I dream of Darcy

Even the movie "Becoming Jane," which stars Anne Hathaway as a spunky, proto-feminist Austen, looks to imbue the author's life, which to the best of our knowledge was man light, and certainly marriage free, with corset-straining ardor. The movie suggests that Austen's brief (and minimally documented, in a handful of surviving letters sent from Jane to her sister Cassandra in 1795) flirtation with lawyer Tom LeFroy was actually the passionate inspiration for "Pride and Prejudice."

Austen may have had love interests. She received at least one marriage proposal from a well-off family friend, which she accepted and then rejected the next morning. But the little surviving evidence does not suggest that her life was riddled with romantic assignations. It's odd to stretch a passing acquaintance with LeFroy into a passionate dalliance, and to suggest, in the absence of proof, that Austen could not have made up a love story without a Darcy of her own on which to base it.

Among all those T-shirts available for sale, the most common are ones that brand wearers as "Mrs. Darcy, Mistress of Pemberley," or "An Elizabeth in a Darcy-less World," or "Property of Mr. Darcy." One shirt is emblazoned with lines spoken by many of Austen's male creations, including Darcy's ejaculation, "You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."

In the mad dash to find their Darcys (and to invent one for their favorite author) some readers and fans have forgotten that Austen regarded mushy female infatuation as side-splittingly funny. Though she wrote in the Romantic period, and though her plots conform to those of classic romance, Austen's work was not Romantic in style. Her heroines are not so much breathless and overcome by their emotions as they are practical and genuine. Elizabeth is never ga-ga over Darcy; when "Sense and Sensibility's" Marianne Dashwood goes all nutsy for dashing Willoughby, she is punished for her rain-soaked silliness with a cold that nearly kills her. And Austen's "Northanger Abbey" is a sendup of the popular Gothic novels with which her contemporaries were so obsessed.

Jan Fergus, professor of English at Lehigh University, said that readers seeking reassurance that soul mates are out there in Austen texts are missing part of the author's point. "Even though Austen writes all these romance novels, it's easy to imagine her characters living independently," Fergus said. "So they're missing the strength and independence and humor, which is in fact the only way you get through life. They're missing the absolute hilarity at the swooning and obsession. All these women think they are connecting to Jane Austen and they're actually channeling ["Emma's" goodhearted but painfully naive] Harriet Smith!"

Furthermore, were Austen not tickled by her besotted disciples, she might reasonably have been ticked.

Fergus described Austen's work as being "about the impossibility of a woman finding a home for herself, by herself, and the importance of home for a woman."

In Regency England, the search for Mr. Right may have taken place at candle-lit balls and in well-appointed drawing rooms, but it was not a game. As Austen wrote, "Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor." Inheritance laws meant that women could not inherit from their fathers, and women lived in real fear of having their homes pulled out from under them if they did not secure a husband of means, who hopefully would not die overseas in the Army, a fate that Jane's sister Cassandra's fiancé suffered. Even if women did marry well, to a clergyman for instance, nothing was secure. Upon his retirement or death, his family would be turned out of their home, as happened to Austen's father when he gave up his Hampshire parish. These are the threats and fears that drive Austen's heroines.

One of the great pleasures of female life in the 21st century, especially if you're of the class to which Austen belonged and into which she sunk her sharp teeth, is the possibility of earning your own living, of not having to land a man to survive financially, of no longer having to wear your need for a husband on your sleeve ... or tote bag or bumper.

There is a particularly grim shirt for sale bearing an image of Austen originally drawn by her sister Cassandra (who also never married after the death of her fiancé) above the caption, "Where's My Mr. Darcy?" To hold out for an affectionate union, as Austen did, was to put your future -- and your family's future -- at real economic risk, with no greater (and perhaps a lesser) guarantee of finding your Mr. Darcy than today's anxious singletons have. Fergus pointed out that Austen herself cautioned her niece in a letter that "there are such beings in the World perhaps, one in a Thousand, as the Creature You and I should think perfection. Where Grace & Spirit are united to Worth, where the Manners are equal to the Heart & Understanding, but such a person may not come in your way, or, if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a Man of Fortune, the Brother of your particular friend & belonging to your own Country."

In short, Fergus said, "Austen is not expecting Darcy to turn up, and if he turns up, she knows he's going to need a lot of reforming."

But thinking about all of this is taxing. And not nearly as much fun as thinking about Colin Firth in dripping breeches.

By phone, Sullivan said the trick is finding balance. "You can go too far" in Austen fantasy, she said. "That's one of the lessons of 'Northanger Abbey': that you can go too far with books, get far too lost in the fantasy. You need to keep things in perspective."

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