April 10, 2008

• Pick me, Pick me

  On Tuesday night, the boys and I watched Becoming Jane about the life of Jane Austen.  This morning Tucker said, "I didn't know you could say so many negative things about men without using bad words."  (A warning, the entire rest of this blog contains spoiler after spoiler, so if you're still on the Netflix waiting list for this one, you might want to just skip down and leave me love in the comments but read it after you've seen the film.)

  All through the film, we see Jane pursued by two men.  One man is a rascal who parties hard, blows off his junior lawyer duties, and gets himself banished to the country as a punishment.  The other is kind, sensitive, wealthy, and has a self-effacing wit.  She "falls in love with" the rascal. 

  In actuality, she pays no attention to the nice guy, is willing to believe the worst of him based on no evidence and ridicules him behind his back.  The rascal she makes excuses for, believes the best of despite the evidence, and waxes poetic about him in front of everyone. 

  It doesn't end well if the ending requires her to be happily with the one she loves.  She spends her life as the sadder but wiser spinster and writes some of the greatest novels of English literature, so there are compensations even though she didn't get what she wanted. 

  (The film also takes a few liberties with the historical account and gives the doomed pair a tear-jerking scene a la Casa Blanca ... "Where you're going, I can't follow, what you have to do I can't be part of ... the judge would set himself against you because of me and you would be dragged down, your potential destroyed, and all those depending on you would be lost ... But don't you love me?  ... of course I do, and I must say it with a smile else I won't believe the irony and all will be lost ..."  It was a lovely bit of role reversal with Jane taking the part of Rick and making the decision for everybody.)

  She gets to claim the position of power, and they go off to nobly suffer for a greater good than the happiness of three little people who don't amount to a hill of beans.

  But the facts of this story and these three lives could have been much happier (and far less dramatic) with a bit of common sense and a little less conviction that rapturous transports of  emotion constituted "the real thing".  In their first meeting Jane is reading an ode to her sister and her sister's newly acquired fiance which is so boring that the young man can scarcely stay awake.

  Jane then is challenged to prove herself and her intellect to the young man.  He is challenged to seduce this innocent to acknowledge the value of "passion" in the form of the erotic.  And the stage is set, the choice is made at a cricket game when the very nice Wisley performs poorly so Jane takes the field and triumphs for the home team.  From that point, there's no turning back as Jane and LeFroy pursue each other whole-heartedly choosing time after time and day after day to ignore everything except their own attraction for each other. 

  Did they "fall in love" at first sight?  No.  Not even close.  He barely even noticed her apart from the fact that her reading disrupted what might otherwise have been a prime opportunity for a nap.  She would never have given him the time of day had she not overheard him making a disparaging remark about her work and felt that sting to her literary pride.

  And all this brings me to the question of whether we choose love or love chooses us. 

  Having made some rather bad choices and some good ones I feel qualified to answer that we choose love.  We have a romantic notion of "one" who is right for us, but the fact of the matter is that out of 6 billion people, there are probably at least 5 or 6 persons with whom we can be blissfully happy.  And the probability of finding one of those people is increased when we apply a bit of reason to the situation. 

  That's why for all the jokes and the failures, the eHarmony formula works for so many people.  There are factors which make us more or less compatible with everyone we meet.  When we choose to be open, vulnerable, kind, interested, and accepting we can find points of agreement with almost anyone.  When we choose to reciprocate the interest of another person we become more attractive to that person.  When we choose to direct our social energies and good humor toward someone who shares our values, our aspirations, and our pleasures the odds of a lasting soul-bond increase exponentially. 

  I'm a little miffed that Jane Austen ignored the quiet geek in the corner in the favor of the ostentatious rascal on the dance floor.  I think that her poor choice, far from being a romantic inevitability was nothing more than the mistake of a young woman who ignored the advice of family and friends cheating three people out of what might have been.  But I'm partial to quiet geeks.      

  There was an interesting discussion of this question between WickedGlee and his lady love yesterday with comments from readers adding their own opinion to the subject.  What do you think?  Do you choose love?  Or does love choose you?

   

  • 11:52 am
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