Exceedingly puzzled

One summer in the 90s, I was riding my bicycle home after a day at the swimming pool with friends. The street was gently curved, with a nice slope that made me go a bit faster than usual. I was enjoying the breeze, and had a big smile on my face.

A boy I knew only a little, just enough to say “ciao”, was cycling the other way with a friend. With that same big smile on the face, I said ciao to him.

I had just enough time to park my bicycle, walk up four flights of stairs, and get into my apartment when the boy rang the intercom. He asked me right away to be his girlfriend.

He didn’t give up at my first refusal, so I had to repeat it three times. In his imagination, there was no good reason for me to refuse him, because:

1. I didn’t have a boyfriend.
2. The crush I had for someone else was hopeless.
3. My big smile suggested otherwise.

Fast forward to 2025, and I come across a similar scene in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

“Really, Mr. Collins,” cried Elizabeth with some warmth, “you puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as to convince you of its being one.”

After reading Mr. Collins’s proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, I was upset for days, feeling a fresh wave of anger about that summer episode, and how I responded to it. The entitlement, the assumptions! I felt the same way later in life, in similar situations, while I was living in Italy.

You must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment of believing what I say.

If only someone had introduced me to Jane Austen’s books when I was a teenager.