Many books mimic life to a tee, and Jane Austen’s many novels couldn’t have described the scenes of BYU-Idaho in better fashion.
When Jane Austen penned her famous line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” she couldn’t have known that she was describing the future students of BYU-I, but she was.
The single female students are more than willing to oblige and marry a man in possession of a good fortune. Not necessarily a monetary fortune, but a fortune of a different sort, such as his good fortune of holding the priesthood, his good fortune of being handsome and his good fortune to be here at BYU-I searching for her.
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Bennet instantly falls in love with Mr. Bingley. She has known him for but a moment and she states, “He is just what a young man ought to be — sensible, good-humoured, lively... so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!” Such a scene is all too common at BYU-I.
Case in point, review this brief exchange: “Autumn, he is the most refined, spiritual young man I have ever met. He gave me advice to improve my scripture study; he even showed me how to use the footnotes of my triple combination,” said Molly Mormon, a freshman from Salt Lake City.
Sense and Sensibility, another Austen based film, shows how many a BYU-I female freshman looks at love. Marianne Dashwood states, “Pathetic? To die for love? How can you say so? What could be more glorious?”
The female freshman student will go out of her way for “love.” She will “heart attack” his room, putting at risk her fingers to cut out all the hearts.
Then there is the BYU-I notion Jane Austen so poignantly expresses in Pride and Prejudice, “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.”
Many a student has met a member of the opposite sex, quickly allowing his or her thoughts to jump from like, to love, to marriage, to eternity. Then they rush to the gardens, allowing the legendary words that one Edward Ferrars expressed in Sense and Sensibility fall from his or her lips, “My heart is, and always will be, yours.” Or they say, “Marry me. Marry me, my wonderful, darling friend,” as Mr. Knightley did in Emma.
Keep in mind they use “friend” in the most loosely of terms because they honestly know not the person they are speaking to on that level.
Scores of anecdotes can be correlated from BYU-I to Jane Austen’s novels, but I haven’t the space. Don’t fret; I will leave you with one last thought. As Charlotte Lucas said in Pride and Prejudice, “We are all fools in love.”
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