On a recent episode of The Amateur Austenite I spoke about my theory of Schrodinger’s Rapist in relation to Mr Elton and Mr Collins. Already similar characters as they are male, clergymen, full of themselves, and determined to do well, when they propose to the protagonist of the novel in which they exist they are both revealed to be what I call Schrodinger’s rapists.
SHELDON: … in 1935, Erwin Schrodinger, in an attempt to explain the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics, he proposed an experiment where a cat is placed in a box with a sealed vial of poison that will break open at a random time. Now, since no-one knows when or if the poison has been released, until the box is opened, the cat can be thought of as both alive and dead.
PENNY: I’m sorry, I don’t get the point.
SHELDON: Well of course you don’t get it, I haven’t made it yet. You’d have to be psychic to get it, and there’s no such thing as psychic.
PENNY: Sheldon, what’s the point?
SHELDON: Just like Schrodinger’s Cat, your potential relationship with Leonard right now can be thought of as both good and bad. It is only by opening the box that you’ll find out which it is.
The Big Bang Theory, Series 01 Episode 17 “The Tangerine Factor”
This interaction from The Big Bang Theory sitcom was my introduction to Schrodinger’s Cat. But I had vague recollections of a similar story in Anne of Green Gables (actually a sequel called Anne of the Island, which I didn’t recollect reading). Anne and her friends attempt to gas a stray cat, but it doesn’t go to plan.
..when the box was lifted in the morning, Rusty bounded at one gay leap to Anne’s shoulder where he began to lick her face affectionately. Never was there a cat more decidedly alive.
“Here’s a knot hole in the box,” groaned Phil. “I never saw it. That’s why he didn’t die..”
Till they take the box off the cat, they assume that the cat is dead. It’s been enclosed in a box with gas, surely it will die. But they hadn’t considered all the circumstances, they didn’t know about the knot hole in the box.
What does that cat have to do with Mr Elton and Mr Collins?
Like Sheldon explains to Penny, a potential relationship “can be thought of as both good and bad.” You could say the same about men, we don’t know how they’ll react till they’re in the situation.
Rape is non-consensual sexual contact. Would Mr Elton or Mr Collins go so far? We don’t know. What we do know, is that they both refuse to hear no, when quite clearly spoken by the woman they are proposing to.
Emma’s situation is particularly precarious, trapped alone in a carriage with a man who refuses to listen to her then acts like a petulant child when she finally gets through to him. Lizzy at least is in her parents home which, despite her mothers wishes, offers some level of protection.
Had Pride and Prejudice and Emma been written by another author these scenes may have developed very differently. Consider Tess of the d’Urbervilles a novel about a woman being blamed, scorned and ostracised for a physical act she did not consent to. That is literally the whole point of the book, I still can’t understand why we’d read it (I read it for university), let alone consider it a classic.
Perhaps Austen is commenting on clergymen, supposed to be pillars of society but more interested in aggrandising themselves. Or she may be reminding us that we can’t trust even those who have a direct line to god (sadly, a lesson many learned).
What is evident throughout her writing is her awareness of the plight of women. Maria Rushworth is cast out of society for her affair but Mr Crawford can walk into any drawing room he likes. Lydia Bennet would have been ruined, and her family along with her, had Mr Darcy not paid Wickham to marry her. Willoughby doesn’t provide for his child (to a woman who is a child herself) and is free to marry a wealthy woman, casting aside Marianne Dashwood, another young woman he seduced (though thankfully not physically).
Mr Collins and Mr Elton highlight that men may not ask for consent, they may turn a deaf ear to a refusal. In different circumstances, instead of being rejected suitors, could they become rapists?
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