Does Jane Austen do Happily-Ever-After?

Jane Austen, HEAs, and other complications for an imperfect world

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Hello dear friends,

It’s cold, it’s dreary, it’s still winter where I am, and we all awoke today with war on the table. Wherever we are, whatever continent and time zone, we could use a cuppa tea and a happy ending.

But things were not so easy in Austen time either.

Jane Austen and Regency stories - on the big screen, the small screen, or in a book - are often our go-to for that romance, that suspended marriage plot, and that HEA we know is coming; but as many of you know, and as our TV screens often diminish, things were uncertain, unstable, and painful in the Regency.

War was on the table for Austen too, even as the water boiled for tea.

One thing I’ve found as I read and reread the stories of Austen, is that so much of Austen is about the journey, and all the muck around it, to get to that destination and its Happily-Ever-After.

The journey or the destination: Jane Austen readers are addicted to the HEAs and happily-ever-afters of romance, but Austen might be doing something even better by weighting her endings with ambiguity, reality, pleasure, and pain. Because such is the world, then and now. | Photo: ©Artycrafter | Dreamstime.com

But even the destination, friends - is not always that uncomplicated-happy we might expect, if our expectations are based on the films, the retellings, the fanfic, all the marvelous romance that arises from these stories and this thing that Jane started.

When you take out your magnifying glass and look closely at the text, sometimes the master puppeteer enacting these stories and these structures seems to be holding something back in the end.

Sometimes that restraint, that complexity, makes the destination all the sweeter. And sometimes it only makes it more complicated.

Did we say ‘Happily Ever After’ or ‘instant annihilation’?

Let’s break it down, as we always do.

First, for those of you who are going to insist on happy endings, we hear you and can absolutely give you at least two almost-unambiguously happy endings in Austen, which to my mind means: Pride and Prejudice, and Emma.

But when you think of all the films, all the retellings, all the romance tropes and HEAs - those “happily ever afters” - flying around that Austen is generally seen as sparking, way back in the Regency, two is not a lot. Not even half.

But even the destination, friends - is not always that uncomplicated-happy we might expect, if our expectations are based on the films, the retellings, the fanfic, all the romance that arises from these stories and this thing that Jane started.

The fact is - and I sense some of you are with me here - we’re feeling rather ambiguous about some of these other endings, and some of these heroes that are not Darcy, Knightley, Lizzy, or Emma.

We’re feeling ambiguous about Edward, and his mother, populating Elinor’s future. We’re feeling ambiguous about Colonel Brandon and his flannel waistcoat. We’re feeling ambiguous if not about Capt. Wentworth, about Persuasion and its ending and that sailing into the sunset - more on this later. 

And we’re certainly feeling ambiguous about Mansfield Park, and its ending - both rushed, and reluctant - that Austen seems to hold her nose and write, leaving any hint at happiness to the very final pages, following chapters of angst, drama, pain, and ultimate “annihilation.” 

In Mansfield Park, as we have discussed in the post Mansfield Park, Horror Show, the ending is the most reluctant, stingy happy a courtship plot could ever dare to get away with. 

This ending is not happy. Am I wrong?

First of all, Fanny Price, our ever-present, ever-pining, stronger-than-she-seems heroine does indeed get the guy. But what a guy! He has successfully ignored her, not-seen her, condescended to her, and blundered his way back to meanie Mary Crawford every time he has a chance, and Fanny is exhausted, as are we, from watching it all.

Get out that magnifying glass and go close in on the text, and you’ll remember that even in Edmund’s ultimate rejection of Mary - one that many readers cheer for, even while respecting Mary’s unconventional striving, as I believe does Austen - that rejection is lukewarm. 

It comes in an almost creepy last meeting between Mary Crawford and Edmund, when she calls to him as he’s walking away from her forever, and she throws him a final “saucy playful smile.” Edmund resists, as he says, but adds, “I have since—sometimes—for a moment—regretted that I did not go back.” And who does he say this to? Fanny of course.

This is an ending not of confidence, assurances, and faith; it’s one of doubt, sadness, and flashes of regret.

It seems there are two alternative endings and romances playing out in Mansfield Park, and each add a lot of fun and suspense. But they also represent alternate HEAs - between Edmund and Mary, and Fanny and Henry - that Austen holds before us and lets sparkle only to yank them away.

Many of us wonder about Henry Crawford. There’s that “hole in her heart” comment that he makes about Fanny. We know he is capable of cruelty, and he’s done bad things, and done bad things to women.

But - and I was just last night reading two characters discussing this in Sally Rooney’s novel Beautiful World, Where are You - a lot of us have done bad things, and it’s the ability to acknowledge those things and to change, that makes us human.

I think Austen makes Henry cruel, yes, but also human, and complicated, and she shows us his growing regard and then ultimate love of Fanny. And if we are tempted to debate about this friends, debate no more: Austen gives us the answer, as she often does, right in the text, and it’s not hinted at. It’s spelled out. Here’s the passage of that alternative HEA that Austen might have given Fanny and Henry. But then doesn’t.

“His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained; especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of his conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward—and a reward very voluntarily bestowed—within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.” 

It’s not that “reward very voluntarily bestowed” is the dramatic stuff of HEAs we’re all looking for. But it might be just as good - or almost as good - as the actual ending this book provides for Edmund and Fanny.

That ending manages to be both passive and rushed. As if Austen wants to just get through what readers expect and get it over with.

All of this reminds me, by the way, of a more overt example with another great novel that arrives across continents and about five decades later - with Louisa May Alcott’s ending for Little Women, where she only provides a marriage for the writer Jo March because her publisher insists on it: So, she says, if they must have a husband, I’ll give them a “funny” one, and she gives readers the older German intellectual, Professor Friedrich Bhaer, instead of the handsome, gallant, and wealthy Laurie. 

Yes, Fanny and Edmund will get together. And that is the ultimate wish of our heroine’s heart. But Austen gives this ending in passive, indirect language. The denouement is held very much at arm’s length, and we are not allowed in to Fanny’s interior monologue, where we have been otherwise throughout the novel.

Edmund’s love is not a given, but instead is given the opportunity to grow: “Scarcely has he done regretting Mary Crawford … before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well—or a great deal better … and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.” (319)

The idea of sisterly regard, wedded love, and “foundation enough” is about as heated as it gets here at Mansfield, friends. And after walking us up to that approaching tenderness and regard, Austen immediately steps back again, with her “I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own,” all the while assuring us - we must take her word for it - that in whatever timeframe we want to give it, “Edmund … became as anxious to marry Fanny, as Fanny herself could desire.”

We’ve been told. Not shown. And we’ve not been given access to Fanny’s thoughts or her happiness. This is not exactly breathless love; but it’s desire, and anxiety, and a fitting ending to this complicated place and this complicated story.

Jane Austen to readers everywhere: Sorry not sorry

So it is that, as we’ve talked about in the post Mousy, Monstrous Fanny Price, Austen is phoning in this HEA. 

Edmund comes to her when there is literally no other option in sight. Good and amazing as she is - and make no mistake, she is - Edmund doesn’t appreciate her. Not now, maybe not ever.

Am I disagreeing with Austen here? I don't think so, friends.

I feel that Austen is perhaps not writing this happy ending because she does not care as much about the ending, and she does not care about happy, in this story. In this story, it is the journey and all we see on the way that matters. It’ a process. And in that process, Austen will destroy Mansfield Park and what it symbolizes, rise up her heroine, and that heroine alone, and make everyone else suffer, quake, tremble and self-destruct in her wake - from the Bertram sisters, to the Crawford siblings, to Lady Bertram and Sir Thomas himself, shaking the foundations of this place and all that it represents. And we’re here for it - because those people are either terrible, or act terribly, and our heroine is ascendent. 

And that’s all good. But it’s not a romantic HEA. 

Figure it out on your own, Austen says. Have that happy ending if you must - feel at liberty to do so. I can’t be bothered with these people any longer. 

Not that I’m dwelling on “guilt and misery,” the narrator says - “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery” - but actually I’m kind of doing just that. Sorry not sorry.

The literal sailing into that literal sunset that is ‘Persuasion’

So what about that most-romantic, most pining, most soulful, most deserved happy ending of all endings in Austen: Persuasion? 

What about that letter, that pierced soul, that half-agony-half-hope that literal-sailing-into-the-sunset that is the HEA of Persuasion?

We won’t take this HEA from you, friends. But we will add some complexity to it, courtesy of the late great scholar Nina Auerbach.

To understand what Austen is getting at in Persuasion - and make no mistake, friends, Austen is always getting at something - it’s great to think about the Romantic era that Austen is smack in the middle of, and that is reflected all over her writing.

She’s examining, exploring, and sometimes interrogating the Romantic spirit that seeks to throw out tradition and static societal order and its hierarchy in favor of dynamic, natural order and equality, while at the same time embracing rationalism, which sharpens your sword in the new world order. 

Figure it out on your own, Austen says. Have that happy ending if you must - feel at liberty to do so. I can’t be bothered with these people any longer. Not that I’m dwelling on “guilt and misery,” she says - “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery” - but actually I’m kind of doing just that. Sorry not sorry.

Auerbaach points out, in a 1972 essay “O Brave New World,” that Austen is embracing both the philosophies of Mary Wollstonecraft and the sensibilities of the Romantic movement. Austen’s stories are laden with the dichotomy of rationalism and Romanticism, and Austen seems to be saying: so is life.

This is what is going on with Austen’s substance vs style dynamic that is constant in every book: Austen’s rejecting, or at least calling into question, the static aristocratic and exploitative systems of her era; and embracing Romantic ideas of natural order, egalitarianism, and reason, for women and for humanity. 

But those Romantic ideals cannot be followed to their logical extremes without regard for the barriers and obstacles that exist for the marginalized. And by marginalized we mean: Anne, and Fanny.

The Romantic spirit of the intellectual age - and the forces of nature, passion and the sublime - are there; but those forces are necessarily tempered, or you could say are harnessed, in Austen’s heroines, through self-education, moral conscience, dedication, and determination. 

So, interestingly, Anne, like Elinor with Marianne, cautions the poetry-loving Captain Benwick to not dive too headlong into the Romantic poetry: “that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.”

Taste it - but sparingly! That rather sums things up, for Austen, don’t you think?

Austen seems to be saying in this, her last novel: Yes, appreciate the romance, the independence, the feeling, the authenticity, and the Happily-Ever-After if you will; but use caution, care, consideration, and intention to guide you. Most of all, take with you to your HEA that rationality and reason to guide your way. There’s much that is uncertain, and much that is at stake - because you matter.

But! It’s not even that simple. 

This, as Auerbach points out, is a process, and not a linear one. Throughout the journey of her novels and through the Jane Austen-universe - progressing from Marianne and Elinor, through to Romantic Fanny, then Emma whose imagination is an arm of her suppression, and Romantic Anne - we embark on the journey. It’s a process laden with pleasure and pain. And Austen, as Auerbach beautifully recounts in her essay, uses both of those exact words together throughout many passages in Persuasion to show us that her stories are laden with pleasure and pain because life is laden with pleasure and pain.

A perfect ending, in an imperfect world

So then what does all this mean for the HEA? Where has it gone? 

Is there ever a truly happy HEA? I fear not. 

But maybe, just maybe, you could also say that by embracing the uncertain within the certain happy ending, and by refusing to shrink from the complications in an uncomplicated structure of the courtship plot, Austen is actually giving us the best, and weightiest, and strongest happy endings of all. 

Possibly none of the heroes are fully trustworthy. All are flawed, as are humans in this imperfect world we inhabit - a world rife with war, then, and also in the headlines today. Persuasion punctuates this uncertainty in life and love, from beginning to end.

Austen gives Anne the guy, the husband, the happy - but also the “quick alarm,” even in that very last sentence of the novel, that points to war, strife, and uncertainty, and the potential for all of it, always there, with our happy.

Much will be left to chance (Austen calls it “providence” and it’s the same thing); much is in the air. Questions remain about how Elinor and Edward, Lizzy and Darcy, Emma and Knightley, Fanny and Edmund - and ultimately how Anne and Wentworth - will get by. 

They will reject elegance, hypocrisy, aristocracy and status; and together they will lean toward love, affection, feeling, meritocracy, equality. 

But will it be enough in this world? The answer, after all the writing, the filming, the scholarship: We don’t know. 

But this is why we love Austen - because while we find love and companionship and affection, and it’s ours; still, like us, and our loves, and wherever we are, on whatever continent, time zone, or era, we belong to an uncertain, unfair, unjust world. 

But this is why we love Austen - because while we find love and companionship and affection, and it’s ours; still, like us, and our loves, and wherever we are, on whatever continent, time zone, or era, we belong to an uncertain, unfair, unjust world. 

That is the truth of it. 

We can celebrate our love and affections and inner strengths even more because in this uncertain world they are even more valuable, and in fact they are essential. They are more than happy; they are life, they are sustenance. 

Austen’s paradoxical pleasure-pain endings admonish us to do what we can but beware the outer forces of destruction that are present. 

It’s because Austen doesn’t shrink from this uncertainty of the world, that we love our HEA, and we love these stories, even more. 

They show us, even amid uncertainty and cruelty, the real truth, and the real hope to carry with us on our journey. 

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Friends, tell us what you think - have you wondered about the ambiguity of Austen’s endings? Do you worry about what real life will be like for Fanny, Edmund, Anne, Wentworth, and even for Emma, Knightley, Lizzy and Darcy? Let us know your thoughts by replying to this email, or commenting here:

Cool things and community

So one of the best things about writing a Substack newsletter is getting to know other Substack writers. And occasionally we like to mention each other in our newsletters - so keep a lookout for our mention-swapping, and be assured that I will only ever mention the newsletters that I subscribe to, read myself, and that absolutely knock my socks off. Easy to do - because I’m outrageously impressed by the dedication, the artfulness, the community of writers of Substack - where I have connected with people who are truly dedicated to the art of writing and fiction. 

And one of my first favorites was a newsletter, the Novelleist, written by Elle Griffin. Griffin is an impressive business journalist/editor - that’s her day job - who also writes gothic fiction on the side, and publishes on her newsletter. And - talk about journey vs. destination! - along the way she uses her journalism skills to research the publishing business. She’s not only an engaging writer - of fiction and nonfiction - but she’s a highly effective community builder, who has organized fiction writers across Substack, and generously given of her time and talents to help build the community of fiction and book-ish Substackers. 

But what I think you Austen Connection readers might be most interested in is that Griffin also publishes her gothic novel, Obscurity, on her Substack, as an experiment in self-publishing that is unfolding in real time. There are so many things that are cool about that, it’s hard to know where to start - but let me just mention that, as Griffin says, it’s a very C19th thing to do, as Dickens and others got their start by serializing their novels in magazines of the day. 

So: Check out The Novelleist - and let us know what you think! 

Cool Links

Here are some of the things I’m reading:

• Nina Auerbach’s “O Brave New World: Evolution and Revolution in Persuasion,” published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

• Book Riot’s breakdown of the HEA

• Here’s an article about Louisa May Alcott’s ending for Little Women and Jo March

• Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where are You