What could bring a group of busy Duke students together on a Friday night to play a board game? Nineteenth century (British) literature, of course! Our English 90S class, Economics of Romance, had a lovely evening on September 20th enjoying tea, strawberries, and cookies ostensibly shaped like Jane Austen. We were playing Marrying Mr. Darcy, a board game originally based on the novel Pride and Prejudice, but which also has an Emma expansion pack. Throughout this semester so far, we have been studying Emma in class and particularly focusing on the ways that the novel defined success. What better way to illustrate this than through a game where the winners and losers are so clearly defined?
Besides the obvious parallels between the characters and events that occurred in the novel and the game, we found some surprising ways in which our experience playing Marrying Mr. Darcy mirrored the economics inherent in Emma. The way to win the game is by wooing and marrying the ideal suitor. Just as in the novel, potential romantic matches are reduced to their societal value - in the game, this took the form of literal points. The central currency of the game is “Character Points,” which are represented in various categories like beauty, wit, and friendliness. Just as in the novel, improving yourself (as Harriet “improves” under Emma’s guidance) is a way to increase your value and chances of “winning the marriage game.” Having a concrete way to quantify these improvements made understanding why someone might be so keen to learn the pianoforte or find a way to seem friendly and inviting much easier.
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n addition to the economics aspects of the game, we found that the complicated and seemingly arbitrary rule structure of the game gave us more insight into how difficult it could be to “win” in Emma’s world. Every heroine started out with a certain dowry that set her above or below others, yet upward mobility was not impossible as we saw when even the poorest character (Miss Bates) was able to snag a suitor. Blunders were constantly made, interferences generated, and lots of parties attended, all of which complicated the game enormously. The student who ended up winning did so partly because no one realized how many character points he quietly accrued while we were all focused elsewhere! Similarly, the luck aspect of rolling a die or drawing a card in the game helped us think about what life might be like in a time when you were never sure when a letter would reveal a death, an origin story, or even an unknown love story.
It was interesting to see how the optimal strategy to win the game would be to ultimately conform to Emma’s framework of marriage. As Emma made her matches in the novel, she tried to match people to stay within their same social class. Similarly, in order to gain the most marriage points, each character had to marry the specific person that aligned with Emma’s hierarchy. Marrying someone of a lower or higher social class would result in fewer marriage points compared with marrying in the same class. Going through the game with this strategy in mind gave us the opportunity to look at marriage through Emma’s lens.
Ultimately, it seemed that random events and chance were often disrupting the game, completely changing our strategies and largely impacting the final outcome. As seemingly random events in Emma appear to change the course of the novel, such as the onset of a winter storm giving Mr. Elton the chance to confess his love for Emma, chance seemed to be dictating who was in the lead! Rolling a die determined who we would marry, what character points we would receive, and what chance cards we would draw. We seemed to be simply along for the ride, constantly changing our strategy with the hopes of edging towards the optimal marriage.
What we did have under our control was choosing which characters to “fight” with by stealing character points or using a matchmaking card to make it tougher to marry a suitor. Many of us ended up attacking each other, prompting the victim to retaliate. This constant cycle made it difficult for most of us to accumulate many character points, reflecting how bitter squabbles in Emma made it take longer to ultimately reach the end goal of marriage. By the end of the game, the student who won had accumulated enough character points by avoiding confrontation with others and choosing not to steal character points in response to attacks. Simply focusing on improving your character was the key to winning!
Overall, it was a great evening filled with food and fun. Playing the game allowed us to be engrossed in the world of Emma and think about marriage strategies from our character’s point of view. This gave us a deeper understanding of the difficulties in securing a good match in Emma, a goal of utmost importance, and a sense of the hierarchy imposed on the characters by the novel.
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