CULTURE

...If one wants to understand the appeal of Jane Austen and the Brontes at the cineplex, one need only check out what is perhaps the most popular of all current dramatic series on TV with young women these days: Melrose Place...

...And women do indeed fly, on Melrose Place, in upscale women's magazines and pulp fiction, in the writings of young "post-feminist" writers like Naomi Wolf and Katie Roiphe, who snag six-figure book contracts to tell us how easy it is...

...Rochester, has followed closely upon the Austen run, and it cannot be too long before other long-dead literary ladies find their way to cineplexes and Barnes & Noble new-release shelves...

...Women today have so many other, better, fantasies to nurture and plan for, fantasies that—at last—have every possibility of coming true, or so we are told...

...It was sweet but low-key, and the ratings didn't rise high or quickly enough for Aaron Spelling...

...And while this particular set of numbers may not be as sociologically or statistically accurate as the magazine suggests, the general idea—that today's women have at least a few qualms about the brave new world of postfeminist "liberation"— seems, even by casual observation, to carry more than a grain of truth...

...As for the rest of their lives...

...They cared about each other and helped each other out...

...The world of Melrose Place today is one in which sexual and financial negotiations and relationships are fast-paced, brutal, permanently unstable and shifting and—here is where the Jane Austen contrast is most vivid— completely devoid of any sense of rules, limits, or boundaries...

...Harvey—to the soft-focus visions of female passivity...

...Or so it looks in these lovely movies, filled with elegantly appointed mansions and cottages, delightfully fitted and accessorized gowns, even for the less well-endowed— physically or financially...

...The new world in which we liberated women can now easily negotiate power deals, break through barriers, and soar to the heights is actually less glamorous and more rocky than the hype would have us believe...

...That's what a recent Parent magazine survey purports to find...

...The preposterousness of plot and characterization, the excessively glammed-up costumes and settings, the sheer audacity in defying all rules of reason and logic, are not to be taken seriously...

...The left might be offering an alternative idea of gender equity, in the context of a larger vision of social and spiritual wholeness and stability, but it is in total media eclipse these days...

...But charming and seductive as they were, they would—we knew in advance—be seen through and sent packing before any real damage to even the most silly of maidens could be done...

...Women and men share similarly rapacious, individualist, conniving genes—temporarily anyway—and then they morph, male and female alike, into the opposites, suddenly becoming caring, loving, vulnerable, sensitive, and altruistic...

...The heroine always rode off into the sunset and did whatever virtuous women of high moral character and integrity did in those days...

...It's so terrifying that any woman in her right mind would gladly flee to Jane Austen country to escape its manic, madhouse miseries...

...With only the marketplace—with its hollow, individualistic, always uncertain and anxiety-provoking ups and downs to guide our ambitions and our destinies—all the success, all the gender equity in the world can do little to calm our nerves or fulfill our deepest needs and desires...

...I did everything so that this child could have freedom of choice, and have what America stands for," said the mother of Jessica Dubroff, as she sent her seven-year-old daughter off on a quest to break a nonexistent, nonsensical "world record" wearing a cap inscribed with the slogan Women Fly...

...Money and success and sexual pleasure are at stake here...

...And even those of us who make it, so I hear, are not enjoying the serenity that Austen's and the Bronte's heroines seemed always to achieve at journey's end...

...Hang on to your seats, kids...

...Well, it was the Nineteenth Century version of "don't ask, don't tell...

...They were straight and gay, black and white...

...As a female member of a somewhat older demographic segment, I would not, for all the tea in Victorian England, go back to the stay-at-home world I struggled Elayne Rapping, most recently the author of "The Culture of Recovery" (Beacon), appears in this space every other month...

...No wonder the women who watch, excited but a bit horrified at this vision, feel the need to escape, occasionally, to the more stable, comforting world of Elinor and Marianne, where limits and rules and values and consequences were predictable...

...The sisters in Sense and Sensibility, the heroine of Persuasion, the poverty-stricken but intelligent and industrious Jane Eyre, even silly little Alicia Silverstone in Clueless— all these attractive and admirable young women learned to live according to clearly written and easily understood rules of conduct and character...

...CULTURE Elayne Rapping The Jane Austen Thing Would you believe that 55 percent of women between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, would, if they had the chance, trade their present situations for the 1950s stay-at-home life of June Cleaver...

...Most importantly, the appropriate, equally virtuous, industrious, and upstanding male counterpart would emerge to wed and provide vou with a secure and meaningful livelihood...

...What about the Gold Card, Power-Book, power-suit combo that will, we hear, take you at least up to the glass ceiling—not quite equality, but a lot further from the village gates than Jane Austen ever dreamed of getting...

...And what a relief that all must have been...

...I savored the luxury of sinking into a fairy-tale landscape, safe and secure in the knowledge that however bleak and unfair the fates of the delightful sisters, Elinor and Marianne, two Prince Charmings, worthy of their grace and virtue, would inevitably appear at their out-of-the-way cottage, in their out-of-the-way village, to save them...

...Ratings soared and the show and its characters and situations have metamorphosed into a near-mythic cultural phenomenon...

...The recent film version of Jane Eyre, featuring Hollywood superstar William Hurt as an unlikely Mr...

...And the picture it presents of this much-demanded state of affairs—as played out in the context of our current, dominant cultural norms and values—is anything but attractive...

...Women fly, too, in the new postfemi-nist ads for athletic shoes and exercise equipment, and in the writings of the new rightwing "feminist" organizations like No Left Turn and Independent Women's Forum, which preach that gender equity has been achieved and all that's left to do is just to "Go For It," "Knock Yourself Out," "Fly High...

...Therein lies the appeal of these movies and books: the vision they offer of a world in which there were rules of conduct, rules of morality, rules of virtue and character...

...What about the easy to find, "I-brought-my-own" condom packet, with its guarantee of tragedy-free sexual pleasure for any young woman with a quick pick-up line or handy cell phone...

...Because ROXANNA BIKAOOftOfF of the guaranteed happy ending for those who did what was expected in a world in which "what was expected" was clear and easy to understand and accomplish...

...What is the appeal of these highly mannered and moralistic tales of rigidly choreographed courtship and marriage rituals to a generation of young women brought up to assume they could "have it all" whenever they wanted it, simply by stuffing their Gold Cards, PowerBooks, Trojan Pluses, and "Just Do It" Nikes in their backpacks or briefcases...

...I, like so many other women, loved Emma Thompson's masterful adaptation of Sense and Sensibility...

...As a result, they could count on a happy ending...

...It may be the only show on television in which perfect gender equality, personal and professional, has actually been achieved...

...Characters who risk all for the obsessive love of another, by the following week will have come to loathe the object of their affections sometimes to the point of plotting to murder them, especially when conflicts of financial interest are involved...

...What could be drawing them—these fans of the unfettered, wild-girl antics of Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love, and P.J...

...Losers become winners and then losers again in a matter of days...

...And gender, even sexual orientation, has nothing at all to do with one's chances of winjB> or losing in any arena, emotional or jH nomic...

...tasies...

...As I write, no fewer than three Austen novels—Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Emma (radically altered, updated, and revamped as Clueless)—have been made into successful feature films...

...To be sure, the series is done in a high-camp, tongue-in-cheek style at wlSi viewers are meant to giggle knowingly...

...How else to explain the huge box-office and bookstore popularity of Jane Austen and the Brontes with the twenty-something...

...Of course the rules were cruel and unfair to women...

...Still, the giggles are inevitably laced with a bit of nervousness, for while the show is quite clearly.^ send-up, what it is sending up are the cultural and social values that undergird die wildly free marketplace which young people today are being socialized to compete in, or die trying...

...And for what...

...Gen X crowd...

...all over America, to share pizza and an hour of very un-Austenian pleasure each Wednesday evening...

...But I must confess that I understand the nostalgic urge to escape into earlier, more gender-controlled and limited eras...

...so hard and so long to escape from...

...Bring in Heather Lock-lear, a veteran from Spelling's 1980s hit series Dynasty, to play the part of a scheming, conniving, amoral advertising executive who chewed up competitors and sexual partners as voraciously as she chewed her power bars...

...I|f J going to be a bumpy ride...

...And oh, the pleasures of that lushly scenic, elegantly witty, brilliantly literate, cinematic wait...

...And as a result, they didn't need to worry about child care, downsizing, relocation, the double day...

...And once one mastered and followed those rules, one would—so the fairy tale went—be rewarded with love, fulfillment, security, and peace of mind...

...They worked Mcjobs and worried over unwanted pregnancies and the perils of single parenting...

...Isn't that what we asked for, girls...

...But in a world driven only by marketplace values and dynamics, leveling the playing field for women and girls is hardly going to make the struggle for equality worth the trouble...

...But fly to where...

...But it's the fascination with that backward time that seems puzzling...

...They volunteered at soup kitchens and literacy programs...

...And young girls, who would never before have dreamed of reading such classics except in Cliffs Notes form, are suddenly carrying well-thumbed copies of her novels around on subways and in coffee bars everywhere...

...His solution...

...Why was I so enthralled with so retrograde a view of women's fate, one in which passivity, decorum, and "holding one's tongue"—no matter what the provocation—were a woman's greatest virtues, marriage her only non-tragic option, and even that option negotiated in a manner that included no input from her...

...For those who decry the limits of essen-tialist assumptions about gender traits, here is a world in which no such assumptions hold, in any way, shape, or form...

...This show brings throngs of young women together, at bars, in dorm lounges, in living rooms...

...Gigolos and jerks could and did apply, of course...

...They didn't need to fuss about finding an appropriate career because they were not allowed to do so...

...Well, the truth is—and here is the great appeal of sensible, accepting Jane Austen today—that the "liberated" life of the independent woman, as the marketplace economy has fashioned it, is not, as a friend of mine is fond of reminding me, all it's cracked up to be...

...Melrose Place started out as a very warm-hearted, even progressive-minded series about a bunch of young singles negotiating the job and relationship world...

...Empires rise and crumble, week after week, as characters shift alliances and arenas at whim, and then switch back again...

...So the Melrose Placed sion is all the MTV generation has to compare with the reactionary Victorian fan...

...What about the gloriously unfettered Courtney and Alanis and P.J., free at last to rail in four-letter-word rage across a multi-media spectrum of lucrative outlets, at the betrayal, cruelty, and just plain dorkiness of the men they still have to deal with, but not—thank heaven—get stuck with for life anymore...

...Of course, as women, all these heroines make for fine role models: intelligent, strong, mature, and admirable in many ways, especially for their time...

...For even in the realm of psychology and personality, there are no rules or limits on what one may become...