Okay. So our parents are supposed to love us unconditionally, and I suppose, vice versa. I mean, they literally give us life, whether by bringing us into the world or raising and teaching us, or both. And I feel like that's a big line with parents: "You know you can always come to us with anything. We'll always love you no matter what." And so on and so forth. Just unconditional love. Though on some level, I feel like that's kind of redundant, because if love really is pure and true and all that, then wouldn't it be unconditional, and if it wasn't, then wouldn't it not be love? At least, in theory. But anyway.
Rereading Death of a Salesman made me think about that state of unconditional love between parents and their children, and how desolate a person must feel without that. I mean, you have Willy Loman, who thinks his son Biff has been spiting him for 15 years, and breaks down in the end when Biff cries on his shoulder, and Willy realizes that, despite everything, Biff really does love him. Then, you have Willy's wife Linda, who takes his side over her sons', and actually kicks Biff out and agrees that he shouldn't come home or write back ever again. And I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it, but Before the Devil Knows You're Dead... Albert Finney's character...he must decide between his love for his wife or mercy for his sons. In Mansfield Park, the Prices have no qualms shipping off their 10-year-old daughter Fanny to live with her aunt, uncle, and cousins, and are not in contact with her for 8 or 9 years. When she is able to visit and they finally see her again, they welcome her with indifference - at the most. Then at the end, Sir Thomas pretty much disowns his daughter when she enters a scandalous affair with the guy trying to court Fanny (even though she is thoroughly repulsed by him). I don't know. I just think it's incredible that there are people who can choose not to love their children like that. Even in putting her baby up for adoption, a mother is showing more love than these characters. It makes me wonder, though, is there even such a thing as truly "unconditional" love? Wouldn't unconditional love be eternal? So if all love is finite, if it all can end or learned to be dissolved, then can it ever really be unconditional? Yet I suppose one might argue that no love, when it's true, is finite, because it transcends death, etc. etc.
But anyway. Back to Mansfield Park real quick. Apparently Jane Austen wasn't too big on the whole subtlety thing. She spells out pretty much everything out for you. Fanny is good because she has sound principles, high moral character, and modesty. Maria and Julia Bertram, and Mary Crawford, are bad because they do not. Edmund is good - everything Fanny has learned is from him. Henry Crawford is bad because, even though he shows reform and is positively influenced by Fanny's goodness, he is inconstant. Edmund ends up marrying Fanny because he realizes that she is wholesome, pure, principled, sweet-tempered, and he knows this: "Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits wanted no half-concealment, no self-deception on the present, and no reliance on improvement in the future...she was of course only too good for him..."
I suppose you could say this directness makes her stuff weaker than more modern stuff that has more subtext and ambiguity and all that. But I like it. It works. Just because she states it plainly, doesn't mean that her insights on the human condition aren't just as sharp. Or that her writing lacks humor or irony. One bit I particularly liked in the conclusion of Mansfield Park is her remark about purposely not giving dates as to what happened when:
"I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that everyone may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and become as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire."
I like how Austen kind of mocks the fact that Edmund had said he could never love anyone as he did Mary Crawford, but does so gently, because she realizes that it's not unusual at all for him to stop loving her and fall in love with Fanny. In doing that, she also is making the simple statement that even "unconquerable passion" can end, can learn to be forgotten. I also like that she doesn't give dates because it would be different for everyone, and there should be no judgment in how long it takes someone. She also could seem to be suggesting, though, that Edmund fell in love with Fanny out of convenience, though I don't think that's true. The same way I don't think it's true that Henry Crawford was a bad guy - I also like that Austen says how he really would have been much better for having married Fanny, that her influence would have kept him straight. I don't think I would have minded if Fanny married Henry instead of Edmund. But if Edmund had married Mary...oof. Fanny had a good influence on Henry, but Edmund had no influence on Mary, and that just would have been disastrous. But I suppose Edmund and Fanny deserve each other's goodness.
When Sylvia reaches her angry stage in the film version of The Jane Austen Book Club, she says that Mansfield Park shows her that a marriage is only as strong as its weakest link. In that vein of thinking, Edmund and Fanny's marriage would last because neither is particularly weak. I started writing a post a while ago about Sylvia and Daniel, and his little speech about how he was struggling with wondering whether or not love (and consequently marriage) could sustain for a lifetime:
Daniel: I was just thinking about something Allegra said at Jocelyn's the other day...so we're talking about how we all need to have connection, you know, conversation, sex, companionship, and Allegra says, "Well, you get all that from Mommy." I have to tell you, it really made me sad.
Sylvia: Aw, baby, she'll find somebody.
Daniel: No, it made me sad for us, because I've been struggling with whether a marriage can sustain all of that over, uh, over 20+ years or if it's just inevitable that after a certain amount of time-- maybe being with somebody else can have a renewing effect, because for me-- I've been seeing a woman at work. We've been together 6 months now . . . We, we can't think of this as a failure. We have had a very successful marriage. We've had a long marriage, by any standard. We got 3 wonderful kids. They're grown, they're working, they're--
Sylvia: Just open the damn door, Daniel, I need a tissue.
Daniel: The kids, that's, that's all you, you know, you made all the sacrifices, I know. But there's a logic to us quitting while we're ahead, and I think they'll be able to see that, you know?
Sylvia: I don't understand a single word of what you're saying, Daniel.
It made me think back to that whole idea of people coming and going in and out of your life, and how perhaps we only have a limited amount of time with them, and how it varies. Say we do only have a certain amount of time with people - perhaps that time, for you, can be different from what it is for them. You may feel the connection longer than they, or vice versa. You may be ready to move on before they're ready to let you go. Going with that, then maybe falling in love is just finding someone that can't ever imagine letting go, and your best potential spouse is the one whose love, whose sense of connection, lasts only as long as yours does.
The whole institution of marriage sucks. At least, in the frame of mind I'm in now, I think it does. It takes something completely irrational (love) and forces you to make it practical. Rawr. Obnoxious.
Wow. Did NOT mean to write that much. Nap time!
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