Tales your mother probably won't tell you anymore (first in a series)

So I was talking to a baby-faced Ph.D. friend who was about to go east to the Ivy Leagues for a tenure track position, and he described how he'd had a "serious" relationship with a young woman from Southern California who hadn't wanted to move to the East Coast because her job, her family, and all her friends were in Southern California. My baby-faced friend critcized her provincialism, her unwillingness to give the new place "a try." In my heart, I applauded the woman's decision. In my heart, I said to my friend, "You want her to turn her life upside down in order to 'give it a try?' You may know about string theory, my young Paduwan, but you know nothing about women. Let me tell you the four magic words that would have overcome her 'provincialism:' Will you marry me?" The fact that my friend was reluctant to utter those words, but was quite willing to expect his girlfriend to make a life-altering move to accomodate his career with no assurances for herself except that they would "give it a try," probably doomed the venture from the start -- and the young woman wisely recognized that. There are too many young women these days who would have made a different decision, and that's probably why the baby-faced professors of the world will keep asking them to make such decisions.

Yes, I'm in full old-fashioned curmudgeonly mode today, but there are reasons, beyond a love of "romance," that women still love Jane Austen (especially since her novels are not essentially romantic), and one of them is that most of us understand the dynamics of this young woman's decision.