Recently on Plain Vanilla

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

All I Needed to Know About Men I Learned from Jane Austen, Part 2: Mr. Wickham

"Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his making friends—whether he may be equally capable of retaining them, is less certain."

-Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 18

My Dear Reader,

If you're not sure what this is, make sure you read the intro.

When Pride and Prejudice's protagonist Elizabeth Bennet first meets Mr. Wickham, she is very taken with him. In a world where she is rarely appreciated, he makes her feel special. What she doesn't know, of course, is that a Mr. Wickham is never, never a good thing.

From a literary standpoint, Mr. Wickham shares elements with a lot of characters in the romance genre. Essentially, he's the bad boy. He is the kind of person who believes that rules do not apply to him, which gives him an illusion of strength. This becomes dangerous because it plays into the cavewoman instinct. If he is strong enough to buck the system, this cavewoman instinct tells you that he is strong enough to protect you. This is not the case.

Still, we all fall for it. Until we don't.

Because eventually, via the school of hard knocks, we learn that Mr. Wickham is actually a coward. He doesn't rebel against the rules because he is serving some higher cause; he is rebelling against the rules because he doesn't have the spine to become a productive member of society. While he appears to be rebelling, he is really in constant retreat. He will come to a new place, wreak havoc, and leave when it becomes uncomfortable.

A Mr. Wickham is always running from his past.

A Mr. Wickham is a man who prefers it if other people suffer the consequences of his actions.

A Mr. Wickham is a man who thinks that the world (including you) exists just for his amusement. He likes to be pleased, and is therefore always seeking pleasure.

Most importantly, Wickham is a master of deception. He likes being liked, and is very good at it. He is charming enough to make you think that he is good, and then when he gains your trust, he tells you lies that you willingly believe. This way, he can move you like a chess piece on a board, manipulating you into doing things that will help him keep up the scam he's running. Eventually, he loses interest and disappears. And when that happens, you will find that he has left you in a very, very bad place.

At first, of course, it's hard to see any of this. He isn't some element of destruction; he's your ally. He forges this alliance by strategically hating things that you also hate. This puts you on the same team. He can do this with such subtlety that you feel like you have a duty to be loyal to him. You feel like you have to hate what he hates. And a Mr. Wickham always hates something.

He makes sure that you think he is shy about it, of course. He wants you to think that he is a positive influence in your life. So, he gets you to coerce him to spill. And when he finally tells his story, he is careful to make himself a victim, so that you will feel the need to comfort him. He tells you one sad story, and you suddenly find yourself with a new enemy. Suddenly, you find yourself with a need to put your new enemy in his/her place. You want to protect and avenge him.

But, of course, Mr. Wickham can't allow that. If you confront his villain, you will quickly find out that he has told you a great pack of lies. He has not told these lies so that you will fight for him; Mr. Wickham has told them in order to separate you from the one person who can expose him as the scoundrel that he is.

It's an old, but very effective trick. Say Mr. Wickham likes two girls, and wants to date them at the same time. So he goes to Girl 1 and tells her that he really loves her, but he is obligated to spend time with Girl 2, who is ugly and boring. Then he goes to Girl 2 and tells her that she is this one true love, but this Girl 1 chick is obsessed with him and won't just leave him alone. So, naturally, Girl 1 and 2 are repulsed by each other. This is exactly what Mr. Wickham wants. The second these two girls actually have a conversation, they will realize that they've been had. Mr. Wickham can't have that.

It would be too hard to swallow if this hadn't literally happened to several friends of mine. Mr. Wickhams are everywhere.

And they all work the same con: to get you to trust him, and only him. He can even get you to the point where you believe that it is you and him against the world. He can get you to see an enemy everywhere you turn. That way, when people try to warn you of his dark secrets, you will not believe them. That way, he can do whatever he likes with you.

But this house of cards he has built will not last long. At some point, one of them will refuse to hold the rest of the weight, and the whole thing falls to pieces. Someone from his past will show up and spread his recent exploits, or someone will be smart enough to realize that they are being manipulated. Sometimes, all it takes is someone being at the wrong place at the right time. However it happens, it is inevitable.

And when it does, the best case scenario is that only Girl 1 and Girl 2 have been victims. In Pride and Prejudice, the original Mr. Wickham managed to victimize an entire town before anyone got wise. He was so good at isolating people that they had no idea that their friends and neighbors were victims because no one was willing to compare notes.

But luckily, Jane Austen has taught us that this very tactic of isolation is what makes a Wickham easy to spot. It's natural for most couples to start falling off the face of the Earth while they're falling in love with each other, but if your boyfriend is getting you to revile and avoid people, you need to ask yourself what he's hiding from you. Because if he's filling your heart with trust for him and suspicion for everyone else, he is most certainly a Wickham.

And, he will leave you. The moment he is outed, he will pack his bags and vanish. If he gets bored, he may leave even sooner. And when he abandons you, you will have lost the only person you trusted, and you will understand that he was not worth trusting. And unless you are very, very lucky, that will tear you apart.

So, the way I see it, you need to learn how to spot a Wickham, and when you spot one, you need to take your loved ones and run for your life.

It's a lot easier than having to pick up the pieces.

Now, you want a guy who will tell you the truth and be almost impossible to get rid of? Next time, when we discuss Mr. Collins, I'm sure you will get your fill.

Regards, best wishes, and someone you can trust,

-Cecily Jane

Monday, March 26, 2012

All I Needed to Know About Men I Learned from Jane Austen, Part 1: Introduction

My Dear Reader,

I realize that there are a lot of people who do not understand the fascination that people like me have with Jane Austen. To be brief: she speaks the truth. She is a writer who captured relationships and human nature in a way that most authors can't.

In a way, she reminds me of Charles Dickens. Before Dickens, books were about the rich. But Dickens grew up as a poor child. He understood the poor, and he wrote about them in a way that got attention. In a culture obsessed with social class, Dickens offered the higher classes an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of the poor. Ironically enough, he had to hide his poor upbringing because it would have killed his credibility, but the deeper you go into the writing, the deeper you go into the soul of the boy in rags who was brilliant and talented enough to make his fortune. The more you read Dickens, the more you realize that Dickens is telling his own story in code.

Jane Austen, in comparison, was not especially poor, and not especially interested in writing about the poor. She was, however, a single woman in a culture where being single wasn't exactly an option. Austen's tales of romance are compelling and timeless because she was a talented author writing about a subject that she uniquely understood. She knew what it was like to be shoved at suitors who were less than desirable and to be snubbed by men of means. She knew what it was like when you either had to marry an idiot or lose the farm. And, through her own experiences and those of her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen knew what it was like to have heart-wrenching loss that was so soul crushing, it would take more than a lifetime to recover from.

I like to think that she poured these parts of her into her stories, and that by reading them, I get closer to understanding the kind of person Jane Austen was. More importantly, I find that the experiences she describes in her novels are so human, and so relatable, that I kept running into version of her characters in my life. I will explain by way of her most popular creation, Pride and Prejudice, and the four prominent male characters in it: Mr. Wickham, Mr. Collins, Mr Bingley, and Mr. Darcy.

For your convenience, I will be breaking this analysis of Austen up into installments that will be published throughout the next few weeks. Why is Wickham so destructive? How can you escape the clutches of a Mr. Collins? What is heartbreaking about Mr. Bingley? Why is Mr. Darcy so special? Check back and find out!

Regards, best wishes, and happy endings,

-Cecily Jane

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

What the Heart Wants

My Dear Reader,

I am not the jealous type.

I am the protective type. I like to keep what I have, thankyouverymuch. I don't really enjoy it when people move, break, or take my belongings. I can even get pretty upset about it, depending. But then, I grew up with four younger siblings who liked to periodically come into my room and break anything of value. I guess I just developed a kind of survival mentality that I never got rid of.

But that's things. People are different.

When I was a freshman in high school, I had this rather pathetic crush on this guy in my English class. We talked all the time, and though I was too shy and awkward to make any coherent kind of move, we were great friends, he and I.

Then, he got a girlfriend.

Next thing I knew, all I ever heard from this guy was about this girlfriend he had and how great she was. He just could not shut up about her. I knew his girlfriend vaguely through another class we were in together, so I guess I was a good candidate for this kind of treatment. That, and I hung on every word he said because I was so hung up on him that I was thrilled that he was even speaking to me.

It was like one of those teen movies where the handsome guy ends up with his nerdy and somewhat repulsive friend. Except, of course, I got neither the guy nor the makeover. Instead, I was a good girl who slowly realized that the guy was all wrong for me. I didn't miss the very important fact that he was obviously not interested in me. To him, I might as well have been a particularly sensitive guy with unique access to the girl's locker room. Even my crushy, pudding brain could figure that one out.

Still, my feelings for him didn't go away, nor did my pathetic hopes that one day he would look at me like I was, you know, female. And there was, of course, the fact that our friendship had been established long before this girlfriend showed up. So I guess I should have felt something akin to anger or rage when I saw the two of them holding hands or flirting.

Instead, I felt sad. I just stood there and said to myself, "Yup. That's how it is." And I walked away.

Because that's when I knew that I'd lost, and it was time to give up. Not when he treated me the way he did. Not when I realized that we didn't have the same values. I gave up when I realized that he was aware of me and still chose someone else.

And what? I was supposed to take offense at that? I was supposed to try to win him? No. He made a choice, and that was it. My feelings didn't go away, but they became irrelevant. They certainly didn't give me the right to override his free will.

And perhaps you might say, Gentle Reader, that I am a coward. And I am. When it comes to that point where you're supposed to make that sweeping declaration of love and live happily ever after, I generally don't feel any less awkward or shy than the fourteen-year-old I used to be.

You might also call me a pessimist, and I know for a fact that you're right on that count. I'm creative enough to imagine every scenario in which something can go wrong. There are just too many ways to lose, and I can see them all too clearly.

But if we're going to sit here and examine my flaws, I think it's only fair that we eventually get to a strength or two. And if there's something that I've learned through many similar situations, it's that feelings often lead you astray. There are those who say that the heart wants what the heart wants, and that's mostly true.* But sometimes your heart wants the only thing that will most surely destroy you. Sometimes, you have to take a step back and make a decision to do the opposite of what you want, either for your own good, or for the good of someone else. Even though it really, really hurts.

I've gotten very good at reminding myself that I often deserve better than what my heart wants, because sometimes my heart wants the wrong things. I mean, sometimes, my heart wants nothing more than to find the nearest cliff and jump off of it. And sometimes, my heart wants a romantic relationship with someone who wants a platonic relationship with me.

I've also gotten very good at reminding myself that other people have the right to want the opposite of what I want, and that the best way to be happy is to try to change myself, because it's the only thing that I can change.

I guess I've just spent too much time being shoved in one direction or another. I can't count the amount of times I've been told that I'm supposed to have feelings for someone. I'm not sure how they expect me accomplish that task. You can't just put "Fall in love with So-and-So" on your to-do list and hope it gets done by Friday. So how could I expect that from someone else?

And if I really cared about him, how could I get angry at him for making his own choices?

So, I guess I really don't get this whole jealousy thing at all.

Maybe that's a good thing. Who knows.

Regards, best wishes, and requited love,

-Cecily Jane

*I feel that I'd be careless here if I didn't point out that there is a way to change destructive desires, and that's through the atonement of Jesus Christ. It is real, and I can personally guarantee that it works. It takes a lot of time, a lot of prayer, and a lot of faith, but it works better than you can believe.