Please Read This Post With an English Accent

I was recently stuck on a bus for many, many, (many many many) hours, and we chose Sense and Sensibility as one of the movies to get us across the Mojave desert. 

As any literary single girl does at any given stage of life, most especially the single stages of life, I have been contemplating ever since which Jane Austen character I am most in alignment with.

Perhaps, as of late I am Marianne. Feeling like I had my own Willoughby, and was given every indication that there was something happening, but with nothing ever being expressed out loud.  Affection implied, but never confirmed, is the worst sort of puzzle for a lady. 

Except it seems more likely that I was Harriet Smith, from Emma, (or Thai from Clueless- choose who you like!) who was so Clueless that she completely misread every signal from Mr. Elton. 

What? You liked that picture because Emma painted it, not because I was in it? interprets as, What? That picture you liked on Facebook was because of my hat, NOT because of me?...

I am closer to Elinore, who has a hard time expressing and saying what she feels.

In Pride and Prejudice, of the Bennet sisters, while I am one in 5 girls- “I have 5 Daughters!” my father would shout out like Tevia- I can rule out being Lydia. I’m the youngest, but I was never silly.  I remember sitting in the cafeteria my Freshman year in college with a friend who said to me, “I am so boy crazy!! Aren’t you?!?” I just stared at her, mouth agape. 
“...No...” I answered. 

I am no Elizabeth Bennet, however much I may wish to be so. I have wit to spare, but alas, it usually stays bottled up in my head, or only put to paper for 40 or so people to read on said blog. I am not particularly feisty or stubborn. 

I am more Jane Bennet than Elizabeth. More reserved. More shy. Especially when it comes to matters of the heart.  One could take my reserved nature for indifference. And perhaps a gentleman would not know that the ever present hope of romance is always lingering near the surface, because I am too cowardly to express or show it. 

“I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness ...” - Edward in Sense and Sensibility

Someone recently told me that they had no clue I had any romantic expectations on our dates. 
(except that we called them dates and we met on a dating website?...) 
My brother-in-law told me that I should have been more bold, more flirty, to which I burst into tears and informed him that if, as it seems, I was going to be alone for the rest of my life, I would appreciate not being told it was all my fault.  Let me blame it on the men, thank you very much.  

I will never be the Charlotte Lucas. I will not settle.

Perhaps I will be Jane herself, who never married, and died at 41. Except she was played in Becoming Jane by Anne Hathaway, which somehow lowers my regard for the author, although she had nothing to do with it.

Thinking of these Victorian ladies makes me think of North and South, which is not a Jane Austen story, but that kiss at the end on the train station bench is worth the 4 hour miniseries, Jane or no Jane. And it stars Brendan Coyle, who also plays Mr. Bates on Downton Abbey, and who doesn’t adore his love story? 

Maybe I’m the Edith of my story...

Oh how I love great BBC Drama.

Yet I digress...

In Sense and Sensibility Marianne says that “A woman of seven and twenty can never hope to feel or inspire affection again.”

And what ever could that mean for a woman about to turn four and thirty...