Brutally Ransome fights off all remonstration, all reproach: ‘do you suppose I pretend not to be selfish?’ he demands. ‘She’s mine or she isn’t, and if she’s mine she’s all mine.’ Even the pleas of Verena herself have no impact on him:

‘Oh, let me off, let me off . . . its too terrible, it’s impossible. Now I want you to go away — I will see you tomorrow, as long as you wish. That’s all I want now; if you will only go away it’s not too late, and everything will be alright!’

In answer, Ransome simply states:

We shall catch the night train for New York, and the first thing in the morning we shall be married.

He wrenches her away ‘by muscular force’, and is proud and happy at his success. But Verena, beneath her cloak, is in tears. And as James gravely observes in a heart- stopping final sentence:

It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined to shed.

When a man has resolved to marry a woman above all else, he will usually succeed in overriding her objections The woman, caught between bafflement and fear, is mesmerized by the dark satanic drive of the man, and cannot hold out against him. This is the setting for Shakespeare’s most famous marriage proposal, in Richard III.

Richard, especially as played by Laurence Olivier in the film version, is the favourite villain of English history, the one we all love to hate. In Shakespeare’s play he takes time out from marmolizing the Little Princes in the Tower to develop all his other gifts in the murder and mayhem department. Chatting to the audience about his famous hunch back, Richard declares that he’s not cut out to be the Errol Flynn of the Wars of the Roses:

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, I am determined to prove a villain!

But in a tense and completely unexpected development, he contrives to be both, simultaneously! Fresh from plotting death and destruction all round, Richard weaves a new plan:

For now I’ll marry Warwick’s youngest daughter. What though I killed her husband, and her father? The readiest way to make the wench amends

Is to become her husband and her father.

As luck would have it, Richard runs down his proposed bride, the Lady Anne, in the presence of yet another of his victims, King Henry VI. And in a terrifically effective coup de theatre he makes love to her over the still-bleeding corpse and claims her as his own.

The Lady Anne is by no means a pushover. As soon as Richard appears she flies at him with threats and curses, calling him a ‘devil’, a ‘villain’, and a ‘lump of foul deformity’. Yet the more she rages, the more steadily Richard advances his suit. He tells her that the best place in the world for him is her bed, and finally orders her,

`Vouchsafe to wear this ring’. Exhausted and out-manoeuvred, she takes it and with it Richard himself. As he gloats afterwards:

Was ever woman in this humour wooed? Was ever woman in this humour won?

Fortunately, some women in this situation hang onto their native bottle, even if they don’t quite manage to smash it over the proposer’s head. A prototype of the plucky little woman is the heroine of Jane Eyre. Like her creator, Charlotte Brontë, Jane is more likely to give a man a sock on the kisser than a kiss on the feet. She is being pressurized to marry by her cousin, St John Rivers. He does not love her, but sees her as a mainstay of his plan to go out to India and convert ‘the heathen’:

As a conductress of Indian schools, and a helper among Indian women, your assistance will be invaluable.

Sounds grim, doesn’t it? No wonder we lost the Empire, as my father used to say when confronted with any manifestation of modern life from decimal coinage to the Rolling Stones. You need only feel sorry for the Indian objects of St John’s forthcoming mission. For Jane needs no sympathy. She listens carefully to his proposal:

God and nature intended you for a missionarys wife. It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love. A missionary’s wife you must — you shall be. You shall be mine: I claim you — not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign’s service.

Then she gives him his just deserts for such a romantic and loving proposal — in plain English, the boot!

`I scorn your idea of love,’ I could not help saying as Irose up and stood before him, ‘I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer: yes, St John, and I scorn you when you offer it!’

That’s the stuff. Right, left, and the uppercut straight to the jaw. Attagirl!

All these shuddersome proposals have one thing in common. They aren’t, truly, proposals in the real sense, since the men never actually ask. They decide, declare, and assume possession, following the Julius Caesar model of manly conduct — came, saw and overcame. This is probably the most insulting way a man can `propose’ to a woman — apart from telling her in the process that she is as plain as a pikestaff and made for use, not ornament, as St John does to Jane above.

This type of back-hander is just what the heroine Sybilla gets in the award-winning Australian movie, My Brilliant Career. The would-be masterful male here is in fact a Snotty Pommy, which may or may not be an improvement upon the Whingeing Pom from the Antipodean point of view. Against an appropriate background of sheep, Sybilla has to listen to his silly bleating:

Pom: I enjoyed myself last night. I thought we got on jolly well together. Sybilla — I’ve been thinking. Well —

looks aren’t everything -

SYBILLA: Would you come to the point, Frank?

Pom: Well, now that this fellow Harry has gone, you should pay some heed to my attentions.

SYBILLA: Do you mean attentions or intentions?

Pom: At the conclusion of the coming year, I shall be

returning to England, and I expect you to return with

me as my wife.

At which point Sybilla shows her estimation of his proposal by pushing him in the sheep pen in a tough but necessary rejoinder.

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