Be Nice To Your Sister If You Want To Get A Husband: Siblings On Jane Austen's Marriage Market

Yet Even More Austen

Careful readers of the Chatner will realize that since the birth of our son Rocco in April the percentage of posts about Jane Austen has increased exponentially.¹ That trend continues over at Liberties this week, where I’m continuing my series on siblings with a look at brothers and sisters in Austen’s novels.

Who has ever felt, growing up, that their sister was merely okay? Depending on the day, she was either the greatest confidant, resource, and companion tailor-made to give your life greater meaning, or the wicked, insurgent agent you were forced to share a trundle bed with by forces beyond your ken.

Some highlights include:

• Mary Bennet tries to talk to Elizabeth at least three times in Pride & Prejudice, but Elizabeth refuses to answer her for the entire book.

• Brothers and sisters almost always like one another in Austen’s fiction, both for good (Fanny and William Price) and for ill (Henry and Mary Crawford, Isabella and John Thorpe). The exception to this rule is half-brothers, who are unreliable at best.

• Good mothers, in Austen, can be either dead or alive, but above all the good ones are fungible. They anticipate their own deaths, and they make the necessary arrangements in advance; they do not insist on uniqueness.

• If you want to get married, you should first be conspicuously attached one of your siblings, ideally one of the opposite sex; this will broadcast your most marriageable qualities (loyalty, affection, constancy) without raising eyebrows.

“Where every aspect of daily life must be funneled into the marriage market; affectionate sisters and devoted brothers make for appealing wives- and husbands-in-training. It is her psychological connection with William that enables Fanny to survive her repressive upbringing at Mansfield with any sense of self intact. She transfers, but does not replace, her love for William onto her cousin Edmund, and it is only this semi-closeted love for both ‘brothers’ that enables her to reject Henry Crawford’s proposals despite mounting pressure (the Bertrams want Fanny to marry out, while Fanny wants to marry further into the family; even her disobedience is filial).”

The bad siblings in Austen are usually the most fun, of course. Who’s your favorite? Mine is Mary Elliot and her “relentless, endlessly inventive whines”: “My sore throats, you know, are always worse than anybody’s.”

1. You can read the series on each book here: Emma, Sense & Sensibility, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park. I didn’t do Pride & Prejudice because I covered that in Texts From Jane Eyre ten years ago, and I haven’t yet done Northanger Abbey because, to be honest, I don’t really like Northanger Abbey.