No means no, or does it?
“I am not now to learn,” replied Mr. Collins, with a formal wave of the hand, “that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second, or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.”
You probably have the same opinion of him as I; he is an oily, odious man who proposes to the heroine Elizabeth Bennet after he learns her older sister is already spoken for (an incorrect assumption by their mother). In other words he’s willing to just go down the line of sisters until he finds one willing to marry him.
And I have always found most annoying his declaration that starts this article that women often say no to a proposal the first, second and even third time, and yet I think nothing can be clearer than Elizabeth’s:
“Upon my word, sir,” cried Elizabeth, “your hope is a rather extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal. You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who could make you so. Nay, were your friend Lady Catherine to know me, I am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the situation.”
But in Ms. Vickery’s book, we read of the very long courtship of Elizabeth Parker and Robert Parker (they were related), with 81 letters exchanged from 1745 to 1751 on their long road to marriage, the chief difficulty being Elizabeth’s reluctance to marry Robert over the objections of her father (he though Robert’s prospects too poor). This delay to me seems an interesting contrast to my perception of the marriage process. I should have thought it desirable to secure a marriage as quickly as possible because a woman’s “sell by” date was so short. We know that when Jane Austen at 27 received a proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither she was practically a spinster. So it would behoove a woman to cut her losses and move on.
This definitely was not the case in the Parker alliance. Robert finally found success when in 1751 he wrote to Elizabeth that he had promised that he would write her “before I attempt’d to make Addresses to another.” His financial prospects had not improved, but Elizabeth pleaded with her father to approve the match, which he did.
So it appears Elizabeth had the power to forward the match but was not sufficiently motivated until Robert raised the prospect of taking his chances with another. Ms. Vickery writes: “Perhaps Elizabeth Parker’s delays even bespeak a reluctance for marriage itself. On the basis of love-letters exchange by nineteenth-century Americans, Ellen Rothman and Karen Lystra have both argued that it was common for women to secure an engagement, but repeatedly to defer the wedding.”
The courtship process was the only time that women experienced any power over their lives. They were either the property of their fathers or after marriage the property of their husbands. But while being courted, they could exercise a measure of control and might devise little tests of their suitor’s ardor. Robert Parker survived these tests and they were married, but unfortunately he died in 1758 and Elizabeth’s next marriage, after seven years as a widow, would not prove as amenable to her.
So perhaps I might cut the odious Mr. Collins a little slack in his understanding that a woman’s refusal should not be considered absolute and perhaps I should reassess my belief that a woman in the eighteenth and nineteenth century schemed to secure a marriage as quickly as possible.