Dressed impeccably and standing no more than three feet apart from each other, they couldn’t stop gazing into each other’s eyes, maintaining an aura of stubborn pride and uncertainty, which lasted for several hours. In fact, this intense staring contest lasted the entirety of the last Jane Austen novel.
Tension ebbed and flowed, as the two protagonists sized each other up. This was at the 20th Victorian ball that was held in the past week alone and where their eyes had first met several hours ago. Ball attendees circled around them in ridiculous Regency-era dancing while wondering what the heck these two indecisive fools were doing.
She was a jaded romantic who grew tired of her mother’s relentless pleas for her to marry her cousin who was the only male heir and inherited the family estate. And he was a bored aristocrat who accompanies his enthusiastic friend to every ball, despite the fact that he loathes everything and everyone around him.
Midway through the novel, our hero and heroine did nothing but stare at each other in complete and utter indecision. The endless gazing continued in silence until, at last, he broke the ice.
“I dare say,” he exclaimed with no emotion at all, “that I do not know if we are destined to be enemies or lovers. I feel that at this point, we either love each other with the fiery passion of a thousand suns or we hate each other with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. Both of those are certainly plausible.”
He wanted to add something else, but surely whatever he would say be up there with Mr. Darcy’s comically awful marriage proposal to Elizabeth Bennett.
“And I,” she retorted with an equally vacant expression, “am uncertain as to whether I wish to make any romantic feelings known to you or if I just want to punch you in the face.”
The annoying ambivalence persisted as the two would-be friends, lovers or something else entirely continued to stare into each other’s eyes, unsure of whether a black eye or a confession of love was forthcoming.
Even after the ball concluded and attendants retired home after an evening of appalling dancing and utter confusion of what was going on, our hero and heroine took no notice of the fact that everyone left and kept gazing into each other’s eyes.
But, as the novel finally concludes after several hundred pages of nothing but intense and creepy gazing, Mrs. Austen reminds us that this was not because of the intensity of their attraction.
No, it was due to the intensity of their uncertainty over who these two people — whose horoscope signs were likely Libras — were to each other.
Are they bitter enemies? Are they affectionate lovers?
They don’t know. We don’t know.
And Jane Austen herself didn’t know.
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Previously Published on Medium
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