Cads & Chads: Ranking Austen's Men (part 1)
Who is the cad-meister general?
Now for the question that is on all of your lips: who is, mathematically and scientifically, the uber chad of the Jane Austen canon? And who is, quantitatively and objectively, the ultimate cad? Well, sit tight my friends, for I have completed the definitive list.
Let’s start with the cads…
CAD TIER
Frank Churchill (Emma) - 2/10
There’s a lot of hype around Frank Churchill. Everyone’s talking about him in Highbury—so much so, that the mere mention of his name gets Emma all twitterpated. However, as it turns out, this guy is all talk and no trousers. Not only is he terrible at turning up for stuff, not even bothering to attend his own dad’s engagement party, but he also wastes Emma’s time by pretending to be interested in her when he is secretly engaged to someone else. Poor old Jane Fairfax must have really felt this meme for about 200 pages of the novel:
When he does actually turn up, though, at least Frank knows how to have a good time. And a half decent hair cut.
Definitive quote:
Emma's very good opinion of Frank Churchill was a little shaken the following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have his hair cut.
Mr Elton (Emma) - 2/10
Mr Elton’s main crime is his pride. He’s a 3 who thinks he’s at least a 9, maybe even a 9 1/2 on a Sunday morning when the sermon is really flowing. The problem is, his vision of himself doesn’t quite stack up with reality, and his outsized ego gets himself into all kinds of trouble. It is this ego which leads Mr Elton to look down his nose at sweet (but lower class) Harriet, setting his romantic sights on firmly Emma, the town worldie, a mistake which brings about one of the most satisfying, and the most cringe, proposal-rejections in all of Austen. “Please refrain from the intimacy of whispering!” is not something you want to hear when you’re trying to get a girl down the aisle.
I’ve ranked Mr Elton so low in the cad tier due to his marriage to a woman even more deluded than he is. I mean. He’s been punished enough.
Defining quote:
[Mr. Elton] had gone away rejected and mortified–disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what had appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended–he came back engaged to another.
Mr Collins (Pride and Prejudice) - 3/10
‘Cad’ may seem like an odd descriptor for Mr Collins, as a puritanical, Fordyce-loving, loose-woman-condemning, ultra conservative clergyman. His main crime, like Mr Elton’s, appears to be his disastrously misplaced confidence in his own prestige and attractiveness, a trait which mostly just leads him to embarrass himself, and many readers will remember Mr Collins as merely a harmless, hapless nerd with zero game. However, if, by ‘cad’, we are talking about a man who is disrespectful towards women, someone who is unchivalrous and ungentlemanly, then I think the shoe does, on occasion, fit.
Think of his reaction to Lydia Bennet’s ill-fated elopement with Mr Wickham. Rather than showing the concern you’d expect from a close family member, Mr Collins cheerfully tells Mr Bennet that ‘the death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison’, and congratulates himself with ‘augmented satisfaction’ that he’s not so connected with the family as to be ‘involved in [their] sorrow and disgrace’. He then explains, smugly, that he has related the whole thing to Lady Catherine, who was super judgy. Surprise surprise. So, in a few sentences, Mr Collins both declares that he wishes a fifteen-year-old girl was dead, explains that he’s thrilled not to be too connected with the family, and has a jolly good gossip about it with the local nobility in order to win some Brownie points for bringing some light entertainment. They probably got out the popcorn at some point.
Cad or not, Mr Collins is, at the very least, a total wally.
Defining quote:
"My situation in life, my connections with the family of de Bourgh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into further consideration, that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females."
John Thorpe (Northanger Abbey) - 5/10
When Shania Twain wrote the seminal ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much’, she was thinking of John Thorpe. He’s got all the gear and no idea. He loves to brag about his car, and his money, and supposed heroic feats he had completed, and it’s all just so incredibly boring. These traits would just be merely annoying, if his thoughtlessness and vanity didn’t sometimes go to darker places—but it does. At one point, John takes our teen heroine, Catherine, out in his flashy gig without a chaperone, leaving her open to serious scandal. He may have done so out of obliviousness; however, it is more likely that he wanted to compromise Catherine sufficiently in the eyes of any rivals so as to make her more likely to accept a proposal from him.
He also hates novels. What a monster.
Defining quote:
“Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t’other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.”
Henry Crawford (Mansfield Park) - 7/10
While not blessed with Willoughby or Wickham’s looks, Henry Crawford has, as they say on Love Island, The Chat. So, when he comes swaggering over to Northamptonshire, all London manners and urban sophistication, the Bertram ladies can’t help but have their heads turned—a mistake which ends in cataclysmic disaster for one of them. Following the fine tradition of players through the ages, Henry Crawford is not interested in women who are interested in him, which is why Henry eventually unceremoniously dumps Maria Bertram after running off with her, leaving her reputation, fortune, and marital prospects in tatters.
While Henry succeeds in breaking at least one heart in Mansfield Park, there is one significant exception. Gratifyingly, in spite of Henry’s repeated attempts and persistence, Fanny Price manages to resist his rakish charms. Fanny gets a lot of flak for being a boring heroine, sometimes accused of being ‘insipid’ (notably by Jane Austens own mother!), but the way she sends this dude wild by basically ignoring him is pretty gripping to see play out. The dyanamic between the two is so compelling that it appears to have its own bizarrely faithful fanbase online, evidenced by surprising number of the rather intense YouTube fandom shipping the two with romantic music videos (of extremely varying quality and cringiness).
Defining quote:
“But I cannot be satisfied without Fanny Price, without making a small hole in Fanny Price’s heart.”
John Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility) - 8/10
Handsome silver-tongued literature-lover Willoughby is dynamite with the ladies and he knows it. He’s the sort of guy that only needs to look at a pretty young maiden for her to go weak at the knees—or, in poor Eliza Brandon’s case, find herself well and truly preggers. However, unfortunately for the ladies, while he’s great at wafting around blustery heaths looking for attractive waifs with twisted ankles to rescue, he’s not so great at sticking around for said waif; unless, of course, there is some kind of financial incentive in place, because those Paddy Power debts won’t pay themselves.
In spite of everything—his breaking Marianne’s heart, the abandonment of Eliza, the incessant poetry recitals—it’s weirdly hard to completely hate Willoughby. He’s just so ruddy smooth.
Defining quote:
He then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.
Mr George Wickham (Pride and Prejudice) - 10/10
It doesn’t get much worse that George Wickham. This guy. Seriously. The scariest thing about Wickham, beyond his creepy penchant for exploiting young girls, is how smoothly and convincingly he lies, and how easily he charms his way into the hearts of the townsfolk in Meryton. Even Lizzy, usually a bastion of good judgement, is taken in by his wiley ways. He is even described, on a few occasions, as an ‘angel’. Sadly, though, Wickham is skilled in exploiting the positive regard he receives to the fullest for his own ends.
His modus operandi is basically to get into debt, both through gambling and a touch of retail therapy, and then to worm his way into the orbit of vulneable teenage girls. He then attempts to seduce them as a means to get as much money out of their mortified families as he can. He couldn’t care less about the reputations of others, whether the families he affects, the young girls he engangers, or the lies he tells about others (specifically Mr Darcy) to cover up his wrong doing. He’s basically the ransomware of relationships.
This is a guy who was brought up well, whose father is described as being ‘an excellent man’, and who has been treated with every kindness by Mr Darcy’s family after his father’s death—even offered a living. But nothing is ever enough for Wickham, and he is more than willing to make others pay to get him what he wants.
He is, undoubtedly, the biggest cad of the bunch.
Defining quote:
All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man who, but three months before, had been almost an angel of light. He was declared to be in debt to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman’s family. Everybody declared that he was the wickedest young man in the world; and everybody began to find out, that they had always distrusted the appearance of his goodness.
Feeling generous?
If you are a-lookin’ at this post and a-likin’ this post, would you consider purchasing me a cheeky cappuccino? No pressure whatsoever—just remember that you would be kindly fuelling a very sleep-deprived new mum of a tiny mercurial infant!