Marital assymetry

This is a term that I found in some Austen criticism. It refers to a number of marriages Austen portrays in which one partner is clearly deficient. Mr. Collins is a good example. Another, and the one that this critic I am reading (John Dussinger) singles out is:

[Mrs. Allen] was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. Northanger Abbey

Nowadays, these people tend to be divorced. When I think of the single and divorced people I know and like I have to say I am not terribly surprised that most of them are. Most people I know are married but there are friends and relations who have made it into their late thirties or forties without getting married or, more frequently, without getting remarried.

They're good enough people. I like them all and dearly love some of them. But I don't sit around wondering why they just can't seem to meet someone because it's pretty obvious why they cannot. I keep hoping they will find someone to be happy with but I suspect that no one in their right mind would marry one of them. Nor does anyone other than themselves spend a lot of time wondering why their marriages didn't work out.

The thing about Austen is that she unhesitatingly blames Mrs. Allen, Mrs. Bennett and Mr. Collins for their respective predicaments. She sees all three as having failed as human beings. We might nod politely and change the subject when our divorced friends bemoan their fates but we don't, even to ourselves, hold them morally responsible. We don't think, "If you had spent your time developing a more amiable character you wouldn't be in this fix."

Perhaps we should.