Sunday 1 April 2007

Upon further reflection...A Social Observation (2) : More love?

Well I shall begin this with my springboard as I said I would. The question I came across was "why was Charlotte's marriage to Mr Collins a bad thing?" I really don't like these leading questions, so allow me to rephrase it; "was Charlotte's marriage to Mr Collins a bad thing?"

Now for those of you familiar with Pride and Prejudice, you'll not only be aware of these two characters, but undoubtedly have your own opinions of what they are like and whether their marriage is right or not; it is inescapable.

I am trying to decide whether to answer the question or to continue with my thoughts from where I left off in the previous article. I feel it most wise to utilise my springboard to its utmost and by doing so return to the rapidity with which I realised my previous article.

I have the good fortune to know a keen Pride and Prejudice fan, whose depth of knowledge of the book allows me to discuss any point of my choosing. I suppose that good fortune is actually not what it is. Rather it is a believable eventuality from what actually was a stroke of good fortune, which would be knowing this person who actually inspired me to read the book.

Upon putting the question to her, we made seemingly obvious conclusions. I quote from our conversation (apologies for repeats from last article):

- In our 'lovey dovey' modern view, it's totally shallow and a marriage not based on love.
- In their social class and social trends, it is entirely sensible for her to marry Mr Collins. She is married to a man due to inherit Longbourn upon the death of Mr Bennet. He is familiar with Lady Catherine and thus improves her potential social standing because of his aquaintances.
- In the eyes of many it eases the loss of the Longbourn estate from the Bennets to their cousin as Charlotte is a close friend of both Eliza and the family, so there's a plus.
- There must be an intrinsic desire to want to love, otherwise why should anyone pursue it? He has no need for love. He has his acquaintances, he has his house and now he has his wife. What need hath he for love? (referring to Mr Collins)

There were more subtle points, but the art of summary can sometimes mean leaving out the small remarks. I suppose one could think of it as breaking down a wall of text into bricks of key points. It is up to the reader of the summary to reassemble the wall with his or her mortar. I may remember that analogy later because I can see how that leads to people misinterpreting others who paraphrase.

I suppose what we touched upon was that despite the apparent relationship established between love and marriage, it may be better to assume them as separate entities (for those that know the song, taking apart the horse and carriage :)).

I feel that although I have used the springboard, it is perhaps better for me to take the relationship between love and marriage as a separate article. Referring back to the horse and carriage may be useful.

I'll finish marriage for now with a humorous quote that friend of mine shared with me:

"I never knew what real happiness was until I got married; by then it was too late."

Now returning to the topic of fallback partners. I believe I mentioned retracing one's steps on a pathway that had proven to take you nowhere. When we have made such a bold (and perhaps foolish) decision as choosing who to love, there are those doubts that I mentioned. And so it is of no real surprise that the fallen chooser should soon afterwards be asking themselves "where did I go wrong?" The decision of love is clearly a huge decision in their past and, depending upon the intermittent events of their life between that decision and the present day, it could prove to be the prevailing turning point in their life thus far.

Here the could bes that they turned away when doing likewise to their second partner (in both the ordinal and cardinal sense) haunt them. Given the present situation of the realisation of a misplaced love and dreams unrealised, it is no wonder that they should so quickly turn to the other person who had shown to be capable of providing love in a nearly equal manner. I find it hard to say misplaced love because true love would be unfaltered, but as can be seen, I have avoided using the word 'true' previously because obviously the love was like an ore, impure though capable of becoming something quite brilliant.

Now begins the near impossible task of analysing both the position of the one who was rejected and the one that rejected.

Who should I begin with? Perhaps as I have dedicated so much time to the chooser, it is only fair that I now spend some time on the poor soul whose heart was broken. What is his/her story between being rejected and learning that the ex wishes to resume a relationship as was?

Well the ex has learnt something. For the purposes of simplicity, I'll refer to the ex as a he and the chooser as a she. You may argue about gender specifics if it entertains you so. The ex has fallen in supposed love and been rejected. To have had love and to have been loved is an amazing thing. It is no surprise then that when the ex lost that, he felt terrible. Terrible is an unashamedly incapable word for describing the feelings that the ex will have experienced. I suppose it would have felt like having the pillars knocked out from your mental temple.

Part of love is dedicating a part of yourself to someone else. It's an understanding of that person, it's an appreciation of that person and the love they give you gives you a dependency on that person. It sound pathetic to become dependent on someone and it sounds obssesive. But if we are not enslaved by love wholly, what power does it have over us?

It is impossible for me to summarise the emotions of anyone that has been rejected. The future has direction and meaning when you are in love. Some say it is an illusion and I suppose if the love doesn't last, then that is what it is. Your future had meaning, but only so long as you were in love. But illusion or not, to believe you have direction and meaning, is to give you hope and happiness unlike anything else. You have a purpose and that purpose is to love and care for a person.

It is not just direction though. To have felt like you were understood and to have felt like you weren't alone, a mass of grey and white matter encased in bone, is so powerful. You cannot draw confidence from nothing. You must feel that your views are sane and reasonable to wish to act on them, and if you are the only one to think about something in a certain way, who is their to confirm the sanity of your mind?

When you are rejected, you no longer have that direction or feeling of being understood. You lose that meaning and that certainty of a bright future. You come tumbling back down to earth and the illusion is no more. You see the situation for what it is and what it was. You see your mistakes and you see your foolishness. And it takes a brave and a wise man to bite his lip and carry on with life when there seems to be no direction to go in and no one to go with. You must admit your loss and you must learn to carry on. To wallow in self-pity is to damn all chance of happiness. Only the sympathisers of the world will give you any attention, and even then, they only encourage you to wallow more. All they will ever be to you is a sympathiser and nothing more. And to pity and be pitied is to truly feel the opposite end of the spectrum from love. In short, and I cannot apologise enough for paraphrasing, you feel like crap.

So one must press on. One must pick a direction, even if it means going in circles for a while. Surely it is better to travel in a circle a million times than sit still, if it means finding your path. And so we find our ex. He has travelled in his circles, but he has progressed. He has found some direction without the girl. He's not necessarily happy because he is alone, but he is content with life. And the girl now returns to feed the addiction for the love he once gave her.

She has had a different experience. I have just realised the HUGE psychological depths to which I could explore the girl's mind having broken up with Boyfriend 1 and found herself without a partner. I suppose it's smarter to dedicate yet another post to her mind.

Let us analyse however the consequence of all of her thoughts in the meeting with Boyfriend 2. What does Boyfriend 2 do now that she has returned? He can say no and be alone but content, or he can risk his contentness for happiness in love and dreams of purpose. But that is exactly what they will be: dreams of purpose.

It is so difficult to analyse the workings of this next part. Let us say for the moment that the girl is incapable of change. This makes the situation easy to analyse. For Boyfriend 2, the picture is clear. The direction he had before with her is an unstable and unclear one. A new factor enters into it. She chose another guy over him and so what is to stop her from doing that again? Clearly their love is not so perfect that she should choose him over the other guy. But here arises our problem in observing this. We have assumed she is incapable of change, but that is to restrain the girl to a robotic existence. In reality, she is capable of change and so the problem arises: what is Boyfriend 2 supposed to assume. Should he assume a stance of hope, not knowing whether it is foolish hope or not, and assume that she has changed and that her love can be improved to perfection, or should he assume that she hasn't changed and cannot change and prevent the love from ever being able to happen?

And so we unmask the risks of love. Is Boyfriend 2 a gambling man? Is love worth the risk for him?

Well I could try to answer that, but it gives me yet more chance for other posts. One is the analysis of the value of love in a person's mind based upon experience and/or upbringing (arguably the same thing). Another is the results of not choosing to love (e.g. backlash from girl telling all her friends about how much of an ass you are) or choosing to love (problems in paradise or perfection attained?).

This post has been a long time coming, and to a degree, concluding it is partly rushed. But I am sick of leaving this as an unfinished article in the draft section. Besides, it has left me with some routes to follow for future posts. I hope you find the analyses interesting, and although it means you have to have experienced a lot of pain, I hope you can relate to the observations.

Plenty of holes in this for people to contribute. We could discuss love forever and still be no closer to a conclusion. But we can certainly document our experiences and draw wisdom from them.

9 comments:

St-Paulo said...

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Charlotte already having a sexual relationship before their marriage so given the time period they would have had to have married if anyone found out or be banished as they had 'disgraced' themselves.

It is arguable that the marriage was foolish on Charlotte's part at least as she had no idea that she was being used as her head was never one for thinking with. Mr Collins however was arguably just fulfilling a basic human desire through his actions so I'm uncertain if I can completely blame him for what he did.

Sorry to focus on the fiction although to be honest I've never read the book although I have seen the 6 hour BBC adaptation in it's entirety (thanks mum!)

I must say that I think that using people as fallbacks or rebounds is rather, well, childish I guess. Rebound relationships or even just rebound sex seems like an another oppurtunity to set yourself up to get hurt or even worse using as a means to hurt someone else. Ok, so I've never been in a relationship so serious that when it's ended it's sent me into a slump but can't people just get on with their lives without focusing on the past so much and trying to get pleasure out of the pain of others?

Phil' said...

I'm afraid you're factually wrong there, Paul. Lydia and Wickham were the scandalous couple; Charlotte and Collins were exceedingly proper. The question is whther they were to proper.

Correct me if I'm factually wrong - I've not read P&P in a year or so, but I believe one can infer the Austen approved of Collins's marriage. At the end of the novel, she distributes 'rewards' to the good characters, according to their deserts. Dickens does the same. And the Collinses are happily married - more so than the BBC adaptation suggests. So perhaps we are supposed to approve.

On a more general point, I'm sick of teenage 'love'. I might write a full post about it. I happen to be one of those who gets tormented by it too often. Thus I have decided to concentrate on more important things. To link this back to the first point, people - myself included - expect too much from it. Teenage relationships are fragile. They are far from invaluable, but even further from secure. It's certainly horrible to be the disappointed party in the end of a relationship. There are few things worse. But at some point, it's likely to happen.

That does not mean we should be cynical. We should not avoid these relationships because they are likely to fail. Love is a perpetual delight. But we must accept the end of a relationship as an important part of it. I know I learned more in my agonised break-up than I did in the months preceeding it. And I learned huge amounts then, also.

P

Unknown said...

I will tell you what is really scandalous is mixing chocolate and peanut butter.... I mean it tastes good but there is just something wrong about it.... Some relationships were just not meant to be no matter how good they are in the moment.

Happy April Fools Day....

Tom said...

Phil, I totally agree that teenage relationships are fragile. Upon exclaiming to people that I am done with teenage relationships, I encounter the same response. Teenage relationships may go nowhere, and they may not be based on love, but they are an experience nonetheless. The actual words used don't speak nearly as much wisdom, but further reflection on my part draws some from what they say.

Teenage relationships are an experience and having experienced them I've learnt that I should not experience them anymore. I'm sure you can enjoy that conclusion Phil.

I seek permanence, but at our age that is impractical and given our immaturity, unlikely to be found.

I do stop myself from completely denouncing love during the teenage years because there are always exceptional circumstances. But we should not enter relationships expecting our relationship to be one of those rare few. As it is, we do because we conclude that if we don't believe that it will last, it won't last, and this is fair enough.

We often confuse cynicism with wise observation. I put it to you that you are not cynical Phil, simply wary. You know the mistakes you have made and you draw from those experiences. Perhaps they are not mistakes, but rather actions that lead to consequences you did not desire. If it is only opinion that defines desire, then they are only mistakes in your opinion also.

Phil' said...

I love and hate the phrase 'I put it to you'. Over-used massively in courtroom-drama cross examinations.... *mutter mutter mutter*

You're right, but I'm also cynical.

P

Tom said...

Perhaps I should have been more clear. I do not deny that you are cynical Phil :) However, I feel that in this situation, what you attribute to cynicism, would be better attributed to soundness of mind.

I apologise for the use of any courtroom-drama jargon. It was totally unintentional. I put it to you that this time it is not :)

St-Paulo said...

thanks for the correction phil...i should actually probably read the book when i get the time

as an observer I find teenage 'love' fascinating although it can become a bit wearisome when you want to intervene because you know how it's going to end and you don't particuarly want to see either party hurt.

Phil if you disaprove of teenage relationships what age do you suggest as appropriate for courtship? 30?

Phil' said...

Pas de tout, Paul. Do read my full post response.

P

Anonymous said...

Great work.