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Happiness I cannot feel, love to me is so unreal.
Hopes often breed the most bitter feelings when our plans and aspirations fall hopelessly through, but is it the right course of action to simply resign to our fate and go with the flow. Charlotte Lucas certainly seems to think so. She's given up and resigned to whatever may come her way now.
In my opinion, in many ways Charlotte Lucas is the saddest character in the whole book and it's not simply because she marries Mr. Collins. Her acceptance of Mr. Collins' proposal is just a symptom of a profound hopelessness and resignation. All the proverbial lust for life seems to have left her for good.
As the old song goes, 'An empty heart is like an empty life and it makes you wanna cry' That's what contemplating Charlotte does to me. She's found her equilibrium but it comes across as too much like death. Her body lives on but her spirit's been snuffed out, there's no fight left in her. When she hears Mr. Bingley talking about how he liked Jane better than her, she takes it as something perfectly natural and never makes any attempt to do something about it. She's perfectly passive in her dealings with men, there's no snide remarks to be found in her company and when proposed she does just what's expected from her, she accepts.
Mr. Collins may repulse everyone else but Charlotte Lucas just couldn't care less because she long ago gave up trying to be happy.
Poor girl and to think she's only 27 years old. In our day and age she'd be in her best years with lots more options. But still I don't suppose it can all be put down to society alone, our attitudes to life don't just come from our upbringing, nurture plays a part but nature essentially determines how nurture's influence will play out in the end. The question is wouldn't it be better for people like this to never be born?
1 comments:
The decades-old AA mantra asks for serenity to accept the things you cannot change, don't you think struggling in the face of overwhelming opposition when you know full well you're bound to fail for reasons totally beyond your control is essentially foolish?
In this sense Charlotte triumphs because in spite of her seemingly hopeless situation she manages to find her equilibrium. Mr. Collins may be an imbecile but he can give her the kind of comfortable life she probably would never be able to afford were she to remain an old maid. The society she lived in was beyond her control. After all freedom is inside you it's not in the circumstances you find yourself in. Sure some of these circumstances can be changed but just go beyond a challenge and that's when it's time to retreat and regroup to fight another day.
I don't think Charlotte gave up on happiness, rather she gave up trying to achieve it in the conventional way, having realized the conventional way was not for her.
We have no choice in whether to be born or not, so we're pretty much stuck with this life. Suicide is not really a choice as none of us know what comes after death. We're all born in different bodies and in different circumstances and that is beyond our control, but happiness is not about achieve what society says is best for you, it's about making the best of what you have, discovering what really is the best for you and going for it.
So cheer up, things aren't that bad after all.
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