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There are oh so many ways for a single woman in today's world to meet men. From parties and clubs to work or just shopping in the produce aisle, men are everywhere.
Or are they? If men really are falling from trees, then why is it so hard to meet one, let alone "the one"? After all, things are a lot easier for single women today than they were in Jane Austen's time, a comparison I spent a lot of time thinking about while writing my novel Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict . In Rude Awakenings, a gentleman's daughter from 1813 England named Jane Mansfield awakens in the body and life of 21st-century Los Angeleno Courtney Stone. To say that Jane is shocked by the freewheeling ways of Courtney's time would be an understatement.
In Jane's world, her opportunities to meet men were limited to whom her parents and friends deemed respectable enough for an introduction. A man couldn't just approach her and strike up a conversation in a public place. And he certainly wouldn't start dancing around her suggestively without so much as a how-do-you-do, as a perfect stranger does to Jane the first time she ventures into a 21st-century dance club.
Not that dancing wasn't an all-important way to meet a man in 1813 England. A ball was, in fact, THE number-one opportunity for a young lady like Jane to meet a future mate. But a man couldn't even ask her to dance without being properly introduced.
Other than at a ball, Jane's chances of meeting a new man in her world depended on whatever heavily chaperoned parties and dinners her parents and friends gave, or were invited to. Not to mention whom she might get stuck sitting next to at dinner.
But what if she was lucky enough to have a Mr. Darcy sit next to her at dinner (assuming, that is, he was not in one of his "not handsome enough to tempt me" moods)? How would she make sure she got to see him again? Answer is, she couldn't. It was up to him to make the first move. And the next. She'd just have to wait. Wait and hope.
We in the modern world, however, don't have to wait and hope. As empowered women, we get to take the initiative. We get to be the pursuer.
Or do we? How many of us make a habit of making the first move—or the one after that? And how's that working out for us?
Imagine that you, like Jane, are a woman from Jane Austen's time, and suddenly you find yourself given all these choices. All this freedom. Would you know what to do with it?
When it comes to meeting men, are we better off now, or were we better off then? For the first time Jane gets a chance to talk about all of this with the woman in whose life she has mysteriously landed. It happens in the new comedy web seriesSex and The Austen Girl, in which Jane meets Courtney, the protagonist of my first novel Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict , who has found herself taking over Jane's life in the 19th century.
Two fish out of water. One really fun series. A new episode posts every Monday on Babelgum.com. The first is up now.
