I OFTEN wonder what Jane Austen would make of the relentless romance industry that has grown up around her novels. While Inga Bredkjær Brodey’s intelligent and insightful book does not pretend to imagine Austen’s thoughts, it goes a long way to indicate they would — in the very least — include surprise and, more likely, exasperated amusement.
Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness is an intensive study of the endings of Austen’s six completed novels. The casual reader might assume that this would be a short and fruitless piece of work: after all, doesn’t everyone know that Austen’s novels resolve in romantic love fulfilled in marriage? Lizzie gets Darcy; Anne Eliot, Wentworth; and so on. Brodey (Feature, 25 October 2024) does not challenge this. Rather, she reminds us that when we read these resolutions as “happy” moments of marital bliss, we do not attend to Austen’s undercutting of sentimental pictures of romantic love and marriage.
While this is a scholarly book — some Austen fans might find its analysis a little intimidating — it holds wonderful insights of popular interest. Why, for example, do so many find Austen’s treatment of most of her “happy” endings cursory or unconvincing, not least Marianne Dashwood’s marriage to Brandon or Fanny Price’s to Edmund Bertram. Brodey argues that Austen deploys sophisticated techniques, including exposing the literary artifice of the narrative, precisely to critique the expectations of romantic fiction.
Even her most romantic of “romantic endings,” that between Lizzie and Darcy, is open to question. Brodey quotes Austen’s own comments by way of support: it is “rather too light & bright & sparkling”. In short, Brodey argues that even Austen herself felt that Pride and Prejudice was too successful as a romance, and Mansfield Park is the antidote. Brodey is certainly right to point out that — contrary to the classic BBC adaptation — the novel does not end in a wedding, but in a wider focus on social concerns: the two couples to be married will renew and heal the social order.
Brodey does not wish to undermine our trust in Austen. Rather, she deepens our appreciation of Austen’s abiding genius. I love how Brodey brings the novels into conversation not only with their film and TV adaptations, but with the literature that has grown up around Austen. Brodey’s conclusion — that “all forms of happiness require some degree of effort” — is deceptively simple and a powerful corrective to a world of romantic ready answers.
The Ven. Dr Rachel Mann is the Archdeacon of Bolton and Salford, and a Visiting Fellow of Manchester Met University.
Jane Austen and the Price of Happiness
Inga Sigrun Bredkjær Brodey
John Hopkins University Press £23
978-1-4214-4820-6
Church Times Bookshop £20.70