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| Book cover for "Pride and Prejudice." Image source. |
[content note: spoilers for "Pride and Prejudice"]
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, was first published in 1813. It's a romance story, about how the fancy gentlemen and ladies of 1700's England go about partnering up and getting married.
Those of us who grew up in purity culture in the American church in the 1990's were taught an ideology about "sexual purity" and rules about dating and gender roles. This ideology was presented as timeless, traditional, how God always intended relationships to work. Like everyone has always known that these were the rules, until the sexual revolution of the 1960's- that's when all the problems started. We need to just get back to these traditions, which are straight from the bible. That's how dating is supposed to be.
So, naively, one might imagine that when you encounter writing about romance/relationships/marriage from hundreds of years ago, in a society that was greatly influenced by Christianity, it would basically match what purity culture teaches. That the rules that proper men and women followed back then should be more or less the same as the rules that purity culture is putting on us now. That the way that people in that time period viewed romantic relationships would match what purity culture tells us.
But oh goodness, let me tell you, this is very much not true about "Pride and Prejudice."
Wow, it is very much NOT TRUE that purity culture ideology is just getting back to the way that every proper and respectable person used to approach romantic relationships. Purity culture is a movement that was invented in the US in the 1990's, and its aesthetics give the appearance of being old and traditional, but it's not.
So let me tell you about 4 things in "Pride and Prejudice" that are at odds with the purity-culture perspective on relationships.
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1. Men and women dance together
In "Pride and Prejudice," characters attend balls, and the men dance with the women. Like, in couples. Like, a man asks a woman to dance with him, then they dance- physically touching, talking to each other one-on-one, with their attention focused on each other- and then for the next song, the man goes and asks a different woman. There's no expectation, among the characters in "Pride and Prejudice", that you're only supposed to dance with someone that you're in a committed relationship with. They all mix and dance with each other. Every man dances with every woman, more or less. Even married people dance with partners other than their spouse.
In fact, there is an early scene in "Pride and Prejudice" where Mr. Darcy is not dancing, even though there are some women sitting around without partners. Everyone judges him for this. In this society, it is really bad etiquette for a man to just stand there and not ask anyone to dance, when there are women who aren't paired up with dance partners.
Yes, there is some amount of correlation between dancing together and being romantically interested in each other- the characters in "Pride and Prejudice" gossip about who asked whom to dance first, and what it means for a potential relationship between them. But overall, every man pretty much dances with every woman, and nobody thinks this is an issue.
Contrast this with purity culture, where it's a super huge big deal for a man and woman to physically touch each other, especially in a context that can be read as romantic. Any kind of physical contact is so incredibly fraught- really, the ideal would be to never physically touch your spouse until marriage. (I don't know anyone who made a serious attempt to do this, but by purity culture logic, that is the ideal.) Sure, the biggest component of purity is not having sex- but wouldn't it be even *more* pure to not kiss? Wouldn't it be even more pure to not hug? Wouldn't it be even more pure to never dance with someone of the opposite sex?
The way that the characters in "Pride and Prejudice" are all dancing with each other like it's no big deal is shocking, from a purity culture perspective.
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2. Parental involvement
In purity culture, there are so many rules and restrictions on a man and woman who are romantically interested in each other spending time together and getting to know each other. Because, what if you get too emotionally attached? And then what if you don't end up getting married- wouldn't that be heartbreaking and devastating? You'll have "given away part of your heart", and you won't be able to be a whole healthy person in your future relationships. You need to "guard your heart."
You end up with this weird paradox where it's bad to get to know someone, because what if you fall in love and lose your "emotional purity"- you shouldn't do that until you're really sure you will marry them!- but then how can you possibly know if you want to marry them, if you're not really allowed to get to know them?
Some strands of purity culture solve this issue by requiring extensive parental involvement in people's relationships. (This is not the strand of purity culture I was in, but you can look at the Duggar family for an example.) The girl's dad will get to know the boy, and the girl's dad will determine whether he is marriage material, before letting the daughter get to know him.
There are even some subgroups within purity culture which require couples to have a "chaperone" whenever they go on a date- to make sure they're not secretly kissing or having sex or having personal conversations in order to really get to know each other. (Okay, I'm kind of joking, the chaperone doesn't really have the explicit purpose of preventing deep heart-to-heart conversations, but honestly how much are you going to say when you're on a date and your younger sibling is sitting there as a third wheel?)
So, you might expect that in "Pride and Prejudice," the young, single people aren't really allowed to make their own decisions about marriage, and their parents are overseeing the whole process. But oh goodness, no, that's *not* what happens in "Pride and Prejudice."
There were several examples, in "Pride and Prejudice", where a man asked a woman to marry him, she said yes, and then they went and told the woman's parents, who didn't really have any idea beforehand. At that point, when they're telling her parents, to some extent it is to get permission- if the woman's parents object to it, then maybe they won't end up getting married. But typically, the parents are just happy that their daughter was able to get a man, and they're not going to object unless there's something really wrong with him. If you're imagining the man first going to the woman's father to ask for permission to propose, well, that doesn't happen in this book. (The only example that is kinda close is Mr. Collins asking Elizabeth's mother before he proposes to her.)
Instead, what we see in "Pride and Prejudice" is plenty of scenes where single men and single women interact with each other unsupervised. In fact, it seems that the parents *want* their daughters to go out and interact with a bunch of men, to increase their chances of getting a husband.
Jane's mother really wants her to marry Bingley- so she very intentionally sets up situations where Jane and Bingley are alone together, to try to get them to develop their relationship more.
Basically, nobody in "Pride and Prejudice" is freaking out about how risky it is for their daughter's "emotional purity" if she's allowed to get to know a guy and fall in love with him on her own. Most of the parental involvement in this book is the parents encouraging their daughters to go meet a lot of (rich, high-status) men, so that some kind of romantic relationship will develop. And then the daughter will bring a guy back to introduce to her parents, and tell them "we're engaged" and the parents will call that a success. There's no concept of young people just not being able to make good decisions and needing their parents to carefully manage their romantic lives. Well, one character, Lydia, is recognized by everyone as being too shallow and boy-crazy to make good decisions- but this is just because of her own individual personality, not some generalized danger that everyone has to be afraid of.
There is one example of parental involvement which is a bit different though- Lady Catherine wants Darcy to marry her daughter. But her meddling in her daughter's life has nothing to do with "emotional purity" or not trusting unsupervised young people to stay "pure." Lady Catherine's motivations are about money and family connections.
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3. The scandal of running off together
At one point in the story, the Bennet family finds out that one of their daughters, Lydia, has run off with Wickham to elope with him. Lydia's sister, Jane, takes this as bad news, because Jane knows that Wickham is a liar and generally not a good person.
But then, the family finds out, it's actually worse than they thought. Lydia and Wickham have run off together, and he might not intend to marry her. !!! Oh no! This is terrible! Poor Lydia! And oh, the shame she is bringing on her family! Oh, this is terrible!
Lydia's father and uncle spend a lot of time trying to track her down. When they finally find Lydia and Wickham, there is a lot of negotiating to get Wickham to agree to marry her. The whole family is extremely stressed out, waiting to see if this is going to work. Finally a lot of money is paid to Wickham, and he and Lydia get married.
When it's all said and done, the family is glad the problem is "solved" by getting Wickham to agree to marry Lydia, but also, some of the characters feel like, isn't it sad that they've put in so much effort to bag "one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain"? Like, it's considered a success, because he does marry her, but the prize is Wickham, ugh.
The book doesn't explicitly spell out why it's bad for Lydia and Wickham to live as a couple without getting married, and how exactly society would have viewed Lydia and her family. My understanding is, if Wickham leaves her, and it's known that she had the experience of living with a man without being married, people will judge her as having "lost her virtue" and no man will want to marry her. And maybe she'll have to become a sex worker, for lack of any other options to financially support herself.
So even though nobody likes Wickham, he's the only one who can be pressured into saving Lydia from this fate. And, best-case scenario, maybe word won't get out that they lived together before getting married. Well, they're married now, so it's fine. The problem has been solved.
The general strokes of this plotline do match what purity culture says about how people in the past viewed virginity/ how people now *should* view virginity. Purity culture says that if you have sex before marriage, you will be worthless and you'll never be able to have a good marriage.
However, the concerns that the characters in "Pride and Prejudice" have about this whole situation aren't really the same as the concerns I was taught in purity culture. In "Pride and Prejudice," the negative consequences of living together unmarried seem to be only external- it's all about what society will think, how society will judge Lydia, how society will judge Wickham, how society will judge Lydia's family.
Basically, if society believes that an unmarried woman is not a "virgin", she won't have any good options in life. It seems that's what Lydia's family is concerned about.
But in our society now, most people think it's fine to have sex before marriage. So, purity culture can't use these "external" reasons to justify why it's THE END OF THE WORLD if you have unmarried sex.
Because we don't have these "external reasons" readily available, I was taught a whole bunch of reasons along the lines of "here's why it's better for you, personally, to only have sex with one (1) person over your entire lifetime, and why it would be bad for you, personally, in terms of your emotional health and trauma and potential to have a happy marriage, if you have sex with someone and then break up with them." Reasons like, when you have sex, you're giving away your body and heart to your partner, and you can never get that back; it will affect you for the rest of your life. Reasons like, if you had sex with an ex, then when you get married to your eventual husband, every time you have sex with said husband, you will think about your ex and compare them- you will be haunted by it forever, it's impossible to ever get over it. Reasons like, what if someone knew every curve of your body, and then rejected you and broke up with you, that would be so devastating, you should structure your whole life to avoid that ever happening. Reasons like, if you marry the first person you date, that's the ideal scenario for having and happy and healthy marriage, because then you won't have the "baggage" of past relationships.
But in "Pride and Prejudice," it doesn't really seem that anyone is motivated by concern for Lydia's potential heartbreak/ trauma/ chance to have a happy marriage. In fact, it's kind of the opposite: It's pretty clear that after the initial infatuation fades, Lydia and Wickham will have an unhappy marriage, but that's what they both deserve, so whatever.
Almost makes you think that if women had more options, and if society didn't put such a stigma on women who had "lost their virtue", this could have turned out much better for Lydia and her family. (Wow, kind of the opposite of the purity-culture belief that everything would be better if society went back to harshly judging "impure" women.) But instead, the family is satisfied when Wickham is convinced to marry her, because that's the least-bad option out of all the bad options available.
Here's a thought- and I can't believe I'm just realizing this just now- it's starting to dawn on me that in the past, in those "traditional" days when everyone knew that it was wrong to have sex before marriage, it was never about any of these reasons I was taught in purity culture about emotional health, and avoiding heartbreak and lifelong trauma. Wow, what if that wasn't on anyone's radar at all, back in the day? What if it was simply that men are the ones in charge, and men are the ones deciding if a woman is good enough or not, and men want a virgin, to ensure the paternity of future children? And that's it? And that's really it?
And all this purity-culture reasoning about "This is God's perfect plan for sex! God made sex as a gift to us, but it's catastrophic if it's not used in the proper context"- that was all made up in the 1990's purity movement. Maybe nobody saw it that way before! Maybe before, it was "don't have sex outside of marriage, because patriarchy reasons" and nobody was claiming that this was actually the best choice for women's emotional health.
Yes, certainly there's writing from hundreds of years ago about heartbreak and romantic feelings, and how difficult it is if you're not able to be with someone you're in love with- but that's not the same thing as what purity culture teaches. Purity culture says that those feelings *will* haunt you for your entire life, and you will never be able to have a healthy relationship with a different partner, ever, if you've already "given away part of your heart" to a previous partner, and also that sex *by definition* (regardless of if you enjoyed it or not, regardless of if it's consensual) causes you to have that kind of deep vulnerable dependency that will traumatize you for life and is impossible to truly heal from. And to some extent kissing will too, and any kind of romantically-charged physical contact. And therefore we shouldn't pursue our romantic feelings, or value them, or enjoy the full spectrum of emotions- no, purity culture says we need to avoid all of it, as much as we can, until marriage. To do sexual or romantic things with someone and then break up with them is just too terrifying- it would ruin your life- make sure it doesn't happen by avoiding all sexual/romantic things, until you get married.
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4. Breakups
Early in the book, Jane and Bingley are spending a lot of time together, and everyone says they're in love and will probably get engaged soon. But then, Bingley moves to London, leaving Jane behind.
Jane tells her sister, Elizabeth, that she's fine, she's over it, it's okay, etc, but Elizabeth can see that Jane is truly sad about this relationship ending.
Basically, it seems that Jane's view of breakups is: Yes, if you're in love with someone and then you break up, that is really sad. It's really sad, it's really hard, but over time the feelings fade and you move on with life.
She doesn't seem to believe in an ideology where, by having been in love, it means she has "given away part of her heart" and that's going to affect any future relationship she may have.
And there are other examples in the book which are along similar lines. Early in the book, Elizabeth is attracted to Wickham and is interested in spending more time with him, but then later she isn't. And that's fine, there's no freaking out about "giving away part of her heart." Throughout the book, there are various characters who might be romantically interested in each other but then it doesn't go anywhere, and that's fine.
We find out that, before the events of the book took place, Darcy's sister Georgiana had had something of a relationship with Wickham, and they were planning to elope, but Darcy found out and put a stop to it, because he knows Wickham is bad news and is only interested in Georgiana's money. Darcy doesn't tell people that Wickham did this- and Darcy later regrets it, because he thinks if it was publicly known what Wickham was really like, then maybe Lydia wouldn't have ended up stuck with him. But the reason Darcy doesn't tell people is because he doesn't want to make his sister look bad.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Using a purity-culture lens, Georgiana dated Wickham and then broke up, and that means her purity is forever tainted (even though they didn't have sex, I assume). Is that the reason Darcy doesn't want people to know about what happened? I don't think it is, not exactly. I think it's more about not wanting people to know that Georgiana fell for Wickham's trickery- being ashamed to be the victim of a scam. And maybe this would bring shame on her, and make people judge her as not marriage material. It's something like that, but it's not the same as how it would be seen from a purity-culture perspective.
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The world that we see in "Pride and Prejudice," with its beliefs about marriage and romance and gender roles, is not the world of purity culture. Basically, what we see in "Pride and Prejudice" is a very solid line- having sex is off-limits, living together as a couple is off-limits- but there's plenty of space on this side of the line, and characters are free to do all sorts of things. Dance together, meet lots of people of the opposite sex in hopes of finding a spouse, spend time one-on-one with a potential romantic partner, get engaged and then tell your parents afterward, fall in love, break up- and this is all fine. I mean, nobody likes the feeling of heartbreak, but it's just seen as a normal part of life, not something that's cosmically important and will define your future romantic relationships forever.
Contrast this with purity culture, which says the bare minimum is you need to be a virgin when you get married- but wouldn't it be even more pure if you never kissed before marriage? Wouldn't it be more pure if you never hugged anyone of the opposite sex? Wouldn't it be more pure if you never danced with a partner? Wouldn't it be more pure if you marry the first person you date? Purity is a whole spectrum, and no matter where you are on it, you're not good enough, you're not pure enough.
And all of the games that I had to play about "emotional purity", the fear that I wasn't "guarding my heart" well enough, the wild excitement at being able to talk to someone I had a crush on, mixed with terror that I was ruining my relationship with my "future husband" and would regret it for the rest of my life... Could it be that this was *not* something that people were concerned about, back in those "traditional" days when "virginity" was taken very seriously? Could it be that, back then, it was never about protecting women from heartbreak, and it was never about ensuring you could have a healthy emotional bond with your "future husband"?
(Actually, in "Pride and Prejudice," Charlotte marries Mr. Collins even though she doesn't really like him, because she thinks it's unlikely that any other man will propose to her. She sort of sets up their lives so they don't have to spend that much time together, and she's happy with that. This is not exactly a society where people believed "we need to follow the purity rules so you can have a perfect marriage and perfect emotionally intimate bond with your spouse"!)
Could it be that, back then, men made the rules, women didn't have many choices, and men wanted a "virgin" wife so that was the standard women were held to, and nobody was making the arguments "this is truly what's best for women" and "this is God's perfect plan for your life"? (Except perhaps in the sense of, women run the risk of getting pregnant, wouldn't it be horrible if some guy got you pregnant and then left? From a game-theory perspective, women's best strategy is to make sure you have the guy locked down before you do anything that might result in pregnancy.)
(I think a lot of this is because people back then literally did believe that women were inferior to men, and so the justifications for these rules were based on that line of reasoning. But in modern times, people believe men and women are equal, so the purity movement had to come up with completely different justifications for these rules.)
Also, this has me recalling conversations I've had with people who are older than me, where I was speaking out about the harms of purity culture, totally assuming that they knew what purity culture was teaching and that they basically agreed with it, because they would have described themselves as holding the traditional Christian position on sex/marriage. But in a lot of those conversations, we were talking past each other and not able to communicate at all- because purity culture is a uniquely 90's-American-youth-group-culture thing, which I had experienced and they had not- even though it was sold to me as "this is what the bible has always taught." And in some of these conversations, we were able to break through and realize that we weren't talking about the same thing, leading to them being shocked- "wait, you think you're not allowed to date? you're not allowed to kiss? Where did you get these ideas??????"
(At the same time, though, I believe that any ideology that requires abstinence until marriage is #stillpurityculture, even if it doesn't have all the anxiety about 'oh no if you ever break up it will ruin your life FOREVER'- because if you ask any follow-up questions about why exactly unmarried sex is automatically bad, the only justifications that people can come up with are straight-up purity culture logic. I strongly disagree with any such ideology. It is harmful.)
Purity culture claims that it's just teaching what's straight from the bible, what proper respectable people in Christian-influenced western societies had always believed about relationships, until the sexual revolution came along. But wow, no, it's not.
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See also, Siggy's post on "Pride and Prejudice": Ignoring the dystopia
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