Love Follies Postscript

In Love Follies I criticised a philosopher—a logician as it turns out—for pouring cold water over on a sharp critique of delusionary Romantic love.  I want to make it clear that I am not against poetic or even romantic love, being as susceptible to them as the next person, maybe more so.  What I find truly exasperating is this idea that our analytic capabilities need to be smashed up in order to allow these impulses free reign.  The energies of romantic love are powerful and as with all powerful forces need to be channelled if they aren’t going to do a great deal of damage.

I am in the middle of writing an essay on Mansfield Park so it seems only appropriate to quote a passage from the novel to illustrate the point. Here Henry Crawford has cleared out having toyed with Maria, who is engaged to the rich and foolish Mr Rushworth.

Had Sir Thomas applied to his daughter within the first three or four days after Henry Crawford’s leaving Mansfield, before her feelings were at all tranquillised, before she had given up every hope of him, or absolutely resolved on enduring his rival, her answer might have been different; but after another three or four days, when there was no return, no letter, no message, no symptom of a softened heart, no hope of advantage from separation, her mind became cool enough to seek all the comfort that pride and self revenge could give.

Henry Crawford had destroyed her happiness, but he should not know that he had done it; he should not destroy her credit, her appearance, her prosperity, too. He should not have to think of her as pining in the retirement of Mansfield for him, rejecting Sotherton and London, independence and splendour, for his sake. Independence was more needful than ever; the want of it at Mansfield more sensibly felt. She was less and less able to endure the restraint which her father imposed. The liberty which his absence had given was now become absolutely necessary. She must escape from him and Mansfield as soon as possible, and find consolation in fortune and consequence, bustle and the world, for a wounded spirit. Her mind was quite determined, and varied not.

To such feelings delay, even the delay of much preparation, would have been an evil, and Mr. Rushworth could hardly be more impatient for the marriage than herself. In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry. The rest might wait. The preparations of new carriages and furniture might wait for London and spring, when her own taste could have fairer play.

Vol. II, Ch. III

This is a powerful passage, and shows (if anyone was ever in doubt) that Austen fully understood romantic love. This is love gone wrong; Maria has not been taught how to handle its power and it is about to destroy her. Austen’s heroines offered positive examples—and it is to these that we have to look to see how to ride it while ensuring its energies remain constructive. As in every other situation where powerful forces need to be harnessed, keeping a clear head is essential.

Looking at the original proposition dismissed by the logician, it is clear that the questioner has identified the irrational ideas that take hold when we are in the grip of romantic love.

The love shared between two individuals (romantic love) is often thought of as the most ineffable and sublime of human connections, but I can’t help but feel that there is something less than satisfying at its foundations; an element of extreme frivolity. The fact is that love is dependent upon factors and conditions which one may think of as being somewhat superficial. Most conspicuous in my mind is the physical attractiveness of the object of one’s love. We consider it to be highly superificial to let our judgement of a person be effected by our estimations of said person’s physical appearance, yet this very quality is of extreme importance when it comes to who we fall in love with. Does it in anyway sully the integrity of love that its foundations are so superficial?

The point isn’t that we shouldn’t savour the feeling and the experience of being in love with someone, but need to be careful not to allow our ideas and thinking to become corrupted by the process. If we are to build a healthy loving relationship—a true loving relationship, not the illusory facsimile that we start out with—then we need to start paying attention to the fundamentals of the situation. To this end it helps to have a clear understanding of the absurd ideas that tend to take hold in the delusionary state, but this is not going to be helped if, of all people, philosophers and logicians set out to destroy any basis for thinking clearly about the situation.

For more on this (apart from this blog and novels of Jane Austen) I recommend The Art of Happiness, Howard Cutler’s conversation with the Dalai Lama; this intellectually crystallised for me the thinking I had picked up from Jane Austen’s novels.