Christmas break was a two-week long sleep, food, and wine fest and it was AWESOME. Turning 27 was less awesome. As I confessed to several on my friends on the anniversary of my birth, that age always makes me think of Charlotte Lucas (Collins). For the 1.5 male readers of my blog, Charlotte Lucas is Elizabeth Bennet's best friend in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. She is, according to Ms. Austen, "a sensible, intelligent young woman, about twenty-seven," and her life SUCKS HUGE BALLS. She is, at 27, considered to be a near-spinster. She is plain and poor, and not particularly romantic. Her main accomplishment in the course of the novel is marrying a fat, stupid, and annoying parson after he is turned down by her friend and his cousin, Elizabeth. She ends up living a somewhat comfortable but sad existence, contriving ways to avoid her husband by sending him on errands in the parish and distracting him with the garden. Elizabeth, as anyone with a modicum of estrogen in their blood will know, ends up marrying Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy is rich, handsome, brilliant, and passionate. Elizabeth is twenty years old.
I guess what I'm saying is that I would REALLY like to not be Charlotte Lucas, but on this latest birthday I can't help but think of her. It's less about who, if anyone, I marry, but about accomplishment. In the world of Austen, marriage is accomplishment, and the younger you are when you accomplish the better (and less despicable) you are. Things aren't that different today, at least as far as accomplishment goes. You got Mark Zuckerface and all his kin making billions by age 22, and you gotta feel a little loserish when you're toiling away in a job that positively bores you and still have student loans to pay off. At age 27.
I know that this is just maudlin reflection and I've also had a few glasses of wine in preparation for tomorrow (a couple really hard meetings happening), but if there's anything I can take from it it's that I probably should spend less time thinking about Jane Austen characters. Seriously, they died at, like, age 40 and didn't have electricity. What the fuck did they know?! Moaaar wine!
For real, though, I want my 28th year to be better than my 27th. I'm not dead yet, but I'm not getting any younger and there really isn't time to waste. At least if I don't want to I don't have to marry a stupid fat parson, so, silver lining?
