I've been thinking a bit about love lately. Well, relationships more specifically, and what makes them work or fail. And how one can sometimes completely misread people. In my most recent relationship, which lasted a year, communication just fell apart at some point. I don't want to get too detailed here, but essentially, my boyfriend of a year abandoned me for a Swiss hedge fund. But communication had been a mess before that, for all kinds of reasons.
But it's OK. I've had a lot to throw myself into. And in a way it's just one of many stressful things that have happened lately, and once I got over the initial anger and sadness, I found that I wasn't too broken up about it, though I still feel angry and confused thinking about certain parts of it, in a way that I haven't for any other exes. I think with most break ups, I tend to feel like either both people played fairly, or it's just a tremendous relief to be out of the relationship. Not so when someone hasn't been communicative, though. But life goes on.
Of course these things always work out better in books. My favorite love scene in all of literature is in Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's the scene with the letter, near the end. Warning. If you keep reading this, there will be spoilers. The book is 200 years old, but maybe you haven't read it and don't want to be spoiled. In Persuasion, Anne Elliot is 27 years old, and "on the shelf." It was the nineteenth-century, so 27 was ancient to be unmarried. But Anne was once in love with a young sailor named Frederick Wentworth, who wanted to marry her years before. Anne's family and friends thought the match beneath her, though, and she doesn't marry him. There are also valid reasons she has for refusing him, but he goes away believing her to have been talked out of it. Through a series of events, Frederick comes back into Anne's life, now a captain, rich and successful, while Anne's family is in debt and must economize. And through the bulk of the novel, Anne and Frederick barely speak. But they gradually begin to soften towards one another again, and it becomes - very gradually - clear to the reader that they still have strong feelings for one another. But neither acknowledges it for a maddeningly long time. And then events conspire to keep them apart for awhile. I won't give away the whole plot. But! Anne has to go and join her family in Bath, and guess who turns up? And he's still trying to discern her feelings and intentions (will she marry her cousin everyone knows is bad news? Will Frederick face rejection yet again?). Social convention, pride, and fear keep them from declaring themselves. But the tension builds maddeningly toward the end of the novel, and though Austen's novels are known for their marital endings, one still worries that they won't just spit it out and get together already.
Until the scene with the letter. This scene is all about communicating the deepest possible feelings, and so much rides on this communication being successful. And it is, even though the two don't even speak to each other! They are in a room with other people, friends and acquaintances. There is no privacy. Frederick sits ostensibly writing a letter of business, and Anne talks to his friend Captain Harville about whether men or women get over lost love faster (Anne argues that men do). After a little while, Frederick gets up and leaves. But that's far from the end. I'll quote the scene below:
She had only time, however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing, when footsteps were heard returning; the door opened, it was himself. He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a time, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs. Musgrove was aware of his being in it: the work of an instant!
The revolution which one instant had made in Anne, was almost beyond expression. The letter, with the direction hardly legible, to "Miss A. E. - " was evidently the one which he had been folding so hastily. While supposed to be writing only to Captain Benwick, he had been also addressing her! On the contents of that letter depended all which this world could do for her. Anything was possible, anything might be defied rather than suspense. Mrs. Musgrove had little arrangements of her own at her own table; to their protection she must trust, and sinking into the chair which he had occupied, succeeding to the very spot where he had leaned and written, her eyes devoured the following words:
"I can no longer listen in silence, I must speak to you by which means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constance among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in
F.W.
I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I hall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."
So, obviously this ends well. But oh, the torture leading up to it. All the uncertainty and occasional miscommunication. I love that Frederick finally decides that enough is enough, and that some sort of direct communication is necessary. Even if it's done in the most indirect way possible. And I love that Anne has been subtly telling him that she's not over him. Even if she was doing it subconsciously. And he knows her well enough now to read all the signals she's been sending, and he is brave enough to just go for it (finally). Anne is also a heroine I like because, though very much of her time, doesn't lack a backbone. She stops letting her family silence her, and she chooses the future she wants at the end (and by that point it's far from her only option). Of course by the end of the novel things are still a little uncertain - Frederick might have to leave Anne again should there be another war. But in all the important ways, it's a happy ending. They're certain of how they feel and they are brave enough to seize a future together.
I think relationships need good communication, but also a certain amount of courage if they're going to last. At some point one just has to take a chance, even if it doesn't work out in the end. By the end of Persuasion, both Anne and Frederick have matured and grown enough to know this, and they're still young enough to want to do it. And I do know that one can't really read Austen as a relationship-guide for the 21st century, and this little post hasn't done justice to how rich and complex this novel is (it's really about so much more than a romance). But there are certainly some lessons to be learned here. And even if there aren't, it's a really good read.
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