Was Jane Austen a Romance Writer?

A question I thought we all knew the answer to.

Some of you reading this post’s title might be wondering what I’m going on about; of course Austen wrote romances. And others of you might be sharpening the fountain pens, noses aquiver at my base interpretation of one of the greatest authors of all time.

This post is for the latter group.

Okay. Where do I start?

I am what most people would call an average reader. I’ve never spent a second in the trenches of academia, parsing what a single passage in a book might really mean. When I read a fictional book, I expect the story to make sense on the surface and the characters to act in ways that humans do, and to have a good time overall. Symbolic green lights on docks and whatever other inanimate objects are masquerading as emotions, are not things I care about or look for. If I see them, whatever. If I don’t, that’s probably better. I think it’s the job of fiction writers to deliver stories foremost, and if the story is also a seven-layer dip, great, the author put some extra seasoning in. But a good story naturally has lots to interest most readers and a good story should be an author’s top priority when practicing their craft.

That’s the prelude done. Consider this a CONTENT WARNING as well. I’m going to say things that might be upsetting.

One more prelude:

I don’t care what Austen wrote in her letters about her books. I should not have to read someone’s PRIVATE LETTERS in order to understand, and have a legitimate opinion on, what they wrote for the public. I’m pretty sure she didn’t write to her friends expecting that one day it would be made available to everyone with an Austen fetish. If she wanted extra knowledge about her writing to be made public, she should’ve published it.

Now we can proceed.

I have two posts mentioning Austen that both garnered some eyeballs. One is my Persuasion review. The other is Authors I’ve Given Up On, which, contrary to that title, I haven’t given up on Austen, even though I’m tempted to. Because of those posts, mostly the latter one, this strange beast arose in the comments claiming that Austen is not a romance writer. Or that her primary genre is not romance.

This confused me. It amused me, too. I’m one of those people who thinks that Austen is obviously a romance writer and to say otherwise is bizarre and out of touch. But apparently a not-so-insignificant group of people would disagree with me.

But I ask you:

1. If Austen wasn’t a romance writer, why do all of her books build up to and end with marriage?

2. If Austen wasn’t a romance writer, why do all of her books revolve around asking, “Do these people like each other?” and “How are they going to overcome their obstacles so they can be together?”

3. If Austen wasn’t a romance writer, how come she’s directly influenced countless romance authors over the decades?

Austen is to the romance genre, what Tolkien is to the fantasy genre. There is no getting around that and anyone who tries to will not get very far.

I’m not denying that Austen included a lot of other themes in her stories. But she chose romance to be the hub from which all the other spokes issued. It all comes back to romance and without it, you have disparate ideas that aren’t that interesting because there’s no central, happy point we’re all waiting for. If she only wanted to talk about how sucky society is, she should’ve written pamphlets. If her books just focused on how restrictive the time period is and how you’ll end up poor and in a loveless marriage, she wouldn’t be nearly as popular, nor as re-read.

The romance is a safety net. You can go down the rabbit hole of money problems, class divides, marriage expectations, family relationships, and all the other stuff you’re looking for, because in the back of your mind, you know everything is going to be fine. These stories are not tragedies, murder mysteries, domestic thrillers, or World War dramas. Everyone you care about, and even all the ones you don’t, are going to be alive at the end. (I can’t think of anyone who dies during the story itself, but feel free to correct me.) If they all ended in murder-suicides…I mean, she probably wouldn’t have been published, but again, she wouldn’t be that big of a success. So these stories are safe and comfy joyrides BECAUSE THEY ARE ROMANCES.

Austen freaking pioneered the romance genre, people! Even Wikipedia says so! Granted, that’s a low bar, but every single bookstore will shelve her works under classics and/or romance. Why? Because it is the bedrock for all her books. Those who write the enemies-to-lovers trope are taking notes from Elizabeth and Darcy. That is one of the most popular romance tropes of all time and it started with Austen.

If you’re still not convinced, what do you suppose these books would look like without romance?

We have Pride and Prejudice, the most famous of Austen’s books. There’s the class stuff, the money grabbing, the questionable parenting, the marriages of convenience, the pride, the prejudice, you know the drill. But remove the romance from that story and Jane marries Mr. Collins. Is that what you want? Would that punch in the gut make you want to reread the book every year? Because without the hope of marriage to Bingley, it all falls apart. Sure, Elizabeth might still go to Rosings, but it would be much sooner and she’d miss Darcy’s visit. Not like it’d matter, because she wouldn’t have met Darcy in the first place since Bingley is out of the picture.

Without the growing bond between Elizabeth and Darcy, who knows what happens to Lydia the Trollop.

Without the romance, it’s just dances, visits to town, and Mrs. Bennet carrying on. Who cares about class divides and prejudices? The glue that makes those things stick together is gone.

Persuasion. Without romance, Anne has no one to be persuaded from or to yearn for. Boom. Done. Story over before it even begins.

Northanger Abbey. Catherine goes to town with relatives and then leaves because there is no romance with Tilney. What’s the point of even writing the book?

Sense and Sensibility. Mother and daughters move to tiny house because they are poor, and they explore the countryside. That could be interesting if the countryside is jumpin’, but again, the reason anything happens in that story is because of the drama with Willoughby (which is not a healthy romance, I know), the disappointment at a Ferrars being married, and Colonel Brandon wooing someone way too young for him.

Emma. She’s literally playing at match-maker. If there were no matches to be made, it’s just some girl doing whatever she’s doing that does not involve romance, which is going to be very little because it’s all about pairing people up.

Mansfield Park. Haven’t read it and don’t remember the movie. But it ends with the girl being married, so it’s safe to say that was the endpoint all along and if the romance wasn’t there, the happy ending disappears too. Though maybe the reason it isn’t as popular as the others is because of its lack of romance.

I know Lady Susan and the unfinished Sanditon exist too, but let’s be real, they don’t matter in the grand Austen scheme of things (though Lady Susan is married by the end).

Do any of those romance-less books sound good? Are you really that invested in a world where the snappy conversations between the leads no longer happen? Or they do happen, but no one gets together at the end? Just how much do you care about 19^th century living if it doesn’t involve a wet shirt Darcy?

Where did this idea come from that Austen is far removed from romance? I’m going to guess that it came from the teachers in schools who had students analyze Austen for an extended period. They can’t go on and on about the romance, so they must find other bits to ruminate on and write essays about. These students either learned to hate reading as a result, or to blow right by reading for fun, only to focus on the deeper layers and symbolic messages. Fiction does not have to be laid out on the dissecting table and picked over until it’s not fit for scavengers. Pulling meaning from the depths or inserting your own meaning into the book, is desperate, selfish, and will likely miss the mark since you are not the author and should not dare to presume that your meaning is the intended one. Not everything has to provide soul-answering meaning. It’s okay to only judge a story on its plot and characters and leave everything else to the side.

So that leaves me to wonder, what do so many people have against romance? Yes, I know the genre today is a far cry from Netherfield balls and ribboned bonnets. But it’s as if these romance deniers turn their noses up at such simple concepts as love, marriage and happiness. Dude, everyone on the planet wants one or all of those things! How come Austen writing about universal truths is so abhorrent to you? Seeking happiness with another isn’t a good enough reason for these books to exist? There must be miles of other layers to discover? Crafting love stories that have withstood generations is a pretty impressive feat, especially when they take place in a world we no longer recognize. Why not celebrate that?

Side tangent: I hate it when people say a book is “of its time.” Well duh, time travel hasn’t been invented yet. Every book is of its time. Twilight is of its time. To Kill a Mockingbird is of its time. Hamlet is of its time. People can either wrap their head around this idea that society hasn’t always been the same, or they can continue being offended that the past isn’t like the current day. Austen was of her time and I can accept that, and still not like what she wrote.

Back to the show.

I think I’ve made my point, but now I want to address the comments I received that told me what Austen really wrote about. (I’m not sharing the whole comment, just the key phrases. All these comments can be found on one of the two posts mentioned at the start. Unless they’ve been deleted by the commenter.)

“[Austen] is not a romance writer, she writes comedies of manners. The manners very much of her time and place. In Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth speaks about class from a very modern feminist perspective.”

You can laugh at the ridiculous ways these people act because you know no one is going to die horribly, as the romance genre (generally) prohibits gore.

Now you know why I added in the above side tangent.

Another side tangent that I will not get into because I need to retain a sliver of sanity: slapping the “feminist” sticker on every classic book with a female lead. Stop. Feminism of today is a whole different beast to what it would’ve been two hundred years ago, so that word no longer applies. And has anyone considered that Austen could’ve been looking at the recently ended Revolutionary War and wishing that England wasn’t quite so classist? I think we should re-brand Elizabeth as thinking like an American.

“She wrote novels about society, at a time when marriage was the concern for society women, so romance inherently arises. But was she a romance writer per se? I definitely wouldn’t count Emma, Persuasion, or Mansfield Park as part of the genre.”

See my above thoughts on those particular books. And even if she just wrote about society, why do all the books end with happy marriages? All her characters marry for love because romance is the goal of the book. If it wasn’t, Austen should’ve had protagonists living the day-to-day life of society women who end up miserable and/or alone.

“Not to be THAT person, but Austen isn't romance - it's a biting commentary on the times in which she lived and the 'romance' is implausible on purpose or a distraction (see what happens with Lydia which is the 'best' outcome allowed by the social rules).”

Why is romance in quotations? Is this person implying that none of these couples were actually in love? And if it were a distraction, why put that much effort into including it in the first place? Just write the damn biting commentary if it’s so important and forget the happy marriages. If there’s some wildly pressing message you want to impart to the masses, SAY IT. Don’t waste time writing a fictional novel.

Lydia’s a dumbass and she deserves all the heartache that society could heap on her.

And you know what? Every romance in fiction is implausible; that’s why it’s in the fiction section and that’s why it’s the most popular genre.

“You are reading for plot, read for the deeper wave and you'll get more out of it.”

No. These books are fiction and have a plot. To ignore the plot is to piss on the time it took to create and write said plot. These books wouldn’t exist without a plot and I am going to examine the plot, unlike everyone else, apparently. I got as much out of it as I wanted to, so don’t tell me how to read books.

I received many more Austen comments but there’s really only one other that I feel I should include.

I took a screenshot just so you know I’m not making it up. Someone out there thinks this. I mean, pardon me for reading a FICTIONAL BOOK FOR ITS STORY. That is literally the point of fiction novels: it has to have a story. To say that reading a book for its story is “the lowest form of reading,” is an exceptionally idiotic thing to say. Not to mention how degrading it is to every single author who spends many hours crafting a story. All you authors who want to make a good story? You’re wasting your time apparently. And where would this wit, character, environment, economy, morals and blasted perspicuity be if there wasn’t a story to showcase it all? That’s right! It wouldn’t exist! This has got to be most asinine comment I have ever received and while I had already decided to write this post, reading that exquisite take lit a fire under me. It’s people like this who make me dislike Austen.

If any of you are thinking that I don’t “get it” or I didn’t dig deep enough to fully understand the story, that’s absurd. There is more than one way to view a fictional story and if dredging up every possible shred of significance is not how I choose to read books, then go ahead and call me shallow. Most fiction genuinely isn’t worth the time it takes to find these hidden messages. Fiction is not where I go to receive meaning on life; I prefer reality and history for that.

Some people think Austen is the pinnacle of authorship and criticizing her is tantamount to heresy. Will I still criticize her? Of course; if and however she deserves it. Will I view her as the origin point for romance? Always, and to strip that achievement from her is sad and insulting. But something I learned while writing this post is when a diehard Austen fan prattles on about the layers she put in her stories, or the social commentary, the early onset feminism, the biting wit, the restrictive lives of women, the unrestrained brilliance of perspicuity, it makes me that much less inclined to read more of her stuff. And yet, I’m still going to give her another chance because I believe in romance.

So yes, Austen wrote about many things, but those things wouldn’t have been put to paper without her choice to use romance as the hub for all her stories.

Austen was a romance writer, and I will die on this hill.

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