The world’s most stupid romantic advice, in my opinion, is…Only fall in love with those who are  in love with you. This bit of wisdom dates back to the Victorian era, when the rules of courtship for men and women were divided neatly into the active gender and the passive gender. You’ll have no trouble guessing which gender was assumed to be the passive one (hint: it’s the gender that was also supposed to be –by nature – sweet, modest, virginal, gentle, obedient, and so on). 

This explains why Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre, one of the most popular classic novels of romance, wrote to her best friend: “No girl should fall in love till the offer has been made, accepted, the ceremony performed, and the first half-year of life has passed away.” This, she adds, will ensure that the woman doesn’t make a fool of herself. In reality, Charlotte did not follow her own advice, since there were at least two men she had a passion for who had little interest in her and did not encourage her secret feelings. One of them, in fact, was a married man and her former teacher and employer. Her letters to this gentleman are heartbreaking: under the guise of “friendship,” she all but pleaded with him to write back, which he did, coldly, for a time, until he stopped communicating entirely (his wife may have intervened). A Victorian would call those pleading letters immoral; a modern reader might call them downright cringey.

In Jane Eyre, Jane leaves Rochester, seemingly forever, because she discovers he is married, and she believes in “keeping the word of God.” Why did an author like the upright Charlotte Bronte, known for these high moral standards, violate in real life her own rules about whom she could love and whether that could be expressed? 

The reason for this contradiction is clear to me: Charlotte, like her sister Emily, author of Wuthering Heights, and in fact all four of the Bronte siblings, was passionate by nature, and far from passive in her actions. Actually, in the novel, Jane stands up for women’s feelings in the scene where Rochester pretends he’s going to dismiss her: “I am not an automaton!” she cries, thereby admitting she has….those improper feelings.

You can see how convenient the idea of controlling your romantic emotions would be in a society that repressed women’s desires and stifled any attempt on their part to be active and independent (which, by the way, is a prominent feminist idea in Jane Eyre). Since a woman’s all-important reputation would be lowered for taking the reins in romance, it would be prudent to “choose” a man to love only when you had a marriage proposal in hand. 

Now, you’d think that in our own time, when the genders have become more equalized, this advice would be archaic and implausible. Yet I still see versions of this idea in our culture: you can choose to be in love, so choose the “right” person – the “one for you”, and so on. This is a different fantasy from the Victorian belief in self-regulation of emotions by women; it’s the modern idea that you can always get what you want in life transactionally. Since it’s extremely convenient to love someone whose romantic feelings exactly match yours, it’s assumed it must be true that you can make that happen — by planning your emotional life according to what’s in your own best interest.

The stupidity of this, in my view, is that romantic love is not really a pragmatic choice, like choosing the best cantaloupe at the market. It’s problematic to assert that this is a rule we should all follow, for exactly the same reason that Charlotte Bronte’s “rule” did not work for her. Perhaps we can control our actions (at least to some extent), but to expect that our deepest feelings will conform to our cultural notions of good and bad love is not wise. All it does is provide a justification for blaming oneself and all others who, like Bronte, could not live up to this high-and- mighty advice.