The Familiar Suitor Problem in Jane Austen's Novels

Pride and Prejudice & Sense and Sensibility Desk Organizer

"You will meet a tall, handsome stranger." That fortuneteller style promise is what many consider the epitome of romance. You meet a stranger, your eyes lock, and you take a fatal hit from Cupid's bow. Popular films and paperback novels have made that standard.

Stranger danger and fascination

In Jane Austen's novels, things work a little differently, though she does also play with the fascination people, especially romantically inclined young women, have with the attractive outsider.  If familiarity breeds contempt, than its opposite breeds fascination. As the person is not a fully known quantity like the members of the "four and twenty" families one may dine with regularly in the country, there is the introduction of a spark of intrigue in getting to learn more about them and what their lives consist of elsewhere. 

The mystery of their lives may also include a scandal or even a crime, which Catherine Moreland considers in her flights of fancy. But that hint of danger can add an extra frisson that a heroine may find attractive as we see in Marianne's response to Willoughby. Emma, on the other hand, decides to have a kind of controlled crush when Frank Churchill enters the  picture and engages in a flirtation with her to conceal the fact that he has entered into a secret engagement.

Breaking out of the friend zone

Of course, Emma ends up not marrying a stranger at all but her brother-in-law, who has been a regular in her house for years. In fact, making that transition from from the brotherly relationship one has in the friend zone to romantic interest is a challenge for both the hero and heroine of Emma, as it is for Mansfield Park. 

In the first chapter of Mansfield Park, the general rule that boys and girls who grow up in proximity to each other like brother and sister are much less likely to be attracted to each other than they would be if they meet as grownup strangers is explained by Mrs. Norris when prevailing on Sir Thomas to give a home to Fanny price: 

You are thinking of your sons—but do not you know that, of all things upon earth, that is the least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose her a pretty girl, and seen by Tom or Edmund for the first time seven years hence, and I dare say there would be mischief. The very idea of her having been suffered to grow up at a distance from us all in poverty and neglect, would be enough to make either of the dear, sweet-tempered boys in love with her. But breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister.

Mrs. Norris is mostly correct. Edmund does seem to regard Fanny as another sister but not as anything more than that. It takes some revelations about the moral failings of the strangers who bring down his actual sister to make him realize that the steadfast Fanny will serve him better than the attractive and sparkling Mary Crawford.

In Emma, Mr. Knightley never makes the mistake of falling for anyone other than Emma (at least as far as we see in the novel). However, it takes Emma's fear that it might happen -- when Harriet admits to being in love with him --  to jolt her into acknowledging how she really feels about Mr. Knightley (chapter 47). 

A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress; she touched, she admitted, she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet’s having some hope of a return? It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!

Emma tote bag

Here Cupid's arrow finally marks Emma but only many years after she first met Mr. Knightley. This is a love born of a spark maintained over time rather than a burst of flame that strikes all at once. And there's the rub because the pattern of their relationship has been set as brother and sister for so long. In fact, the dialog brings that up when they dance 10 chapters earlier in the book:

'Whom are you going to dance with?' asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment, and then replied, 'With you, if you will ask me.'

'Will you?' said he, offering his hand.

'Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.'

'Brother and sister! no, indeed.'

 

So they established that there is no fear of regarding their relationship as incestuous. But there is still the obstacle of breaking out of the friend zone, which Mr. Knightley grapples with just before he declares himself in chapter 49. Emma had just stopped Mr. Knightley from speaking because she really fears he will confess his love for Harriet. Then she realizes that he was pained by her response and lets him know she will listen:

'I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain. But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation -- as a friend, indeed, you may command me. I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think.'

'As a friend!' repeated Mr. Knightley. 'Emma, that I fear is a word -- No, I have no wish -- Stay, yes, why should I hesitate? I have gone too far already for concealment. Emma, I accept your offer, extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend. Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?'

Watch on Totally Jane Austen

He then communicates even without words, and Emma finds herself speechless, and that leads to the most romantic line in this book, "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

Yet they dream of Darcy

Yet women still tend to swoon far more over Darcy -- the outsider hero -- than they do over Mr. Knightley -- the familiar suitor.  There are also far more film and television adaptions of Pride and Prejudice than there are of Emma. That would indicate that  while Jane Austen was able to center a romantic novel around the more modern type of relationship that bring together two equals who marry their best friends, people still fall for the fairytale plot of the outsider coming in and rescuing the heroine to earn her love.

First line of Jane Austen's Novels Mug

Related

Jane Austen at 250

Observations on Jane Austen's Emma

Valuing Kindness Over Cleverness                                Jane Austen: Love and Money                              

Love and Limerence in Jane Austen
Jane Austen at the Morgan

Jane Austen and Autism

Jane Austen's Heroines

Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness 

Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement

   

The Frick Collection after its 5 year, $220 million renovation

Mistress and Maid by Johannes Vermeer c. 1667 in the Frick Collection. 

Has it really been five years since I was last at the Frick prior to my visit on June 22? I guess it must have been. We didn't return as soon as it reopened this spring but waited until the Vermeer "Love Letters" exhibit opened. I'll start with that as I catalogue the renovated museum's hits and misses.

Top Highlight: Vermeer

The special Vermeer exhibit is ranks at the top of my list for the hits of the Frick's reopening. It  brought in two Vermeer paintings to complement the Mistress and Maid shown above. One is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, ca. 1670–72, from the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

The other is The Love Letter, ca. 1669–70 from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

I urge you to get over to the Frick before the exhibit closes on August 31 because it's quite an experience seeing these three paintings together in-person. The Love Letter one reminds me of Vermeer's The Guitar Player  c 1672 and a variation of it on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My favorite of these three is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid.*  

Access to the Second Floor

Thanks to the renovation, visitors now have access to the second floor, which showcases some art in what had been bedrooms and also houses the museum's gift shop and cafe. This is generally a hit, though I would have liked the bedrooms to retain their original furnishings or their reproductions to reflect what the rooms were like when a family lived in the mansion. There are only a few dressers with no information about them. Speaking of that ...

Information on the Exhibits

The information on the art on view -- both on the placards on the walls and through the app that replicates information to be found on the Frick's site -- is extremely uneven. You'll get more than you want to know about Jean-Honoré Fragonard's "The Progress of Love," but find out absolutely nothing about some of the clocks and scores of other pieces. It is rather frustrating for those of us who would like more information. It's a serious missed opportunity for the museum not to have improved that aspect of its exhibit while investing so much money and time in the renovation. 

Ticketing and Timing: Hits and Misses

Tickets for adults cost $30. Years ago, the Frick generously offered "pay what you wish" times on Sundays. Unfortunately, it shifted that offer to the far less convenient time of  Wednesday afternoons 1:30-5:30 PM. 

If that doesn't work for you, check your local library for membership passes that will allow entry for 2, saving you $60. If you have a card at a New York City library, inquire about  Culture Pass availability. You won't only save money but time because those membership passes allow you to enter any time of day and  skip the line of people waiting to get their timed tickets.  

Allow me my rant on timed tickets, which were  popularized during the reopening of museums after the pandemic lockdowns. The more enlightened museums like the Met** dropped that major inconvenience aa couple of years ago. It only requires timed entry -- though not additional ticket purchases -- to the special exhibits. That the Frick is still stuck in 2021 even after the 2025 reopening is a major miss, but it pales beside another one. 

Really Rare Restrooms

Who designs a renovation for a building with a legal capacity of 1350 with  just three sets of bathrooms? The architect of the Frick renovation does. 

Yes, only half a dozen people would be able to use the restrooms with just two (one for each gender, though heaven knows why when they are all single-occupancy)  on the second floor and in two basement levels. I cannot comment on what these looked like inside because I never got beyond a locked door or a extended line leading up to it. 

I'm shocked that no architect consulted on this project pointed out a standard ratio based on the projected number of visitors, especially in light of the addition of the cafe. Seriously, who does that, especially on a $220 million budget?

Filling in the Sketch

To end on a positive note about what the Frick does well, I want to comment on the Cabinet Gallery. It's one of the smallest rooms on the first floor that is filled with sketches. The highlight of that for me was seeing a sketch for one of the Frick's celebrated paintings: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' portrait of Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d'Haussonville. 

*Notice that the love letters theme assumes literate women. I didn't think that much about that aspect until I saw the The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt special exhibit at The Jewish Museum. (You can catch it through August 10, 2025. Check your library for passes, or plan your visit for the Museums on Us Day to save the $15 per person admission.) A number of the paintings show Esther involved in writing, reflecting the unusually  high  literacy rate of the Dutch at the time. You may also notice that the tables featured in most of these paintings are covered by rugs just like the table  in Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid. 

**Speaking of the Met, it also has a temporary exhibit worth catching this summer: Sargent and Paris. Catch that one before it closes on August 3rd. It definitely worth the trip. The Met never imposes an extra charge for its special exhibits. Residents of NY and the metro area always get to pay what they wish, and for other visitors, it's possible to get in free on the first weekend of the month through the Museums on Us program from Bank of America.  Also the Met is home to five Vermeer paintings, so it will make a complement to the three you can see in the Frick now. One of them, Young Woman with a Lute,  features the same yellow jacket. 

Related: 

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen at the Morgan