“But I Digress” – A Vindication of the Rights of Chivalrous British Gentlemen

In the light of recent events, or rather, disputes, I have to clarify something. Because I’ve had a rather heated discussion with one of my best (male) friends on classic heroes. Right, I admit it. It started off with me being overly enthusiastic about the male hero in Fanny Burney’s Evelina, Lord Orville. My friend couldn’t get his mind around the fact that 18^th-century British stiff-mannered gentlemen hold a special attraction for us women. He was like, “What’s the deal with these up-tight blokes? Whenever you girls read anything about them or see them on TV you psych out completely and talk as if you were deranged!” Of course, my pointing out that Mr Darcy wouldn’t condescend to make a reply to such an unflattering speech didn’t exactly make things better. But it made me think. After all, he sort of has a point. Why do we forget everything around us as soon as one of those gentlemen sporting a tuxedo and preferably on horseback, pops up on the screen?

I’ve given the matter some thought since this discussion. Admittedly, we may talk as if we generally couldn't boast of very profound intellectual endowments as soon as we are confronted with a guy in nice breeches who bows all the time. But, yeah, that’s the whole point. We know that, ultimately, we don’t have to question the integrity of these characters; we know that they’d sooner die than wilfully offend others; and we know that no matter how foolishly they behave, in the end they’ll make amends and marry the heroines. Unlike the baddies, they don’t make you worry constantly about whether they’ll make a fatal mistake that’ll ruin all their chances of future happiness. Because they just don’t make mistakes. (Heathcliff excepted, but then he has always confused me.) But Mr Darcy, Mr Knightley, Mr Rochester, Lord Orville, Mr Tilney, and Mr Thornton and the like are representatives of the quintessential chivalrous British gentleman. Right, forget about moody Rochester’s madwoman in the attic for a while, and forget that Mr Darcy is insufferably full of himself, Mr Knightley annoyingly instructive, and Mr Thornton irascible. The point is that in effect they are disinterested and morally upright, and we know that courting the heroine will result in a catharsis for the hero, whatever his defects at the beginning of the novel may be. When offered the chance to do the right thing, they don’t let it pass by – they grab at it. They are simply excitingly heroic.

Plus, they know how to behave. They are so polite and noble. Since we’re living in an age where the greatest sport among many men seems to be who can bombard the highest number of women with the highest number of the most predictable, most disrespectful, most pathetic pick-up lines in as short a time as feasibly possible, can anybody seriously be at a loss to answer the question about the appeal these gentlemen have? Lord Orville and Mr Darcy and all the rest would be “most seriously displeased” to hear the crude stuff we suffer nowadays. It can hardly be surprising that we prefer listening to these men uttering phrases in the fashion of “…But I digress. I am afraid you have long been desiring my absence. Forgive me for trespassing on your time” when they’re off. Naturally, then, this is music to every woman’s ears.

Granted, I sort of have a soft spot for British noblemen of this bygone era. They are impressive. To a certain extent, that is. For in spite of appearances, I wouldn’t want to change places with any of these heroines. I’m not so naïve as not to classify the depictions of the heroes in Austen’s, Gaskell’s, Burney’s, and Brontë’s novels as exaggerated, idealist, and hyperbolic. After all, few men would have had the mind or the possibility to marry a girl so decidedly below their own social status.

Interestingly, this is just where my friend and I made it up again. I explained to him very patiently that I’m aware of the idealization of men that’s employed in these novels, but, come on, apart from being romantic, they are often satirical as well. They serve to set apart the small percentage of noble-minded gentlemen from the great majority of jerks that were running around then, seeking to justify their moral debasement by holding on to the notion that rank equals virtue. All these novels make fun of that, not least by presenting characters too good to be true next to vile and contemptible ones.

I suppose the thing that my friend and most other men simply don’t get is the fact that we women don’t see these well-bred, high-minded, hypercorrect English gentlemen as standards contemporary (living) men actually have to live up to. Heroic as they are, they’d still bore us contemporary women stiff. But all the same, can we not have these far-fetched ideals in our mind, however irrational and unworldly they may be, as long as we don’t judge everybody else by these standards?

Picture: illustration from Mansfield Park