"The Other Bennet Sister" is Closer to Jane Eyre than Jane Austen

Once upon a time there was a girl born without the gift of beauty, grace, the pleasing manners of extroverts, or the prospect of a fortune. Always criticized and compared unfavorably to her counterparts -- when she got any notice at all -- she grew up lonely with little hope for finding happiness. Once she was grown up, she determined to leave what she had known and comes to find a true home, self-acceptance, and the love she deserved,  despite never blossoming into a beauty. After turning down a proposal from a handsome suitor, she finally got to marry the man she had been in love with who was unattainable for a time.

Coaster in The Other Bennet Sister collection 

That's a summary of Janice Hadlow's 2020 novel, The Other Bennet Sister. Add in a bit about taking on the role of governess, and you have the 2026 adaption's version of the story. Of course, it's also the summary of Jane Eyre's story. Without the inspiration and model set by Charlotte Brontë to apply Romanticism to the novel form and give voice to the type of women never before cast as heroines, this kind of coming-of-age story would not have been possible.  

Romantic aspirations meet everyday reality

While Jane Austen lived during the Romantic movement, she is not generally counted among the Romantics. She may have heard of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley, but she definitely does not quote them. Her references to the picturesque or sensibility should not be mistaken for Romanticism, as she draws on artistic movement from the 18th century.  

In The Other Bennet Sister, Wordsworth's poetry is central to Tom Hayward's character. He shares it with Mary who comes to appreciate experiencing landscapes as a poet does, not just reciting lines, but feeling them. Like him, she internalizes that Romantic quality, and it becomes part of her self-discovery that make it possible for her to feel the happiness she has not experienced when she turned to books for direction and identity at Longbourn.  

It is a very compelling story that resonates well with readers and audiences in the 2020s.  But it deviates from Jane Austen's heroines' stories in a number of ways.

1.All of  Austen's heroines are -- if not beautiful -- handsome enough to be tempting. That holds true even of Anne Elliot who had felt herself aged and faded at 27 but blooms back into good looks, as well as of Fanny Price who becomes decidedly attractive when she grows up. 

2.  Austen's heroines do tend to take some kind of journey and sometimes enjoy being outside to admire the view or for a picnic, but their form of nature is typically very much contained.

3. Austen maintains that men always make the first move as far as declarations of feeling.

4. None of Austen's heroines ever have to earn a living. 

A different take on what's interesting

“[Charlotte Brontë] once told her sisters that they were wrong - even morally wrong - in making their heroines beautiful as a matter of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a heroine interesting on any other terms. Her answer was, 'I will prove to you that you are wrong; I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.”

― Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë

It wasn't just Charlotte's sister, Emily and Anne, who believed in the general rule of beautiful heroines. It had been a tradition reinforced by the author that George Lewes (the man that George Eliot lived with because he already had a wife)  told  Charlotte to take as her model, Jane Austen. Brontë began here response with an indication she would try to take his advice to heart and be "more subdued," but she quickly proves she has no intention of doing so as preserved Gaskell's biography:

"Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would have rather written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels?

"I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find ? An accurate, daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face a carefully-fenced, highly-cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.

If you think about it, you realize that Austen's landscapes are very much as Brontë  describes them. They are tamed and circumscribed and utterly devoid of the sublime quality that the Romantics attempted to capture through their art. But that's not the case in The Other Bennet Sister in which Mary Bennet travels to the Lake District and ventures on a climb to experience the sublime for herself. She even refuses to listen to reason when the guide warns of a storm brewing, going along with Ryder's suggestion that they experience it instead of escape it. (In the book the consequences are just a miserably wet descent, though the adaption has Mary fall deathly ill as a result to allow for some elements from  Sense and Sensibility.)  

Can a heroine speak freely? 

In Austen's universe, the answer is no. The heroines have to hold back to maintain decorum and their dignity. That is central to the story of Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot. But what of Mary Bennet? In the novel devoted to her, this is the crux of the matter. Her path was already paved by Jane Austen who expresses herself passionately and freely to Rochester:

"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;--it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,--as we are!"
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (chapter 23)

Jane knows she doesn't look like a heroine, being "poor, obscure, plain, and little," though that doesn't mean she doesn't have the soul and heart of one.  Romantic that she is, she insist on not confining herself to "the medium of custom, conventionalities" that are the very fabric of the Austenian universe to be able to address Rochester (who was her employer and social superior) as her equal.

All or bust

As all readers of Pride and Prejudice know, Charlotte Lucas  she determines to win the attention of Mr. Collins and marry him to assure herself of a secure future -- if not a very happy one. She appears to be an older version of Mary -- plain and penniless --just without spectacles. At 27, she realizes she may never get another opportunity for matrimony. Someone like her would never attract someone like Mr. Darcy and so she takes what she can get. 

Mary Bennet finds herself with the unexpected opportunity to make a far more brilliant match than Charlotte does  when the handsome, charming, and rich Mr. Ryder  proposes to her. Of course, he doesn't propose at first. He just suggests she accompany him to Italy. Before it has quite dawned on her what that would mean without marriage, Mary already tells him she cannot accept because she doesn't love him.   

In the very next chapter he does propose.  and then even offers to tell Mary what his motivation is on p. 425: 

"There are all the usual reasons of course. I enjoy your company. I find you kind, unaffected, modest, and charming... But I must tell you, there is a more selfish dimension to my preference. I think you would improve me. You are serious where I am flighty. You work hard where I am lazy. You think deeply where I am shallow. Thing what a good deed you would do in marrying me. Imagine how your influence would change me for the betters. Perhaps, for those reasons, if for no other, you are obliged to accept me?"

coaster from this collection

Though he is not as insistent as St. John Reed is in pressing Jane Eyre to marry him because it is her duty to support him in his mission to India, he still is making the argument that a woman is obligated to marry a man she does not love out of duty.

Thinking about why she had no choice other than to reject Ryder's proposal in chapter 91 on p. 434, Mary muses: "If she had known nothing else -- if she had never had a hint of what real love looked like, she might have been content with the pale facsimile of happiness a pragmatic marriage offered. but now that she had known Mr. Hayward, it would not do. Now that she had met a man she truly loved, she could not marry another." 

That is very similar to what Jane put in more defiant terms in resisting St. John. In chapter 34, when she tells him: "I scorn your idea of love," and continues, "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer."  

Even as her own will starts to weaken, she knows this is not the love she has experienced, as she says in chapter 35: "He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, almost as if he loved me (I say almost — I knew the difference — for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty)." Jane nearly succumbs to St. John and only gains the strength to break away when she hears a voice call her name.

Mary doesn't have any such supernatural inspiration but her own resolve to continue to wait for Tom Hayward rather than settle for anything else because, as she tells him when he finally does return in chapter 92 p. 452: "I have loved you for a very long time and know I will never love anyone as much as I love you. You are the only man who could ever make me happy, and I have missed you -- oh, I have missed you so very, very much." 

Even before this confession, Mary repeatedly thinks about her happiness depending completely on a future with Tom Hayward and chafes at being banned from seeking him out to tell him so by the conventionalities of society. There is a lot of pent-up frustration behind this moment in which she rebels against  social norms that in confessing her love to him before he makes his own declaration. Austen would not endorse that, but Brontë.

A nod to Villette

The adaption takes on a somewhat different direction about how Mary defines her life direction that I'm not even certain audiences who get carried away by seeing their "ships" come together would notice. While Tom was absent, she pursued her plan to be what she calls a governess but is really a tutor, something she intends to continue after her marriage. 

This runs completely counter to the book in which Lady Catherine's suggestion that Mary become a governess fills her with horror and prompts her to escape that fate by staying with the Gardiners indefinitely.  The way Mary regards the prospect of being a governess in the book is much more consistent with Austen's view, which she gives voice to in Emma the character of Jane Fairfax. 

But to a modern audience, it makes sense that a woman who has devoted much of her love to acquiring learning may wish to share that with other in order to feel fulfilled. The Sanditon adaption also showed its heroine working as a governess and even continuing to teach after marriage when she didn't need to make a living. In reality, that would not have been socially accepted. Only spinsters could have continued working.

The adaption is really upholding 21st century views that women are entitled to a career that makes them feel fulfilled. But there was some precedent to this in another Brontë heroine: Lucy Snowe. Like Jane Eyre, Lucy has no fortune or looks to recommend her and must make her own way in the world. She does this by teaching and even works her way up to establishing her own school. The narrator suggests that the school was not going to be abandoned upon marriage, which was a pretty bold take for that time. 

"I write..." mousepad

To read more about the Romantic movement's deep influence on  Brontë's writing, read my dissertation: "Engendering Romanticism: A Study of Charlotte Brontë's Novels"

Related:

How "The Other Bennet Sister" subverts narrative convention

Mary and Marylin: the Girl in the Glasses Finds Love

Jane Austen and Autism

Jane Austen: Love and Money
Jane Austen at the Morgan
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen
Observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement
The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory
Jane Austen's Heroines
Jane Austen and Capability Brown
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications

Jane Austen at 250

Many Happy Returns, Jane Austen

From Brontë to Patchett

I just finished reading The Verts, Ann Patchett's latest children's book beautifully illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. The contrasting preferences for a birthday celebration between two siblings reminded me of the contrast between a set of cousins in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

In Chapter 24 of Wuthering Heights, Catherine Linton recounts the contrast between Heathcliff's son summed up in their different ideal summer days:

'One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven's happiness: mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds, and linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side, and the moors seen at a distance, broken into cool dusky dells; but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze; and woods and sounding water, and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine, and began to grow very snappish. At last, we agreed to try both, as soon as the right weather came; and then we kissed each other and were friends.

These two statements, in particular, encapsulate the differences between introverts who need to 
 recharge in quiet surroundings and extroverts who feel inviograted by activity:

"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine."

In Pratchett's book, we have that difference depicted in Ivan's desire for solitude and quiet versus Estie's desire to throw a party with a lot of guests and noise. Thought Emily would not have used the terms attached to "vert," as a staunch introvert herself, she, certainly, would have recognized that aspect of human nature. 

Order these here 

Related

Perspectives on Introversion

Working Alone

The Great Introvert

Jane Austen's Heroines

Happiness is

Views on Boundaries

Public or it didn't happen

Jane Austen and Autism

  

 Some years ago, I wrote about introversion in Jane Austen's heroines here:  Jane Austen's heroines.  What was left out of that perspective was a consideration of introverted heroes. They include both Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. But the most beloved introvert hero of all is Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice.

Mr. Darcy exhibits such extreme introverted behavior in the earlier parts of the book that some readers interpret it as signs of being on the spectrum. I first came across that theory in a YouTube video. 

To be fair, it doesn't quite claim that Mr. Darcy is autistic but that what defines his comfort zone, as well as his way of thinking and responding to social and conversational cues really resonates with those who are neuroatypical. 

A few days after I happened across that video, I found the source of theory of Darcy as autistic in Deborah Yaffe's book Among the Janeites.  It stems from a speech therapist named Phyllis Ferguson Bottomer. Her inspiration was not the book itself but the A&E adaptation that she watched in 2002. She zeroed in on the important interaction in Ch. 31 in which Elizabeth relays her point of view of  Mr. Darcy's rudeness, and he explains himself:

“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,” said Darcy,“of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.”

Bottomer seized on the parallel between this explanation and how Temple Grandin explained her experienced her experience as an autistic in her autobiography: "I have always have a hard time fitting in with this rhythm."

Bottomer was so convinced that the novel portrayed people on the spectrum that she started presenting at Jane Austen conferences and wrote her own book on the subject: So Odd a Mixture: Along the Autistic Spectrum in 'Pride and Prejudice.'

I haven't read Bottomer's book, but I have read quite a number of books on introversion (see links

Pride and Prejudice gold-plated necklace

 below). I'm also an introvert myself and do understand the reluctance to make small talk and throw oneself into a dance when one is feeling not truly connected to those around one. 

Perhaps one would argue that introverts have some autistic tendencies, but one could just as well say that autistics have some introvert tendencies. In a Venn diagram, there would be an overlap between the two. Bearing that in mind, one need not conclude that anyone with those shared tendencies is necessarily on the spectrum, or that perhaps we should really normalize what is considered neuroatypical as typical because introverts do make up a substantial number of the population, as much as half, according to Laurie Helgoe. 

Whether one attributes Mr. Darcy's standoffishness to autistic tendencies or to a natural proclivity for introversion, the assumption Jane Austen and Elizabeth make is that it can be countered. In this key exchange, she likens conversational social skills to playing an instrument and so gently chides him by way of analogy: 

“My fingers,” said Elizabeth, “do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of superior execution.”

Darcy takes this as her seeing a point of commonality between them, which makes him feel more at ease in her presence. Notice how often he responds to what she says with a smile, and this is one of those instances:

Darcy smiled and said, “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you can think anything wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.”

He takes this to mean she understands them, but in truth she doesn't yet. That will take more time and more opening up on his end, risking vulnerability, which many introverts find extremely difficult. But that is the key to their whole relationship: Darcy has to overcome his natural inclination to connect with Elizabeth, and she has to let go of her extrovert assumption that she can take a full and accurate read on others instantly. They are the paradigm of a successful marriage of opposites.

See

The Marriage of Opposites

Jane Austen Silhouette Wine Glass

Happiness is

Perspectives on Introversions

The Great Introvert

Jane Austen: Love and Money

Love and Limerence in Jane Austen

Jane Austen at the Morgan
Three Janes, Two Governesses
Observations on Jane Austen's Emma

Jane Austen's Heroines

Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness 

Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications
The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory

Jane Austen's Heroines 

Jane Austen and Capability Brown

Isaac Asimov on Creativity

Clearly Isaac Asimov lived before "synergy" (now displaced by "collaboration") was  buzz word. In 2014 MIT Technology Review ran "Isaac Asimov Asks, 'How Do People Get New Ideas?' and cited Asimov's 1959 essay on creativity. 

from https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7380/12625238314_6794bf272c_b.jpg

Like Woz, quoted in Susan Cain's Quiet and here, he does believe "isolation is required" to achieve creativity. His description of a creative mind also corresponds to how introverts operate: "His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it."

What's interesting, though is his describing the intrusion of others as not being a problem due to distraction but to introducing self-consciousness that would impede progress: "For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display."

However, Asimov doesn't go so far as to say that you should shut yourself off from society altogether. He explains that interacting with others has other benefits for the mind

No two people exactly duplicate each other’s mental stores of items. One person may know A and not B, another may know B and not A, and either knowing A and B, both may get the idea—though not necessarily at once or even soon.
Furthermore, the information may not only be of individual items A and B, but even of combinations such as A-B, which in themselves are not significant. However, if one person mentions the unusual combination of A-B and another the unusual combination A-C, it may well be that the combination A-B-C, which neither has thought of separately, may yield an answer.

Yet that doesn't mean that he considers the group dynamics to lead directly to new creative insights. Instead they "educate the participants in facts and fact-combinations, in theories and vagrant thoughts." For the group to work in that way, he warns that the group has to not be at all censorious. He explains that even one person can poison the atmosphere in which all creative expression is unimpeded:

If a single individual present is unsympathetic to the foolishness that would be bound to go on at such a session, the others would freeze. The unsympathetic individual may be a gold mine of information, but the harm he does will more than compensate for that. It seems necessary to me, then, that all people at a session be willing to sound foolish and listen to others sound foolish.
If a single individual present has a much greater reputation than the others, or is more articulate, or has a distinctly more commanding personality, he may well take over the conference and reduce the rest to little more than passive obedience. The individual may himself be extremely useful, but he might as well be put to work solo, for he is neutralizing the rest.

He also offers advice on capping the number of group members. Any more than five, he believes would be counter productive because of "the tension of waiting to speak, which can be very frustrating." But even more important than that is the question of expectation. In other words, one's official job should not be to what today is called "ideate."

The way he puts it is this: "The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all." The ideas just came while they pursuing other things, which, he feels is important to remove a sense of obligation: "To feel guilty because one has not earned one’s salary because one has not had a great idea is the surest way, it seems to me, of making it certain that no great idea will come in the next time either."

Living on 24 hours a day

Though the contexts may vary from those cloaked in spiritualism with suggestions of meals with a Buddah to those that guide you to a state of mindfulness, the essence of self-help books seems to be very much the same. 
And yet you are in search of happiness, are you not? Have you discovered it?
The chances are that you have not. The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.

That's what struck me when I read the really short book, How to Live on Twenty-Four Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett with a copyright date of 1910.  The author consciously references other book titles that say "How to live on X amount a day" to emphasize the point that time is money and even more precious and more evenly distributed than currency. I took a copy out from the library, but you can read the entire text online for free from the Gutenberg project here.

The book's central theme is maximizing one's time to achieve happiness, though not the happiness one pictures in a extroverted sense (see  http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html). The happiness is rather the result of achieving harmony between one's principles and one's actions. This point is revealed in chapter 8: 

We do not reflect. I mean that we do not reflect upon genuinely important things; upon the problem of our happiness, upon the main direction in which we are going, upon what life is giving to us, upon the share which reason has (or has not) in determining our actions, and upon the relation between our principles and our conduct.

The book is a 20th Century product, so it's no longer deferring to the Church for guidance on how to live. Rather it is exhorting one live according to principles and reason. In contrast to Disney's advice to follow your heart, you are advised to use your head. But in doing so you also gain an appreciation for science, art, music, literature (if those things interest you) or even your own daily life. What would be packaged today as "mindfulness," he calls reflecting on genuinely important things. 

Chapter 5 is entitled "Tennis and the Immortal Soul." The conjunction here is not intended to suggest a deep connection as one finds in  Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. On the contrary, the suggestion is that tennis and other leisure pursuits are what people regard as important while they neglect the type of "cultivation of mind" that the author believes is essential to feed the soul. That becomes clear from the end of the chapter:

 But I do suggest that you might, for a commencement, employ an hour and a half every other evening in some important and consecutive cultivation of the mind. You will still be left with three evenings for friends, bridge, tennis, domestic scenes, odd reading, pipes, gardening, pottering, and prize competitions. You will still have the terrific wealth of forty-five hours between 2 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Monday. If you persevere you will soon want to pass four evenings, and perhaps five, in some sustained endeavour to be genuinely alive. And you will fall out of that habit of muttering to yourself at 11.15 p.m., "Time to be thinking about going to bed." The man who begins to go to bed forty minutes before he opens his bedroom door is bored; that is to say, he is not living.But remember, at the start, those ninety nocturnal minutes thrice a week must be the most important minutes in the ten thousand and eighty. They must be sacred, quite as sacred as a dramatic rehearsal or a tennis match. Instead of saying, "Sorry I can't see you, old chap, but I have to run off to the tennis club," you must say, "...but I have to work." This, I admit, is intensely difficult to say. Tennis is so much more urgent than the immortal soul. 

I find it fascinating that the core of such advice is so consistent for over a century, despite the massive changes the world has seen over two World Wars and the rapid advance of technology. That is not to mitigate the differences in contexts. They are quite striking. Clearly, the people the book addresses are not feeling the same stress people do today when they rise early to commute to work and return from it. Work begins for them at 10 AM and ends at 6 PM. The commute is assumed to take at most half an hour, though there also is an assumption of a sixth half day of work ending at 2 PM.


For people living in England in 2010, leisure time is not frittered away in front of a screen (not even a movie screen, never mind a smartphone, computer, or television). Even a radio is out of the picture, as music is only to be found in live events. Still they manage to fritter away time but just by doing this and that until thinking of going to bed for a good 45 minutes before doing so. In that way, one lets time slip through one's fingers instead of getting one's real 24 hours' worth. In fact, the author doesn't expect one to use all 24 hours but just to make better use of the time spent outside work by exercising one's mind for 90 minute sessions and actively reflecting at other times when is apt to adopt a "semi-comatose" state.

Another difference most of today's self-help books and this one is that very little attention is paid to exercise of the body. Bennet does mention that 10 minutes a day of that can make a difference. However, he is not arguing that one needs to put in the time for the physical regimen but for exercising the mind and getting it into shape. Likely people walked a lot more just to get around as we're talking about a time before cars were owned by the average person.

Chapter 7 is entitled "Controlling the Mind," and like many modern books on meditation, the goal is to achieve concentration and focus, though Bennet skips the thinking about nothing step and jumps right into focusing on your end goal:

"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in the train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing simpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the affair is not easy. When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is larking round the corner with another subject. Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by any chance fail if you persevere.

When you achieve a certain mindset, you can appreciate that "nothing in life is humdrum" as stated by the title of Chapter 10. In that chapter Bennet demonstrates how an appreciation of cause and effect can make one more philosophical and less shocked when things don't go one's way with the example of accepting one's stolen watch as the result of knowable causes. But it's not just a matter of learning to appreciate human nature but all of nature:"The whole field of daily habit and scene is waiting to satisfy that curiosity which means life, and the satisfaction of which means an understanding heart." That is something that can even be appreciated by someone who does not care for art, music, or literature. But for those who do care for the latter, Bennet devotes an entire chapter.

"Serious Reading" is the title of Chapter 11. By using that term, Bennet's intention is to exclude novels because they do not require the mental exertion that should be applied to the 90 minute program. Good novels are all too easy to read, he says, and bad ones just aren't worth reading at all. It's remarkable that what was considered merely popular literature then are are now seriously studied in college courses. Wouldn't any reader today be proud for working her way through something like Anna Karenina if she were not required to read it for a class? Bennet has loftier reading goals, as he indicated by his own choice of reading, including the works of Marcus Aurelius (he doesn't leave home without him in book form), Epictetus, Pascal, La Bruyere, and Emerson. No women featured here, though he does reserve special praise for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and recommends that everyone read Aurora Leigh.


Aside from praising poetry over prose, Bennet offers two concrete suggestions for the one who embarks on improving reading:

The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts. Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author. Say to yourself: "I will know something about the French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John Keats." And during a given period, to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice. There is much pleasure to be derived from being a specialist.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read. I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter. They take to reading as better men take to drink. They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion. They will tell you how many books they have read in a year. Unless you give at least forty-five minutes to careful, fatiguing reflection (it is an awful bore at first) upon what you are reading, your ninety minutes of a night are chiefly wasted. This means that your pace will be slow. Never mind. Forget the goal; think only of the surrounding country; and after a period, perhaps when you least expect it, you will suddenly find yourself in a lovely town on a hill.

Related post: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/its-meaningful-life.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/12/views-on-boundaries.html

The marriage of opposites

Shakespeare begins Sonnet 116 with the declaration, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/ Admit impediments." In real life, some marriages may not be based so much on the coming together of minds but on the attraction of opposites. That's the case for introverts who marry extroverts, as was the case of each of the three authors featured in Perspectives on Introversion.
The two could complement each other, and come, potentially, come up with a better balance than a couple consisting of two social butterflies who always seek out a crowd or two introverts who end up staying home all the time. On the other hand, the two might clash when it comes to deciding how often to go to parties, entertain others, and how many guests to invite. 
The extrovert may push for more social opportunities, which recharge his/her energies, while the introvert may feel stressed by having to constantly make small talk at such gatherings. Is it inevitable that they end up citing irreconcilable differences in divorce court?

Not necessarily.

In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain, who admits to being an introvert happily married to an extrovert explains that being married to one's social opposite can work quite well. The key is to understand the other's point of view and arrive at a compromise that will be a win-win for both. She offers the example of such a couple in conflict over the gregarious husband's desire for weekly dinner parties. His introvert wife dreaded such social situations and wanted to be absent from them, a solution that did not appeal to him. The winning solution was one that cut back the parties to twice a month and that changed the format to a buffet style with flexible seating that allowed the shy wife to select a seat at an edge or within a smaller group that would allow her to opt out of small talk and opt into more meaningful, intimate conversations. Other conflicts over public versus private outlets could be resolved in similar ways.

For more on this, see https://therapychanges.com/blog/2016/12/introverts-extroverts-brain-chemistry-differences/

Rrelated posts: 

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/working-alone.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/great-introvert.html 

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/12/views-on-boundaries.html

http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/public-or-it-didnt-happen.html

Views on Boundaries

Personality types and introversion recently came up on one of the online boards  on which I comment. It made me consider another aspect of the difference between introverts and extroverts. It's not just a matter of people who need to be alone to recharge in contrast to those who need to be around other people to feel energized. There are real differences between the two in how they view the way people should relate to each other, and that can give rise to misunderstanding or the wrong assumptions, and, yes, I'm thinking of a particular incident.

From what I've observed, introverts assume that boundaries should be in place unless otherwise specified, whereas extroverts are more likely to assume the opposite. Consequently, while an extrovert would assume it is neighborly to drop in on someone, an introvert would rarely do so unless s/he is expressly invited to come at a particular time. That doesn't mean the introvert doesn't like his/her neighbor but that the assumption is that people want to be left alone unless they tell you otherwise.

Now to get to the particular incident of different assumptions of what constitutes polite behavior, here's the example. I had a friend who stayed in the empty house of a neighbor of a relative once. Said relative told me afterward that the friend was shocked at what the friend did. I was imagining all sorts of horrific scenarios and then was told that the really shocking thing was this: the friend did not pick up the mail that was put through the door slot. Now if you're an introvert, your assumption of boundaries would tell you to leave as much of someone else's stuff alone as possible. That would extend to handling someone else's mail that just happened to be delivered through the door. It takes an extroverted mindset to assume that showing such respect for someone else's privacy is a lack of courtesy.

I'm now adding one other example about circumspection with respect to boundaries, as it just happened. I commented on someone's post and referred to a Talmudic story to make my point. Someone else said I was misrepresenting it and said I got the name wrong. In truth, I would do the same, but only if I were 100% sure that the other person got it wrong.  

In this case, the name I had written was correct. I ascertained it again for myself by getting out the primary source. When I pointed that out, the woman who had disagreed with me had to concede that point and then made excuses for herself that she had just been on a long flight, etc., etc. I understand making mistakes when tired. I do that myself and have even been guilty of making typos I would normally spot. However, I would not ever challenge someone on the basis of at hazy recollection, and then say, well, what do you want from me, I was tired.

That's also part of introversion: being very prepared and very sure before speaking up, particularly when publicly contradicting someone.




Related http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/public-or-it-didnt-happen.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/05/perspectives-on-introversion-this-is.html
 http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/working-alone.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/great-introvert.html 
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html

Public, or it didn't happen

The title is a variation on the "Pictures, or it didn't happen" demand that we sometimes see in comments on posts. The idea is that the visual is necessary to really convince the audience that the account is true. (Why seeing should be believing in the age of Photoshop and CGI is beyond me, but I can visualize things through descriptive texts).

To return to the title, though, it refers to the way some  extroverts see the world -- only things that happen in public really matter. In the introvert universe, though, what transpires in private counts just as much as what happens in public, sometimes even more so.

Lately, there's a trend to make introversion more socially acceptable by stressing that it's not a matter of being anti-social, just of needing to recharge with alone time. However, that really is an overly simplistic reduction. There are real differences between introverted and extroverted perspectives on interaction that extend beyond what one may prefer to do during leisure time to feel revitalized.

I believe that accounts for how extroverts forget about things that are very important to introverts but have no public impact. For example, after I had a baby and couldn't drive for a while, someone nearby promised she would drive my son, along with her own kids, into school. Even though she made the offer on her own and not in response to my request for a favor, she forgot all about it. Another woman I carpooled with for camp just failed to show up on the last day because she decided not to send her kid in then and couldn't even be bothered to let me know by phone.

 I don't think it's just a matter of general forgetfulness but the way extroverts process things require a more public event for them to rank as important. Letting down someone in private just doesn't count. On the other hand, should the introvert skip a party filled with people with no real common interests, well, that's a crime not to be forgiven.


More recently, I've seen this happen again in variations. The extroverts involved would, undoubtedly, claim that they are nice people. But they really have no empathy for the introverted way of thinking -- that which is private also matters, especially when it is a matter of keeping your word and not letting down someone who thought you could be relied on. But in their mind, only what happens in public is important.




Related posts:
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/12/views-on-boundaries.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/08/happiness-is.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/great-introvert.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/04/working-alone.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/05/perspectives-on-introversion-this-is.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html

Happiness is

Do you find happiness surrounded by the throngs of people and noise in a club? 

Or do you find in silent contemplation of the beauty nature? 

Happiness is not one-size-fits-all but a function of one's own subjectivity --whatever or whomever one loves. For some people that may be parties and rock concerts, while for others it may be reading a book on a beach and listening to a string quartet. Though one's choice of activity  is more social on an objective scale, that does not mean the individual is experiencing a greater feeling of happiness.

That's because happiness can be found in quiet contentment just as much as it is in outward celebration. 

For the chemistry that underlies the difference in preferences for pleasurable outlets between introverts and extroverts, see Introverts and Extroverts: The Brain Chemistry Behind Their Differences

 Herein lies the problem of declaring who is the happiest of them all.  As researchers rush in where angels fear to tread, psychologist Will Fleeson of Wake Forest University headed an often quoted  2010 study that declared extroverted behavior is correlated with happiness.

The abstract puts it as follows:

In Study 1, participants reported their extraversion and positive affect every 3 hr for 2 weeks. Each participant was happier when acting extraverted than when acting introverted. Study 2's diary methodology replicated the relationship for weekly variations in positive affect. Study 3's experimental methodology replicated the relationship when extraversion was manipulated within a fixed situation. Thus, the relationship between extraversion and positive affect, previously demonstrated between persons, also characterizes the internal, ongoing psychological functioning of individuals and is likely to be explained by something capable of rapid intraindividual variation. Furthermore, traits and states are at least somewhat isomorphic, and acting extraverted may increase well-being. 

Sophia Dembling addressed the problem with the definitions of happiness here in her book The Introvert's Way: Living a Quiet Life in a Noisy World. As I suspected from the shortness of the chapters in the book, they are based on previously published blog posts. The one on the happiness study is at http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201009/is-our-definition-happiness-extrovert-centric:

For his research, Fleeson drew on a three-component model of happiness, using just one of the three components: Positive affect. That's the happy other people can see and hear, and it is strongly related to extroversion. The second leg of the stool is life satisfaction, which is more cognitive than emotional: Even if you're not feeling great at the moment, you know your life is pretty good all around. (Introverts have a little bit less of that kind of happiness than extroverts. We think too much, right?)
The third component of happiness is absence of negative affect--not having anxiety, fear, anger, frustration. "And the opposite of that is feeling at peace, at ease," Fleeson explained.
At peace, at ease. Those also sound introvert-ish to me.
So one could argue that introvert happiness here is being described as a sort of negative space. Feeling peaceful is not positive affect, it is the lack of negative affect.....

As she points out, though, the peaceful, calm type of happy is the one that introverts normally prefer to what she describes as "one long Mountain Dew commercial." Even though they do sometimes want to socialize as much as the next person, extended extroverted behavior drains them of energy, which would make them not exactly happy -- even if they are keeping up a socially accepted smile..

Oh, and whether introverts pay a price for behaving like extroverts is research for another day. Fleeson didn't explore the energy cost for introverts behaving extroverted, although he personally understands the need to crawl into a dark room after a stretch of interaction.
But he did say that when he had subjects sit at a table and assigned them to act either introverted or extroverted for ten minutes at a time, the subjects who got most exhausted by the task were extroverts who had to behave introverted.

 Maybe extroversion is a force so strong that suppressing it is exhausting. Or maybe introversion generates energy of its own, so intense it wears extroverts out. 

A note on the book, it does make some excellent observations about introverts, though as it is a short paperback, it is much less thorough than Susan Cain's book. I also found the short chapters too much like blog posts, which, as self-contained pieces sometimes overlap a bit with other chapters in the book -- though it's great for people who like to just read a couple of pages at a time.  

Dembling  refers in places to Laurie Helgoe's writing, which I reviewed, along with Cain's and another name in the field of inroversion in http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/05/perspectives-on-introversion-this-is.html Interesting that all these books are written by women. While the other three all identify their husbands as extroverts, Dembling is not altogether clear about that; it sounds like he is also an introvert, though more extroverted than she is.

Related:

Working alone
The Great Introvert
Jane Austen's Heroines Ranging from Extroverted Emma to Introverted Fanny
Views on Boundaries
Public or it didn't happen

Jane Austen's Heroines: Ranging from Extroverted Emma to Introverted Fanny

                               Jane Austen Fiber Doormat

If I were to rank Jane Austen’s heroines on a scale of most extroverted to most introverted, Emma Woodhouse would be at one end and Fanny Price on the other. Elizabeth Bennett would be pretty close to Emma, and Anne Elliot would be second to Fanny on the introvert end.  There are errors that result from both extremes, though Jane Austen seems to stack the deck in favor of introverted heroines.

Extroversion leads the heroine to err with nearly disastrous consequences in Emma. Emma is not to occupy herself in solitary pursuits like reading. There are a few references to her constantly writing up reading lists but never getting through the books on them.  She craves company and influence over others. So when her governess leaves to marry, she feels compelled to find a new companion in the person of Harriet Smith. Then she sets out to remake the character and even history of her friend, giving her unrealistic expectations.  Mr. Knightly castigates Emma for her attempt to redirect Harriet’s life, and  Emma concedes at the end that he was right. Emma likely sees the ugly side of extroversion for herself in the patronizing way Mrs. Elton directs Jane Fairfax.  

In Pride and Prejudice, the exchange in which Miss Bingley attempts to label Elizabeth by claiming that all that interest her is reading is very telling. While Elizabeth is a reader, she doesn’t want to be thought of as a boring bluestocking, a role which may be more readily embraced by an introverted character.  Elizabeth is nothing if not vivacious, though the person closest to her is her sister Jane who is her opposite in some way.  

Jane is sweet and innocent, in the sense that she fails to suspect others of any motives less pure than her own. In contrast, Elizabeth is witty – sometimes bitingly so – and quick to judge others in a negative light.  Elizabeth is the one who concedes her error. But her friend, Charlotte Lucas, who proves most perceptive, suggests that Jane’s shyness was what made it possible for Mr. Bingley to doubt her genuine affection for him.

Mansfield Park’s heroine, Fanny Price, manages to win her heart’s desire though, even though she is careful to keep her feelings for her cousin to herself. Her introversion is not presented as a sign of weakness but of strength. She is certain of what is correct and will not budge from her refusal to participate in the theatricals even when everyone else gives up on any scruples of morals or modesty.  Fanny is the only one of Austen’s heroines who is presented as being perfect in the sense that she has nothing to improve on in the course of the novel as the extroverted heroines do.

Persuasion l Compact Mirror

What happens when an introverted heroine lacks that kind of confidence in her moral sense is presented in Persuasion. Like most introverts, Anne Elliot is a good listener, who provides calming comfort to the more highly-strung members of her family. But she comes to realize that too much listening to others is what caused her own loss of happiness when she allowed her friend (a woman who cast herself in the role of Emma) to persuade her to reject Frederick Wentworth.  As the novel ends happily, she does get a second chance, but she does first recognize the error of her former ways. While she is more right about others than extroverted characters prove, she has to learn to assert her own point of view. Ultimately she does, and gains the perfection and perfect happiness allotted to Fanny Price.

Note: Jane Austen fans can find a variety of merch here: https://www.zazzle.com/store/totally_jane_austen

 Emma Attitude Denim Jacket

Related:

Jane Austen: Love and Money

Love and Limerence in Jane Austen

Jane Austen at the Morgan
Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement
Some observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Jane Austen and Autism

Jane Austen's Heroines

Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory

Perspective on Introversion

The Great Introvert