please welcome dr. elizabeth kantor. >> asked me to talk about marriage, which i'm very excited to do to a group of young, i imagine, mostly single people.

i am going to drag in jane austen as soon as possible, but i want to start with a paradox about marriage and the 21st century. at the end of last week there was an article in the new york times comparing essentially single mother had to apparent head with a -- a two-parent household. explaining about the advantages of a 2-parent married family with children. the only newsworthy thing about this was that it was in the new york times. in know, folks to -- about a decade ago maggie gallagher published a book called the case for marriage. why married people are happier, healthier, better off financially. it has never been more clearly scientifically established that

marriage is the best way to raise children and really great for the people who are married, for their finances and for their personal happiness. i'm a social scientist, but if you want to read up on this matter will cards at the university of virginia and the national project has done a lot of work on this. i imagine that these the things you have heard are ready. so, to maximize your happiness and make sure that your future as yet only imaginary children turn out really well. you're all going to rush out and get married. obviously people don't get married for this sort of calculated reasons. even if he did decide to get engaged as soon as possible it would be a little harder in the world today than they used to be

because the other side of the kind of paradox of marriage and a 21st century is that just at the time when it has become obvious that marriage is in decline. a retreat from marriage, cohabitation, kind of falling in the hills of the divorce revolution in the earlier generation. you know, people say divorce rates have stabilized, but that may be because fewer people are even attempting marriage and the first place. on the one hand this institution is great for people and on the other hand people are retreating from it. it's not just in the marriage itself that we see this crisis in relationships between men and woman. the pew research, i read an awful lot of people writing

articles and books about relationships. it's pretty clear that there is a crisis out there. the modern relationship has kind of hit a wall. a few years ago the lead to a magazine was advising one of to settle for a guy that they could not really get excited about. last year, the atlantic even when a step further with all of the sigell ladies essentially saying, well, there aren't any good guys out there. the mine is what gives out. i read articles and books by a lot of women who are pretty hostile about how men are a mature and will commence. i read a lot of comments by guys who are really angry about women who they think just see them as a meal ticket and a point to marry them and walk away with the kids in the house and the dog and a part of the

paycheck. it seems to me that marriage is in kind of a crisis today. ..

>> it is really a practical advice book. i wanted to make it a self-help book. at the end i will talk about why advice like that, needs to be directed more to women than men. a real self-help book for women, just giving them very practical tips on how they could change the course of their love life. i will give you just a brief run through of some of the sample advice. some of it is about avoiding the various pitfalls on the way to happily ever after, staying away from the kind of crazy romanticism where you are just pursuing, instead of happily ever after. on the other hand, staying away from the cynicism that makes for hostility. and it's that's hard for people to meet and love each other. there is a lot in the book on

discerning intentions, which is summing that women just knew was a really important part of their job as a woman whereas today, there is a lot of women who scratch their heads, why is he not that into me? wireman afraid of commitment? jane austen actually has,, i found eight examples and six novels that are of guys that are classically afraid of commitment. they range from people who are just hardheaded players, like henry crawford threw a guy like willoughby in sense and sensibility, which is married to his own maturity, committed to not make a commitment look good because outokumpu style. and really, it has to do with jealousy. i think it can help them and a

lot to look at a kind of template for this. i am dealing with somebody who looks like he's interested in me, but he is not anymore. which class this evening to? which classes are fun to? honestly, i cannot give you all the advice in 15 minutes. i would like to back up and talk about the case for jane austen as an alternative to the typical 21st century ways of thinking about dating and courting and mating. when i first started writing the book, i was just thinking, okay. jane austen is a genius at writing and social criticisms and at male and female psychology and relationship dynamics. and she happens to be writing in an era for the crisis in relationships had gum things up.

so she could have some useful advice for modern folks. in the course of working on the book, i came to see that jane austen was really more than that. i found out about what you could call her place in marriage history. the history of marriage, which is the history of relationship, is very interesting. for hundreds of years before jane austen, and you could say starting with the place in the and the gospel where divorce is for bid and then going through courtly love in the middle ages, marriage had been improving, particularly in the sense, it had been getting to be less and less about money arrangements, family alliances, parents giving

them -- their daughters away to marry in return. so for large numbers of people, it about love. in ancient times, but was mostly about, you know, what you wrote poetry about rather than what you live happily ever after about. love became more and more about marriage. by jane austen's day on the young men and women are making their own matches. they are deciding who to marry themselves, not their parents or their guardians. but they are still aware that that is the kind of new freedom that they have and that has not always been the case. but parents used to make these decisions and their freedom is a new thing. partly because of that

awareness, that it is new you can arrange your own marriage, they are still doing it with some prudence. a jane austen heroine, like a real woman in the early 19th century, gets to marry the man she falls in love with. but she tries to take care not to fall in love with somebody who will ruin her life. she sees that she needs to think about will they have enough money to live on, does he have a character flaw, say compulsive gambling or alcoholism that is sure to ruin her life. if you look at the end of pride and prejudice, there is definitely tension there. that is a picture of two people who are really in love with each other. but it is also a picture of what one of them, what elizabeth bennett calls the rational happiness. in other words, they are deliriously excited about each other, but they always have very

good reasons for believing that they are going to be happy in the long run. that it is not just a one-time adventure. that they are having extreme emotions and it will all be very exciting, but it will end well. jane austen is a high point in history. in the literary history. literature and we are like this with real life, you have to ask yourself why 200 years ago was a story like this, pride and prejudice, realistic enough to write believable popular fiction about, whereas today, what is our believable popular fiction about relationships? sets and the city, girls on hbo, the reality, if it was reflected in the fiction, it is also

shaping the reality in turn. the fiction shapes the reality. i wish i had time to talk about the courtly aspect of the relationship. but just sticking to jane austen, she is a high point in the fiction about marriage. the novel of manners. in the history of marriage, not only because it took hundreds of years to get to the point where women have choices with the choices in pride and prejudice, but because after jane austen, even starting in her day, things started to come unraveled. it is a high point because she is downhill from there. what causes it to unravel is a whole big collection of ideas

were a lot of liberationist movements. jane austen made fun of this sort of thing in her early work called love and friendship, which is a satire where everybody finds stuff like happiness seems very boring to them. authenticity, liberation, intense experiences, basically they go around expecting love to strike someone claiming. and then not unnaturally come to kind of wake up to find that their lives are charred rubble after that experience. for the last 200 years, we have come as a culture, pop culture and music and are fiction and the way we talk about love, we have kind of been a sewing back and forth between romanticism.

you only know it's love if it makes you miserable. on the one hand, right? [laughter] [laughter] which has all kinds of problems. on the other hand, kind of a neo- victorian attempt to hush the whole thing up. you know, be careful, watch out, don't take any risks. when we get behind the false dilemma between passion and prudence and realize that you can have both if you go about it the right way. the kind of clear eyed way that jane austen can show you from the 18th century. jane austen's novel, 200 years after they were written, pride and prejudice has a publication date of 200 years ago next june.

it is still compelling for a lot of women. we watch a lot of those movies and we sell a lot of copies. i think that is because they express something that is really a universal aspiration. at the end of pride and prejudice, the picture that she writes shows you marriage, determine a committed relationship, as an ideal. but really, almost anybody can see blue the attraction of. but maybe it is hard for us to see what the principles and insights are that she's putting into the picture. i talk about a lot of different principles that jane austen, they find in the jane austen

novels. the one i want to talk about, because it is the most politically incorrect. it is the hardest for modern people to take seriously, it is the idea that men and women are really quite different from each other. not only in the obvious physical way. but that there are important psychological differences between men and women. in jane austen novels, you see that mostly when you are looking at how a man or woman approaches a relationship. mr. darcy, in a snarky mood says it jumps from admiration to love from love to matrimony in a moment. now, i don't know if this is history, but to me it rings true that typically, always with error exceptions to any rule, but typically women, and an

earlier phase in a relationship start thinking about long-term possibilities, typically earlier than geyser. that can create some problems in relationships. another scene in which she gets at jane austen's inside, is sense and sensibility when mary and has found out that willoughby has deserted her to marry a woman with a lot of money. and her sister is comforting her and she says unfortunately he did not feel about you the way that you felt about him. and marianne says, he did feel the same, for weeks and weeks he felt it. i know that he did. it is troubling because if you read sense and sensibility, it seems like they really do feel the same way about each other. and they're all excited and they want to spend all their time together. they are thoroughly enjoying

each other's company. but neither will it be really didn't feel that same way as marianne difficult time, or else he could feel that way, and it was easier for him to forget it. does that make sense? in other words, the kind of lights up, it highlights a way in which typically, women are more forward-looking than it comes to be, and they are more living in the moment. i found in "the new york times" something in modern love, their modern love section, an interesting piece by an author who wanted won a contest. and she talks about how no one will commit to her or to anybody else.

she is driving for a zen like type of attachment, so that she can essentially live with the fact that the men in her life are like that. she must remember that no one is my property and neither am i correct i should just enjoy the time we spend together, because our collective experiences add up to a rich and filling light. the guys in her life don't seem to have tribe for that is unlike attachment. i guess what i am recommending from jane austen is that women could take our natural capacity for relationships, are almost a natural relationship and make it a strength not a weakness. not to make ourselves, accommodate ourselves to men at their worst, but that both men and women could learn how to do better together. thank you. [applause]

[applause] [applause] [applause] >> i am sure you must have questions. >> yes, the lady in blue? >> my name is suzanne kelly and i am from this university and i want to thank you for being here. my question is. okay, my question is in today's society, i noticed a lot of couples who get engaged. they wait for years before they get married. do you think it is healthier once you find that person and you know that you want to get married, do you go ahead and jump into that relationship and go for the ride knackered you waited out until it is the perfect time to get married >> jane austen makes fun of the cool shade of her day. long engagements are terrible. she is all about balance. i think maybe she might think that our engagements today are

bizarrely long. i think you put your finger right on part of the problem when he said, waiting for everything to be perfect. in a certain sense, finding love and commitment with the right person is perfect. there is a lot of talk in literature about marriage about how marriage is postponed for a lot of people because they are waiting until they have achieved all of these facets of adult life, finished a long education, maybe saved up for house, waiting until they can afford -- and this is the one i think is crazy -- can afford a 20,000-dollar wedding -- when, you know, it's not about the party. it is really about a lifelong commitment. you know, you'd think it would make sense to want to start your life with that person in a

relatively short dreamtime. >> do you think that delaying the marriage destroys the relationship? >> every relationship is different. i am not saying that any engagement that is one that would not make sense under certain circumstances. the goal is a lifelong commitment. again, reading a little bit of the literature, it seems like one of the reasons that the age of marriage is so late in the marriage rate is so low comparatively by historical accounts, is that people are waiting until their lives are almost perfect already to think about getting married, which i think is a mistake or a problem. >> did you have a question? >> go ahead.

>> thank you for coming. >> speak close to the microphone. >> what is your favorite jane austen book? >> you know, i cannot say. it is like who is your favorite child? bear my children, but they are all perfect. i would recommend pride and prejudice to be the first one that anybody reads, just because it is so sparkly and fun. i have a special place in my heart for it because my first experience reading persuasion, was when i had first fallen in love with my husband. he recommended that i read it. it was almost like being on drugs or something. it was like you have these endorphins running through your brain, you are so excited about this other person and you are reading this book which is doubling and tripling it. you know, i don't think anybody can argue who has ever been

deeply in love. even though jane austen was a spinster and never married herself, she didn't know all about it. she knows exactly what she's talking about. >> thank you for speaking to us today. i am from patrick henry college. i was wondering what you think about that kind of search for marriage or commitment among women and the different attitudes among men. how they have hindered just friendships between single men and women? >> in practical terms and how we could kind of fix the courtship rituals, if you can still call them that, to me it seems like, i mean, in emma, you have an example of a relationship that starts as a close friendship. to me, it seems like what we need is more occasion for men and women to pay casual attention for each other. a situation in which asking somebody out for a date doesn't

mean you ask them out as into the going out with you. i think our culture will be healthier when we get to a state where men and women can be friends, but also where they can be kind of casual dates. in jane austen's day, the social life, you went to a dance. a guy could ask you to dance. but he was expressing some sort of interest in you. it was kind of acknowledged. he thought you were cute where he would ask you out. he would not ask you to dance. but it was a very limited sort of experience. everybody knew it was for a couple of dances and then you were supposed to dance with other people for the rest of the night. you could tell me about it other than i know because you are in it. i have a lot of complaints when i have women coming up to me, sometimes men as well, thing where can i meet women like

this? part of the problem is it is so high stakes for guy to pay a little bit of attention to a girl, to ask her once because it might mean he is asking her out in another sense. >> in the back? >> just one more question. i am married. my wife loves all that jane austen books and movies. she makes me watch them all. i just wanted to ask you, it seems like generally men live up to the themes that are expected of them. my wife expects me to be a gentleman. i am just curious, with the way that modern feminism doesn't have very many expectations, they just want men to get out of the way a lot of times come if you feel like that has to do with some of the relationship problems that we have nowadays, and since women don't necessarily expect men to be gentlemen all the time, men lived up to that expectation? and that causes some of the issues between men and women and

how we are just not getting married anymore because men are like, why should i? i can get everything that i want out of the relationship and nobody has a problem with that anymore. >> i think there is a lot of truth to what you are saying. i think jane austen really offers a completely different idea of female empowerment from the sort of substandard kind of female empowerment that we are often taught. i don't know if you remember -- i didn't see this show, but a scene from sex and the city that asks, can a woman has sex like a man? which really means can they have sex like a cold and heartless player coming from and not like aecent human being would gentlemen. what you see in jane austen instead is she's really interested in this discussion. which is the end of persuasion, where she talks about men and women and -- well, her

characters talk about it -- men and women and their differences, their different capacities they have for love. her courtship and she tried to show how those rules or principles can be updated in a really practical way for modern women. her heroines live by certain rules and they also expect certain things from men. all of that is in aid of getting to a place where a man can be in love like a woman. quiroz at the end of these novels are not wheedled interest. the women are not negotiating them painfully into admitting that he is her boyfriend and then proposing and then today, the negotiations are finished by the time you are married.

then you have to painfully talk them into having a baby. that kind of relationship is not the kind that jane austen had. you know, they have the kind of relationship that is built on high female expectations, and they get to a point where the hero wants to lay everything he has at her feet. a very different kind of dynamic, and i think it does depend on high female expectations. >> since i have wheedled men into seeing jane austen movies with me, is a it good from and reed? >> i think so. a lot of men have read my book and are excited about it. in terms of who is just going to change this dynamic in modern relationships, i am actually betting on women. because i think we are more interested in the questions.

>> i am hannah from the university of michigan. i would love to hear your thoughts on the media today and we have shows where the main character is treated really poorly by her boyfriend. we have movies and shows like true blood and twilight and shows like an infatuation with one another. if you like there are a lot of mixed views. >> there is a lot of media for girls. you know, i watch the publicity materials. i don't want all these shows. i can't comment on them. i do think that what is interesting if you compare what you hear about x-men and the cities with girls, for example, i just think it is

evident that the modern courtship rituals, if that's what you call them, that people are becoming frustrated with them and they are willing to complain. that show is supposed to be about the assimilation of the girls in new york. twenty years ago, women were not complaining but their love lives were like that. it was all about we are in power, we are free. to me, it seems like there is evidence that people are ready for an alternative. >> i have a question on the marriage issue. it seems like a lot of young people nowadays are actually getting married, but the problem is it seems like there is a level of commitment, but the marriage covenant is not there. when they say till death do us part, they actually mean until

no longer happy. americans prioritize happiness above all other things. then when happiness goes, so does the marriage. what is your advice for after happily ever after. you know, that initial infatuation cannot last trip to marriage. there will be rough patches. >> certainly there will be rough patches. i don't think it is the right way to refer to it as after happily ever after. you can see for example in pride and prejudice, darcy and elizabeth are already doing this before they get married. they are going to do what they need to do to make their marriage really happy in the long run. their relationship, in a certain sense, it is the one that jane austen gets into the insurer of psychologically more than the other relationships.

their they relationship succeeds because darcy and elizabeth are willing to overcome their personal flaws and mistakes in order to learn better. you know, that is what pride and prejudice is about. both of them have to overcome -- actually it is a prejudice against darcy because he is a little bit shy and seems like a snob. toward a guy that is a completely worthless player. right? mr. wickham. darcy has to overcome his disdain for her. he talks about her eyes and is very attracted to her, but he thinks i'm attracted to her just because she is cute. he doesn't appreciate her as a human being. he proposes to her and almost in an insulting way. you have overcome my good sense and i want to marry you because i can't help it.

..