A Close Call Girl

 Auguste Toulmouche, The Hesitant Fiancée, 1866

Granted, this seems like an unusual situation, but it is not a foreign concept that someone almost – or actually marries – a total liar. Literature is packed with horrible matches, and we’ll get through plenty of those, but let’s focus on the barely dodged bullet for now. 

I’ll start off with a big kudos to the former bride-to-be for her sleuthing skills. No, you’re not supposed to snoop through your partner’s devices, but if it saves you from a life spent partly wondering why your partner always comes home smelling like rubber and partly googling whether syphilis can really be transmitted from public toilet seats, you’re off the hook in my book.

And kudos for breaking off the engagement even though everything from center pieces to ruffled maroon bridesmaids dresses were already sorted. I am also happy to point out that it could in fact have been worse. Like Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre"-worse, meaning she might have made it all the way to the altar only to have someone storm in mid-vows and reveal that not only in the groom already married, he also keeps his first wife locked away to not have to deal with her mental illness.

Stupid embarrassing wife cramping his style. How dare she. 

Now, I don’t blame Jane Eyre for not suspecting, as suspicions tend to be less specific than “I have a weird feeling that a woman whom my boyfriend is still legally married to is stowed away right here at Thornfield and wants us all to burn.”

I mean, you’re allowed to expect more from people, especially ones that ask you to marry them, and Jane Eyre, despite constant and lifelong digs about being ugly and poor, has enough self-respect to reject Rochester's consolation prize: a life spent gallivanting around the south of France as his mistress. Between that and a bigamist marriage where you constantly try to tell yourself that your captive predecessor’s maniacal laughter echoing in the halls of your home is just the sound of the wind, France seems like the more fun option, but Jane is not having it – she takes her 20 shillings and is out of there.

Anyone who did not read the novel or dozed off during one of the countless snoozy adaptations is probably thinking “YAS, bitch” and mentally fistbumping the little governess for not putting up with Rochester’s entitled BS. It therefore brings me no pleasure to inform you that when Rochester’s pyromaniac mrs. finally manages to torch Thornfield properly and kill herself, Jane's immediate thought appears to be "Soooo... he's single then?" And indeed he is, so of course they get married!

Apparently he’s also mellowed out, maybe from losing his eyesight in the fire, maybe from finally being rid of that pesky secret wife and her fascination with candles, who knows.

Rochester. Part Victorian villain. Part byronic hero. All LIAR

Hold on, wasn’t this blog meant to teach us valuable lessons from literature? What exactly can we learn from this? 

The main lesson here seems to be that mean, sexy men can get away with a LOT of shit, so if you’re a dark byronic brooder like Mr. Rochester, you’re more likely to be forgiven for past indiscretions like LOCKING YOUR WIFE IN THE ATTIC AND PRETENDING SHE’S DEAD, especially if you suffer an injury and allow yourself to be nursed back to health like a scrawny, helpless baby bird with no eyes. 

I personally don’t know the groom of the cancelled wedding, but I’m guessing that either he doesn’t have the magnetic pull of pigeon-chested Rochester, or the woman who dumped him knows she has better options than Jane Eyre, who maybe came into contact with seven men in her life, one of them being a frigid, pious cousin who only proposes to her because he wants someone to wash his dirty bloomers while he’s off preaching to infidels. Wouldn’t most of us prefer a gaslighting, slightly sociopathic bigamist over that? No?

Well. 

Even if you’re certain there are no spare wives in the attic or regular invoices from local massage parlours, please make sure you know the person you’re tying the knot with. I’m serious. Even Rochester admits his mistake when lamenting the circumstances leading to his first marriage: "I did not even know her." When you get something as rare as a white Victorian man admitting he was wrong about something, perhaps you'd better listen. 

I also have it on good authority from both Mozart and Shostakovich that things can go terribly wrong if you don't heed this advice; just consider “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, who is so frustrated in her passionless matrimony with a flour-merchant that she proceeds to murder everyone standing between her and her sexy clerk lover, Sergei. 

Or Count Almaviva, whom I’m sure we all adored when he first pursued Rosina in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” –I mean who can resist a serenade, right? Even if it sounds bad, you have to appreciate the effort.

Anyway, once we get to the sequel with Mozart's “The Marriage of Figaro”, the count is sick to death of his wife and amuses himself by chasing after the staff instead. This one does end on a note of hope and forgiveness though, and maybe people really can change?

Maybe Rochester’s cruelty vanishes with his eyesight. Maybe my friend’s friend’s ex-fiancé will learn his lesson and not deceive his next partner. Or maybe he could just marry the prostitute and we’d get a version of “La Traviata” with a happy ending.

Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. Hell hath no fury like an unsatisfied wife of a flour-merchant