Could someone help me understand what Jane Austen meant when she said :
“There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself.” - Pride & Prejudice, Volume 1, Chapter 6.
The speaker is Charlotte Lucas and she is conversing with Jane Bennet.
Almost any attachment (fancying, love, a crush) is so much influenced by vanity or feelings of gratitude (rather than any solid reasons for people to be together) that any may result in people getting hurt or wrecking their lives if just left to follow their own course.
ISTM it relates to " If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him." The romantic theory that if a man loves a woman then nothing will deter him from persisting in that love, and that a show of indifference may indeed stimulate him to even greater heights of love is doubted by Charlotte. She thinks that a natural preference may exist and predispose a man towards a woman but that this may wither away if all the other feelings which simultaneously exist in any person, the need to feel liked, approved of and valued for example, are ignored or slighted.
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Charlotte is basically saying that a person can’t fall in love without encouragement of some sort, and that she thinks Jane needs to encourage Bingley more. The gratitude or vanity comes from someone liking you; the “not safe to leave any to itself” is that an affection can’t be safely left without encouragement if a person wants it to bloom.
Bruh she was obv hi as fuck wen she wrote that