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What does the single woman do on Valentine’s Day? She can go out with her spinster girlfriends for a gloomy night of mutual commiserating. She can go to a singles party for an even gloomier night of being chatted up by tiny bald bores and asking herself whether it’s time to ‘downsize the goals’, OR she can create her own romantic evening at home. This requires only a bottle of wine, a box of chocolates, and some perfectly-chosen literature. I don’t mean the kneejerk romantic literature of Mills & Boon or Danielle Steel – I mean the classic literature of hope. You don’t want stories where impossibly beautiful young women fall in love with barrel-chested local squires, or even ‘sexy guys’ from the office. You want stories where real, convincing, grown-up women who have been on their own for a while (women who might also have spent Valentine’s Night alone with the booze and a box of Black Magic) find real, convincing, grown-up love.
Your ideal texts: Jane Eyre and Persuasion.
Some people think that Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most romantic novel. Nonsense. Elizabeth Bennett is young, bored, and irritated by the constraints of bourgeois life: she’d fall in love with the first bloke who was rude to her. We were all like that as teenagers. As adults, we need a little more meat on the bone, a little more depth to the love story. We need Anne Elliot in Persuasion.
As a young woman, Anne meets the dashing sailor Frederick Wentworth and he proposes to her. If this were Pride and Prejudice that would be the whole novel, end of story. But this is a richer, deeper, darker book altogether.
Anne’s trusted friend Lady Russell persuades her to break the engagement with Wentworth, believing that Anne can do better. The novel actually opens eight years later when Anne (still unmarried) is financially troubled, emotionally lonely, surrounded by younger women who are happy in love, and fairly certain that she will be a spinster for ever. Wentworth, now a successful Captain, returns to Anne’s vicinity – but has his head turned by the younger, sexier, more spirited Louisa Musgrove. Anne’s sorrow gradually gives way to a rivalry which brings an unwonted sparkle back to her eye, and soon she is being pursued by another man altogether.
Anne Elliot is a quieter and yet more powerful heroine than any other Jane Austen character. Sadly and bravely she says: ‘All the privilege I claim for my own sex ... is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.’
This is the wistful note of an older woman who has suffered some disappointment and heartbreak along the way – and this is what makes Anne a character we can relate to, as the rain lashes our dark February windows and everybody else is out sharing their irritating little Valentine dinners. Another quiet, powerful woman in the middle of another deep, dark book is Jane Eyre. Like Anne Elliot, Jane is old enough (and has been unlucky enough) that she assumes the romantic flame will never burn for her. Even when she falls for the moody, passionate Mr Rochester, she knows that she can never compete with two rivals: the sparky, flirtatious Blanche Ingram, and a mysterious lady of whom I will say no more just in case you haven’t read it yet.
No grown-up woman who finds herself alone on Valentine’s Day can fail to empathize with Jane’s stoicism as she negotiates work and life alone, nor her occasional fears and feelings of inadequacy. But Jane’s great strength is gradually revealed and – like Anne Elliot – she is rewarded with true love.
Now, let’s get to the practicalities of February 14th. When you’re shopping in the afternoon, for heavens’ sake treat yourself to a decent bottle. None of that cheap screw-top stuff from the supermarket. And this is no time for self-denial when it comes to the chocolate selection. As evening falls, draw the curtains and revel in self-indulgence. You might have a little starter of metaphysical poetry, just to remind yourself that all the men who are out there right now dazzling women with speeches of love are only doing it because they want to get laid. Andrew Marvell and John Donne are perfectly honest about this, so you might tickle your appetite with some of their amusing arguments.
Then move on to the main course: Persuasion or Jane Eyre, or (if you’re very hungry) both. If you have read them before, when you were younger, read them again now for an excellent boost of self-confidence on this strange date in the calendar. If there’s hope for Jane Eyre, and hope for Anne Elliot, there’s hope for us all.
Links
Jane Eyre
Persuasion
The Metaphysical Poets
The Complete English Poems John Donne
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