Jane Austen was a timeless author who understood aspects of love and friendship she wove throughout her works.
As a little girl, I poured over the words of Jane Austen. Every one of her books showcased characters of humanity; jealousy, pride, desire, compassion, service, determination, love, and all of the flaws that make a fictional character believable.
She understood something about the way people relate and love. We are not much different today.
As I have lived and loved, her words have brought me solace, comfort, and balm to my soul when I have found myself heartbroken and hurting. Her words have brought laughter and insight as I struggled to discover truths in relationships with my own friends and lovers.
Her understanding of friendship and love is found in all of her books.
“We are all fools in love.”
One of her most famous lines of all time, Jane Austen told us in Pride & Prejudice, that most of us behave as clueless, stupid idiots when we first find ourselves in love.
New relationship energy is a powerful drug.
More often than not, our emotions dictate, rule, and guide us in our choices and seldom is logic applied as we proceed. We want to see, touch, smell, taste, and connect with our object of desire come hell or high water.
“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”
Austen said love causes us to behave unlike civil human beings. We are giddy, silly, foolish, and sometimes ridiculous. We make mistakes, bring embarrassment to ourselves, and consider our decisions after we have made them. We may even make a fool of ourselves in public, putting all of our time and attention on the person our heart longs for, as Elizabeth Bennett observed about Charles Bingley in his admiration for her sister in Pride & Prejudice.
“I have no notion of loving people by halves.”
In Northanger Abbey, we learn that true love is all encompassing, and total. Isabella proclaims that she loves people all the way (though she was not at all sincere in her profession). That doesn’t make this gem any less true.
Have you ever been loved in pieces? Have you ever felt as if something was missing in your relationship?
Have you ever been so thoroughly, deeply loved that reality felt boring? Have you truly loved someone with your whole heart and soul? Have you given yourself so completely to another person you didn’t know where they began and you ended?
Then, you might understand what she was trying to say.
“To love is to burn, to be on fire.”
Marianne Dashwood questions if love is even real if it isn’t passionate in Sense & Sensibility. Of course, for many, love is madness, passion, and ecstasy.
Highs, lows, rollercoaster, and fiery connection.
So much of what we read online about love today would dismiss this as only infatuation or desire. Does this not have a place in love? Why must online gurus tell us this is only toxic or not sustainable?
Why isn’t life-altering, transformative sex and transcendent love, which makes you feel drunk and high without altered substances, considered real love?
Maybe Marianne knew a little of what she was talking about, even if she chose the more sensible, peaceful love in the end.
“There are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.”
Of course, Jane Austen uses the character of Edmund Bertrum to help us understand that passionate intensity is not the only form of love. It is one of many ways we can love another human being.
Have you loved someone quietly, peacefully? Have you loved someone passionately and intensely? Have you loved someone playfully and deeply? Have you ever loved like this all in one person, or in many?
This gives me hope, that in those moments in time, love can evolve, deepen, change, and become as overwhelming or as serene as a human being is capable.
Jane Austen understood what some of us have learned, that time and experience changes people and how they love.
“It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy- it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.”
When I first read this in Sense & Sensibility, I felt as if Austen was speaking to me. I have learned emotional connection and depth is something which can not be determined by time, but by hearts alone.
People are different and so unique. Chemistry, compatibility, and connection can not be measured. It is felt, and different with each person.
“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”
In Northanger Abbey, we learn the importance of friendship. Have you ever been through a horrible break-up and leaned on your friends to pull you out of the pits of despair?
Did it help? Did it make you feel better? Sometimes time spent with someone who will let you vent, cry, sit in silence, or make you laugh about anything other than your broken heart is the kind of healing a soul needs when we’re hurt.
How fortunate if we have a friend like this to lean on.
“If I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more.”
Oh, Emma, how did we love this line so much in Jane Austen’s novel of the same name!
Have you ever felt a love so intense and deeply moving, that mere words would only make a mockery of the feeling? Speechless at the overwhelming love for another has been something I’ve often found for myself that conveys the depth of regard I have had for a lover.
Only then, like Jane Austen, could I write, not speak, of such love.
What are your favorite Jane Austen quotes?
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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