Paper

In Praise of Charlotte Lucas
by Elizabeth Newark

Anyone wanting to set off a firecracker of a discussion at a meeting of the Jane Austen Society need only toss the names of Charlotte Lucas and Fanny Price merrily into its midst. For there seem to be two camps — those who speak up for Charlotte Lucas and have little time for Fanny; and those whose ideal is Fanny Price, to whom Charlotte is anathema.

What is the problem? Well, when Elizabeth Bennet refuses the proposal of Mr. Collins, the pompous, snobbish curate who is her father’s heir, Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth’s friend, deliberately sets out to catch him on the rebound, and succeeds. Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins, whom we consider no intelligent woman can like, let alone love, for the security he can give her and the home he can offer. The pro-Charlotte brigade, which includes some feminists, finds this eminently sensible.

On the other hand, Fanny Price, although a penniless dependent, refuses to marry the charming and wealthy Henry Crawford whom she has seen flirting with both her cousins simultaneously, and whom she neither likes nor respects. Despite Sir Thomas Bertram’s bullying, she sticks to her guns. The pro-Fanny brigade, which includes some feminists, finds this admirable.

I speak for Charlotte Lucas.

My writings are always nudged on by something (like the grit in an oyster) and in this case the provocation came from the paper Austen’s Sexual Politics, by Susan Morgan and Susan Kneedler and published in the 1990 Persuasions This paper gave great credit to Fanny Price for refusing to marry Henry Crawford, while they list Charlotte Lucas with Lucy Steele and Isabella Thorpe in Golddiggers’ Row. I quote:

So many critics have been fond of saying that Charlotte Lucas, twenty-seven and not beautiful, had no other choice. But Fanny Price, infinitely more vulnerable, in a less secure position with little power, shows us how much choice a woman may claim. Refusing Henry has risks, risks rendered in her uncle’s furious reproaches and in her own agonized query: “what was to become of her?” Yet Fanny’s anxiety over her future never tempts her to discard responsibility for her life or to seize the cheap solution of marriage without love.

These are strong words, but they are somewhat disingenuous, Charlotte’s age is given here but not Fanny’s, and Fanny’s age is important as, at the time she refuses Henry Crawford, she is eighteen. In other words, she has time. This gives her a decided advantage over Charlotte who, at twenty-seven, can by the standards of her day be described as “on the shelf.”

Also omitted from this paragraph is the true reason Fanny will not marry Henry which is, of course, that she is head over heels in love with her cousin Edmund — not because she refuses to “discard responsibility for her life.” Miss Austen herself states that if Henry Crawford had persevered … “Fanny must have been his reward — and a reward very voluntarily bestowed — within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marriage to Mary.” Juliet McMaster, in her monograph Jane Austen on Love, says:

If Fanny had not been in love with Edmund, she would have married Henry Crawford — a woman’s only defense (against a determined man’s courtship) is predisposition …

(As things are, with Fanny in love with her cousin, I don’t believe she would have married anyone, however deserving — not even Mr. Knightley!)

Now let us take a closer look at one of the statements in the above quotation from Austen’s Sexual Politics:

So many critics have been fond of saying that Charlotte Lucas, twenty-seven and not beautiful, had no other choice. But Fanny Price … shows us how much choice a woman may claim.

Fanny chose to say ‘no’ to Henry Crawford, a purely negative choice which left her as she was before, with the added burden, perhaps, of Sir Thomas Bertram’s displeasure, but with her future still undecided. That is all. If we are considering how much choice a woman has, then this is a very poor example.

I’m not too impressed with the right to say ‘No.’ It is too passive. Women have had that right, in theory at least, for a long time. We even have popular songs on the subject. This for example is from a Victorian music-hall song:

No! No! A thousand times NO!
I’d rather be dead than say yes!

(I will call this ‘Fanny’s Song.’) And still older (I don’t know the date, but I should like to)

On yonder hill there stands a maiden,
Who she is I do not know.
I would have her for my lover,
Madam, answer Yes or No?

Oh, no, John, no John, no John, no!

The essence of independence for a woman lies not in being able to say ‘No,’ but in being able to take positive action to affect her own life. This is where choice comes in, and it is Charlotte, not Fanny, who exercises it. I warm to Charlotte Lucas (who has never in her life received a proposal of marriage) because, instead of passively resigning herself to what fate is dishing out, as a dutiful female should, she gives fate a nudge. It is Charlotte, not Fanny, who takes responsibility for her own life. Fanny, in floods of tears, says ‘No;’ Charlotte, dry-eyed, says “Yes!’ Not only does she make up her own mind and act on it, she then makes the best of it. Miss Austen tells us nothing to make us think that Charlotte regrets her choice.

Now it is time to take a good look at Charlotte Lucas, her background and her prospects.

At Home With Charlotte Lucas

When we meet her, Charlotte is a plain young woman of twenty-seven (past all hope, so Marianne Dashwood would say), an age when even Anne Elliot, of the ‘very pretty features,’ has lost her bloom and, her friends and relatives fear, her chance of matrimony. And matrimony, at this time in history, was every woman’s aim. It was the equivalent of a career. As Cecily Hamilton writes, in her interesting book Marriage as a Trade (written in the 19th Century):

To a woman, a woman in love is not only a woman swayed by emotion, but a human being engaged in carving for herself a career or securing for herself a means of livelihood …

Charlotte does not have very pretty features’ and has never had any bloom to lose. He father, Sir William Lucas, retired from trade when he was knighted. He is comfortably off but not wealthy; he is very proud of his social position, but his resources are limited. And he has a large family.

What would the future hold for Charlotte if she remained a spinster? She would have a home whilst her father lived; thereafter she and her mother and any other unmarried sister might have been parked in a small house somewhere, like Mrs. and Miss Bates, or Jane Austen herself, where they would struggle along on a small income. When Charlotte’s mother dies, it is probable Charlotte would be parceled out among her married brothers and sisters, a useful old maid aunt.

To know the single woman’s fate in those days, we have only to quote Miss Austen talking of Miss Bates:

[She] stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour; … and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible.

Emma Woodhouse, telling Harriet Smith of her own thoughts on marriage, says:

A single woman with a very narrow income must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid — the proper sport of boys and girls;

Carolyn Heilbrun writes, in her essay Marriage Perceived: English Literature, 1873-1944, of the non-existence of single women. They were of so little importance they barely appear on the printed page. Ms. Heilbrun goes on to say:

Who can dispute the clear-sightedness of Charlotte [Lucas], twenty-seven, not pretty, forced to choose between nonexistence and the possibility of a place, however inadequate, in society, and with no illusions about marriage.

Those who disapprove of Charlotte’s marriage usually suggest she should become a governess. But this is not realistic. Even if such jobs were readily available and well-rewarded for a woman of no experience and ordinary education (did Charlotte have accomplishments? Does she play, draw and speak Italian?) it is naive to suggest she could have become a governess whilst her father lived. Those who promote this betray their ignorance of the social conditions and mores of the day. Charlotte Lucas is not a penniless orphan, like Jane Fairfax (or Jane Eyre); she is Sir William Lucas’s daughter. Sir William’s daughter could not become a governess; it would never have entered her head. And her father, who must be about 50, might live another 10-20 years. After that her mother, if still living, would have first claim on her. To suggest that Charlotte start looking for a post as governess when she is over 40 is a bad joke. This, in the eyes of the day, is verging on old age for a woman. (Mrs. Dashwood, at ‘hardly 40,’ is considered by her brother likely to live only another seven or eight years.)

But, disregarding common sense, if Charlotte Lucas had obtained such a job, what then? Charlotte Bronte is one writer who makes very clear the trials of governesses in the 19th century. Charles Dickens is another. Speaking at a dinner in aid of the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution in 1844, he talked of the need to treat governesses with greater respect and consideration, including better pay: ‘Their salaries,’ he said, ‘would bear poor comparison with the wages of the butler; they would compare but shabbily with the remuneration of the lady’s maid.’ A.S. Byatt, in her well-research novel Possession, makes a character say: ‘I cannot again demean myself to enter anyone’s home as a governess. Such a life is hell on earth.’

And in any case, is it a solution? Being a governess in the 18th or 19th Century is hardly the equivalent of having a ‘career’ in the nineteen nineties. There is no promotion. It is more in the nature of exchanging one subsistence life for another. And what happens to governesses when they are too sick or too old to work? There is no social security.

I think people who advance the governess theory are thinking in terms, not of Jane Austen who wrote novels of her time, but of Romance Fiction, where the well-born governess is inevitably courted by the son of the house.

If becoming a governess is out of the question, should Charlotte have continued to wait for love? She says herself, ‘I am not romantic.’ Should she have waited passively for a knight on a white horse (instead of settling for a clown on a donkey)? Just how long should a woman wait for Mr. Right to turn up? Miss Austen herself, in a letter to her sister Cassandra on November 1, 1800, wrote:

‘There is a great scarcity of Men in general, & a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much.’

This makes it very clear what Jane Austen herself thought of the availability of worthwhile men. As Charlotte herself saw it, she had waited long enough. She felt she had just one chance of marriage, and she took it. She is not a passive person. What kind of a person is she?

A Look at Charlotte Lucas

We know she is intelligent and thoughtful, if she were not, she would not be the dear friend of Elizabeth Bennet. (Elizabeth, speaking of Charlotte to Mr. Darcy, says: ‘My friend has an excellent understanding …’) Their ideas do not always coincide. On marriage, for instance, Charlotte’s ideas are practical to the point of cynicism. Listen to Charlotte on Jane Bennet’s chances with Bingley:

‘I wish Jane success with all my heart; and if she were married to him tomorrow, I should think she had as good a chance of happiness, as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.’

I may add that Dr. Samuel Johnson, as reported in Boswell’s Life, has much the same views on marriage. I quote:

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter.

Charlotte’s ideas on social conseqence are also practical. This we know from the chapter on the Ball at Netherfield, when

‘Charlotte could not help cautioning [Elizabeth] not to be a simpleton and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man of ten times his consequence.’

These views doubtless help her to accept Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s patronage with equanimity.

But the long friendship between Charlotte and Elizabeth would not have endured if they had not had many things in common. And this friendship continues after Charlotte’s marriage — much as Elizabeth disapproves. At first, ‘Elizabeth felt persuaded that no real confidence could ever exist between them again.’ But time changes this. Charlotte’s absence leaves a hole that Elizabeth’s family cannot fill. Dearly as Elizabeth loves Jane, Jane is perhaps too sweet and uncritical to satisfy Elizabeth’s keener intelligence. By the time Elizabeth is to visit Charlotte at Hunsford, she is looking forward to seeing her friend again. And later, after Elizabeth has accepted Mr. Darcy’s proposal, when the Collins arrive at Lucas Lodge to escape Lady Catherine’s anger, we are told: ‘… the arrival of her friend was a sincere pleasure to Elizabeth …’

Q.E.D., Charlotte, the dear and lasting friend of Elizabeth Bennet, cannot be cheap, grasping or vulgar.

Solutions

Elizabeth Bennet is shocked when Charlotte accepts Mr. Collins, but we are not told what Elizabeth thinks Charlotte should do. Accept fate, presumably? Miss Austen’s own solution for her heroines’ problems is romantic love, and marriage to the right man. Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Anne Elliot, Catherine Morland, Fanny Price, Elinor Dashwood and yes, even Marianne Dashwood, are settled in this way. But all women were not that fortunate. Women must have discussed their futures in the way we do now, expressing hopes and fears, and the thought ‘What will become of me?’ must have haunted many more feminine minds than just Fanny’s.

To wait to be chosen — that was the accepted thing in Jane Austen’s time. But if not chosen?

Charlotte has not been chosen. So how does she solve her own dilemma? As I have said, she acts. She is not flirtatious or seductive (as is Isabella Thorpe and doubtless Lucy Steele); she does not caress or wheedle (as we are told Penelope Clay might do); and we already know she is plain. Charlotte captures Mr. Collins by the simple expedient of listening to him.

… the assiduous attentions of which he had been so sensible of himself were transferred for the rest of the day to Miss Lucas, whose civility in listening to him, was a relief to them all, and especially to her friend.

and

The Bennets were engaged to dine with the Lucases, and again during the chief of the day, was Miss Lucas so kind as to listen to Mr. Collins.

Mr. Collins is not rich, but he has a home to offer, and he has expectations. He is Mr. Bennet’s heir. She ‘accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment;’ in other words, to secure for herself a future. The way I see it, Charlotte does not ‘seize the cheap solution of marriage without love,’ as some people put it; instead she takes a job, not as a governess, but in the far older career of matrimony which involves an exchange of duties. She does not ‘discard responsibility for her life’ (Susan Morgan); on the contrary, she accepts it completely and utterly. Charlotte Lucas takes a job and she secures her job efficiently, with no waste of time and effort:

Miss Lucas perceived [Mr. Collins] from an upper window as he walked towards the house, and instantly set out to meet him accidentally in the lane.

(Note that word ‘accidentally.’ It is pure Austen.)

(The only literary parallel that comes to my mind is in Barbara Pym’s novel, Jane and Prudence, when Jessie Morrow, the quiet (but not commonplace) little companion, sets out with much the same deliberation to capture Fabian Driver.)

The Lucas family is delighted at Charlotte’s engagement. Lady Lucas, we must presume, worries about her daughters’ futures just as Mrs. Bennet (silly in so many ways but utterly practical in this) worries about her daughters.

Mr. Collins’s present circumstances made it a most eligible match for their daughter, to whom they could give little fortune; …

Charlotte herself, we are told:

… was tolerably composed. She had gained her point and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable, his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservation from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.

For Charlotte, the least agreeable circumstance in the business was ‘the surprise it must have occasioned to Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship she valued beyond that of any other person’. She knows it will be a painful process, and she makes sure that she is the one to break the news:

Miss Lucas called soon after breakfast, and in a private conference with Elizabeth related the event of the day before.

Elizabeth is astounded:

‘Engaged to Mr. Collins! My dear Charlotte — impossible!’

Charlotte states her case plainly and fairly:

‘… you must be surprized, very much surprized — so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it all over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic, you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collin’s’ character, connections and situation in life. I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the married state.’

Elizabeth, who does believe in romantic love, feels that Charlotte has —

… sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage … And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.

Elizabeth’s point, that Charlotte could not even ‘be tolerably happy,’ is the most telling used against her. She will be more prosperous, but she can be happy? But when Elizabeth visits Hunsford Parsonage, she notes that ‘when Mr. Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten.’ Later, she ‘meditates upon Charlotte’s degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it was done very well.’

These are early days, but it does seem that Charlotte can be happy in the life she has chosen.

To touch briefly on a more earthy aspect, I have heard women say, regarding Mr. Collins, ‘But he must have been so awful in bed!’ (But we can say that about other men: how about Mr. Cheney and Mr. Ashcroft in the present government?) I think myself that Mr. Collins was probably energetic in the performance of his husbandly duties — and short-lived. Charlotte would think about her poultry, or plan the next making of marrow-and-ginger preserves, and that would be that. Five minutes should cover it, ten at the most.

After all, for how many of us is married life perfect? Some happiness, yes, but too many ‘love matches’ fail for us to believe that marrying that special person ensures complete happiness. We have only to look at Miss Austen’s novels to find a number of examples.

Marriage in Jane Austen’s Novels

Sir Thomas Bertram, Mr. Bennet and Mr. Palmer all fall in love with and marry pretty tiresome women because of ‘beauty and that appearance of good humor which youth and beauty give.’ The infatuation cannot have lasted long. Their wives (not a very thoughtful lot) marry them, one presumes, because they are a ‘good match?” (Or should that word be ‘catch?’) They feel affection, perhaps, but we cannot believe that Lady Bertram and Mrs. Bennet are women of deep feeling. (Lady Bertram tells Fanny, in connection with Henry Crawford’s proposal, that ‘it is every young woman’s duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this,’ and we must suppose that this is what she did herself: accepted an unexceptionable offer.) Mrs. Palmer is such a ninny that one feels she could have been attached by anyone considered by her mother eligible who paid her the slightest attention. Elizabeth Bennet is unhappy with the situation in her family:

[Her father] … had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown … To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement.

These are plain words. I cannot help feeling that Charlotte Lucas, guiding her foolish husband, makes a better thing of marriage than Mr. Bennet does, mocking his foolish wife. But they are Miss Austen’s words, not Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth does not condemn her father as she does Charlotte, though surely it is as reprehensible for an intelligent man to marry unwisely in hot blood, as it is for a woman in cold? Charlotte at least is not deceiving herself.

This brings us round on a different tack. Lady Elliot and Mrs. Tilney are women of intelligence and principle who presumably marry for love — and their husbands are men of position, handsome and prosperous, who presumably loved their wives as much as they were able. No-one would have advised these two women not to marry. But both Sir Walter Elliot and General Tilney are second-rate men. Sir Walter has a decorative exterior, but mentally he and Mr. Collins are birds of a feather. He has neither intelligence nor feeling; he is comprised of equal parts of vanity and snobbery. While she lived, Lady Elliot kept her foolish husband in line (much as Charlotte Lucas will shepherd Mr. Collins); but she herself, we are told, was ‘not the very happiest being in the world.’

General Tilney is a despot: egotistical, arrogant and dictatorial, his temper is unsafe, he cares little for other people’s feelings, and he also is a snob. From what we learn of Mrs. Tilney from her son and daughter, she too was not a happy woman.

But though in Jane Austen’s terms, a woman of principle may only marry for love, this obviously does not mean her marriage will be happy, or her husband exemplary. (How does Jane Fairfax fare, I wonder?)

Charlotte Lucas is nothing if not practical. No-one promises her a rose garden; she does not expect it; she cultivates her own flower-beds.

I should hazard that Charlotte’s compensation, and perhaps that of Lady Elliot and Mrs. Tilney, comes from another direction. The answer lies in that phrase of Charlotte’s I have already quoted: ‘I ask only a comfortable home.’ Charlotte is a house person. I am a house person myself and I think this desire in a woman’s life should not be underestimated. It is only very recently — in the past few decades — that it has been acceptable (or possible) for a single woman to buy her own house, even if she could afford it. Banks, loans, mortgages, were geared to men. Houses traditionally came and went with husbands. A widow might own a house (like Lady Catherine and Lady Russell) but more usually it was inherited by a son. Single women lived in houses owned and run by relatives. Charlotte has no chance of a home of her own, possibly not even a room of her own, however hard she works, if she does not marry.

When, later, Elizabeth Bennet visits Charlotte at Hunsford Parsonage, we have the following:

… Charlotte took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased, probably, to have the opportunity of shewing it without her husband’s help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient; and everything was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency, of which Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit.’

Disliking the marriage as she does, still feeling sorry for her friend, Elizabeth goes on to think:

Poor Charlotte! — it was melancholy to leave her to such society! — But she had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.’

One last point. Before I end this paper, I’d like to speculate a little on a subject not mentioned by Jane Austen herself, and rarely if ever by those who discuss her: the wish of an unmarried woman for children.

It is always presumed, when Charlotte Lucas’ marriage to Mr. Collins is discussed, that it is just her financial security that is at stake. I have already put forward the suggestion that she may wish for a house. But there is also the possibility that she might desire children. A single woman must be content with her nieces and nephews. But a married woman (whether she wanted them or not) of course had them. And it seems to me that though the drawbacks of her husband might in time outweigh her pleasure in her house, some at least of her children might call on her love and fill her mind with hopes and plans. And they would return her love.

Conclusion

Some people oppose Charlotte Lucas on feminist grounds. I too think of myself as a feminist but I have never felt the need to think of Jane Austen as one, except in one regard. By the simple act of describing, without remark, intelligent, lively, witty, attractive, interesting women, she makes it clear that such women existed. In this regard, I rate her next to Shakespeare, who surely would have been ridiculed if he had expected his audiences to accept women such as Rosalind, Portia and Beatrice even though there were no such women of their caliber around.

But if Jane Austen does have a feminist character in her novels, that character, as I hope I have shown you, is Charlotte Lucas because she acts.

And so I come to the end of my justification of Charlotte Lucas. I sympathize with her; in many ways I admire her; in a hard world she makes a hard choice, but make it she does and it is a positive choice. It was a far far braver thing she did that day than she had ever done before, and I doubt if I would have had that much courage. But she deserves our respect, not our pity, and certainly not our scorn. She knew what she was doing, she did it, and she made the best of it.

What greater praise can I give her?

Copyright © 2001 by Elizabeth Newark

A shorter version of this paper was published in Persuasions, Volume 15, December 1993.

Elizabeth Newark is a Londoner by birth and a San Franciscan by choice. She was infected by Jane Austen at the age of 14. The senior class in her English secondary school put on Pride and Prejudice as a play one Christmas, and she found it so delightful that she immediately sought out the books. She has still not recovered from the infection.