By Maddy Higgins
So, I haven’t gotten the chance to write about Jane Austen yet, which is a shame, because I cannot express how much I love all things Jane Austen. While there are so many things I could write about involving her books, in this article, I want to focus on one aspect that really stands out to me: the strong relationships between women in Jane Austen’s novels and how they directly influence the course of the novel. It’s not that these relationships are always perfect, but they are realistic and are vital elements in the arcs of the novels and the character development of the protagonists.
To start with Pride and Prejudice, it’s easy to say the main focus of the novel is the love story between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, which is true, but I would argue that the relationship between Elizabeth and her sister, Jane, is almost as significant to the story. Jane has about the same amount of appearances, if not more, and her importance in Elizabeth’s life alters the course of the story; when rejecting Darcy’s proposal, Elizabeth tells him that if she had even wanted to marry him, nothing could “tempt [her] to accept the man who has been the means of ruining, perhaps forever, the happiness of a most beloved sister”. Mr. Darcy doesn’t propose again to Elizabeth until he has secured Mr. Bingley’s and Jane’s engagement. Jane’s character is essential to the story, as is her friendship with Elizabeth.
It’s more than just plot relevance, though. One of the reasons why Elizabeth and Darcy’s story is so compelling is that the characters are very different, which initially causes them each to misread the other, but ultimately changes them both for the better as they both learn and understand each other better; the characters foil each other, meaning that their differences help readers understand both of their characters better. However, many of these same statements can be made about the friendship between Jane and Elizabeth.
Jane, as a character, is extremely sweet-tempered and mellow, with overflowing humility and compassion. She is very forgiving and always gives people the benefit of the doubt, even when they don’t deserve it. Elizabeth, in contrast, is very quick to judgment, opinionated, and proud. The contrast between Elizabeth and Jane, the different ways they approach life, and the way they challenge and act as foils to each other, are compelling to me for the same reasons the love story is, and in my opinion, severely overlooked.
In Emma, the friendship between Emma and Harriet is even more central to the story; Harriet’s presence in the novel is what guides much of the plot along. Emma and Harriet’s dynamic is more complex and interesting than Jane and Elizabeth’s: Emma is a very wealthy, well-born heiress in the town, and Harriet is a schoolgirl of unknown birth, which lends their relationship a very large power difference in Emma’s favor. Emma uses Harriet as a pawn in her favorite activity, matchmaking, and takes advantage of Harriet’s naivete and blind admiration. Emma’s friendship with Harriet is a frequent conflict between Emma and Knightley, who sees the bad nature of their acquaintance and views them both as negative influences on the other. Emma’s choosing to end her friendship with Harriet and let her marry a man of lower birth is one of the most significant marks of her character growth by the end of the novel as she becomes wiser and humbler.
Nowadays, discussions about the representation of relationships between women in media are much more prevalent than they were in the regency era, but it’s still fascinating to me to see how Austen was such a pioneer of her time, and how there are elements of her writing we can still learn from today.