Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series. 

    In previous posts, we looked at the utterly virtuous heroines of 18th century literature, the prescribed role models for impressionable young novel readers. We also asked whether Fanny Price is too perfect, or intended to be perfect, and whether she has any faults. 
​    Creating a perfect heroine is an artistic challenge. First, without faults to overcome, it’s hard for a character to have a character arc. The perfect heroine has to struggle against circumstances that are none of her own making – she is an orphan, or an outcast, she is treated unjustly, she is misunderstood, she is the victim of jealousy or selfishness. And if she is a perfect 18th century female, it’s hard to give her any agency. She can’t travel on her own or earn her own money or give anybody a dressing-down. More typically, the 18th-century heroine weeps her way through her travails until she gets to her happy ending. However, I’ve recently encountered two heroines who are not entirely ridiculous: one is Adela Cleveland in Sarah Burney’s Traits of Nature (1812) and the other is the mother in Jane West’s The Advantages of Education (1793).  

Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series.  

     What keeps Darcy and Elizabeth apart for most of Pride & Prejudice?  Pride on his side, and prejudice on hers. Early on in their acquaintance, there is this exchange:
     “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character." [says Elizabeth] "But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”
     “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
     “And your defect is to hate everybody.”
​     “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.”
      And even when pride and prejudice are cleared away, there still a little delay caused by residual embarrassment and doubt. Once they are happily engaged, Elizabeth asks Darcy about it:
     “What made you so shy of me, when you first called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?”
      “Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.”
     “But I was embarrassed.”
     “And so was I.”
     “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.”
      “A man who had felt less, might.”

   In Fanny Burney’s Evelina, the heroine impulsively goes to the aid of an impoverished Scottish poet, who turns out to be her half-brother. Burney’s sister Sarah Burney gave us Clarentine, who assists a destitute refugee from the French Revolution, who turns out to be her aunt.  Adela, mentioned above, also bumps into an old childhood friend who has fallen on hard times, and his landlady's friend just happens to be the gigolo who married Adela's disgraced mother. 
     Charlotte Smith’s orphan heroine Celestina doesn’t know who her parents are, but the mystery is solved when the man she loves gets lost in the Pyrenees. He stumbles into the only peasant cottage in all of Europe where he could learn the answer to the mystery. Celestina is in fact the daughter of a blue-blooded French nobleman.
   In Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda, we meet Virginia, a beautiful, innocent, artless, girl. She is a secret ward of the hero; he has financially supported her ever since she was left alone in the world. The hero intends to marry her in time, but she is infatuated with a picture of a handsome young lieutenant. Well, what do you know: thanks to a string of amazing coincidences, we find the mystery man and her missing father (and dad's rich!) and everyone gets married to the person they really love.    

Clutching My Pearls is about my take on Jane Austen. Click here ​for the first in the series.