Austen and Asexuality
Austen's work is famously seen as buttoned-up and proper, and frequently this is ascribed to her being a product of her time. But what if she were queer?
(This is a long one, sorry. If you're new to this newsletter, they're not all like this or even remotely close to it.)
I’m on the asexual spectrum. I only realized that I fit on it within the last few years; before that, I went through stages of assuming there was something wrong with me, or that I was "normal" but not trying hard enough to date, or that I was too picky.
I’d already figured out that I was queer in that I had more of a preference for women than men, but the entire asexual thing is so far from what even the more queer-friendly parts of society generally discuss and represent that I didn’t have a model for understanding myself. Experiences that were supposed to be universal just didn’t match my reality.
Since getting there, I’ve done a lot of self-reflection to better understand at least my own personal aspec perspective. One thing that’s become abundantly apparent is that my fiction is heavily influenced by it. Really heavily.
You see, I love romance. I love it so much! For years and years I've come up with novel concepts that turn to some extent on romantic relationships between the leads, and written intensely romantic short stories and fanfiction. However, these relationships almost never have much to do with physical attraction. If the characters acknowledge their own or each other's attractiveness, it's in the same way they acknowledge competence or talent. They fall in love with each other based on a slowly ripening friendship that shifts into romance, or something they find strangely compelling about each other's personalities.
It's easy to call this prudery. One of the tricky things about asexuality is that the internal experience of it can be difficult to distinguish from purity culture, high standards, etc. from an outside perspective, which can make it harder to identify in someone else -- particularly in historical figures one only knows from a great cultural distance. A lot of people in the past never married, or only had one known love interest in their entire lives. This is often put down to disappointment, bad luck, religious fervor, or a great one-sided romance, but it seems pretty plausible as an aspec person that at least some of these figures were aspec themselves!
Enter Jane Austen.
Back before I made all of these realizations, I used to tell myself that I wrote the way I did because I'd imprinted on Austen. (And I certainly have imprinted on Austen in some ways, when it comes to content and style.) Austen's work is famously seen as buttoned-up and proper, even didactically moral, and frequently this is ascribed to her being a product of her time. But since my realizations, I've started wondering about the possibility that she was, in fact, asexual herself and that it bled into her work the same way it bleeds into mine.
The main and most obvious area this shows up is in the general lack of physical attraction between the main characters in Austen's novels, in comparison to the raptures many other historical authors go into about how attractive their characters are and how much they notice each other's beauty.
- Northanger Abbey: Catherine and Mr. Tilney are randomly introduced by the master of ceremonies at Bath's Lower Rooms, and while he's described as being "very near" handsomeness, all the emphasis is on their conversation and his wittiness in it. The narrator describes his feelings for her as rising out of his awareness that she was in love with him. (John Thorpe's interest in Catherine being the inheritance he imagines she's in for is quite clear.)
- Sense and Sensibility: Edward Ferrars is specifically described as "not handsome", but as being intelligent, quiet, and amiable, while Elinor's virtues are her understanding, judgement, and good heart. The beginning of their relationship is simply referred to quickly as a growing attachment. And Marianne certainly doesn't seem to find Colonel Brandon remotely attractive until she's known him quite a while.
- Pride and Prejudice: Mr. Darcy, of course, finds Elizabeth only "tolerable" in looks at first, and when he does start to appreciate her it's first for her eyes' expressions, and then her manners and pleasing figure. Elizabeth, meanwhile, doesn't have a positive thing to say about him (including about his looks) until she starts to like him personally. She does respond more to Wickham's appearance, but even then it's mostly presented as aesthetic appreciation sans romantic interest.
- Mansfield Park: Fanny's attachment to Edmund is entirely due to the consideration he's shown for her throughout their lives, and his regard is "founded on the most endearing claims of innocence and helplessness, and completed by every recommendation of growing worth".
- Emma: Emma is, of course, handsome, clever, and rich, but her platonic relationship to Mr. Knightley starts long before that's the case, when she's a child. They both realize they're in love with each other when they think the other is in love with someone else, after a long acquaintance where they never considered each other as romantic prospects.
- Persuasion: This is actually the most allosexual of the main pairings, in that when Anne and Captain Wentworth's early relationship is first described, their good looks top the list of their qualities. However, throughout the book, neither of them can entertain the thought of anyone else romantically - Anne's pursued by both Charles Musgrove and William Elliott, both very good matches and attractive men, but has no interest in them; Wentworth tries to make himself fall in love with Louisa Musgrove but doesn't even realize that he's coming off as if he has - which is extremely asexual-with-an-exception/demisexual of them.
So yeah.
Even beyond that, though, is the way that being physically attractive is treated in the Austen canon. Many characters are described very briefly as pretty or handsome or having a fine countenance etc., but it's typically done with the sense that this is simply an attribute of theirs that affects their situation. Their looks are one variable in the calculus of whether anyone is interested in them, along with their manners, kindness, moral virtues, and amiability. (And, of course, their money.)
It particularly stands out to me because makers of filmed representations of the Austen canon frequently feel the need to "fix" the text by including the signs of sexual attraction that seem to be missing, from their perspective. Andrew Davies has been particularly criticized for this - he loves a scene where the hero is in undress, and there's the famous advice he gave Colin Firth. The tv show Sanditon took it to an extreme by running with Austen's manuscript fragment and developing a plot that went with the sexy option at every turn -- from the incestuous siblings to the heroine catching the hero bathing naked in the sea.
From an aspec perspective, though, nothing was missing in the first place.
Necessary notes:
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This is not my reasoned and factual Theory of Austen Being Asexual. I just think considering the possibilities of historical queerness is interesting and this particular reading resonates with me.
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I'm not suggesting that allosexual people are shallow and only attracted to looks. But there's a difference between not prioritizing looks and not feeling compelled by them! Something a lot of aspec people say is that we can appreciate someone's attractiveness, but have no impulse to act on it.
Because this is a letter about Jane Austen, I am of course going to do a Regency fashion history bit.
Mrs. Gwynne is dressed in a fairly plain white muslin gown, over a short-sleeved white silk slip. (Period term. No, really!) Women are depicted in white in many, many portraits and fashion plates, showing how commonly it was worn. The construction is rather simple: the ruffled neckline is held open with cords or a seam at the level of the collarbones, and forms a slight crossover in the bodice, which is gathered under the bust; apart from that, there are plain long sleeves and (as far as can be seen) a plain skirt. A light blue satin ribbon runs around the skirt at the high waistline, likely tacked in place to some extent in order to stay there.
Her hair is smooth in front and riotous in the back, probably flipped up and held in place with a comb rather than being a meticulously pinned hairstyle. Hair was still done in a rather "natural" way at the beginning of the 1810s.
Under her right elbow, we can see a red cashmere shawl with a white-grounded paisley border. Imitations were being produced in Scotland from 1805 on, but the genuine article was expensive and highly fashionable. In France, it was the mark of a married bourgeois woman: husbands were supposed to provide them as part of the corbeille, gifts given the morning after the wedding.
Thank you for reading! If you have any questions or thoughts on what I should write about in the future, hit me up on BlueSky.
See you in the new year!