Jane Austen, a Game Theorist
Strategic thinking has be prevalent throughout the history for a long time in military and political affairs. The idea of game theory has been introduced and clarified in the 1944-53 through von Neumann, Morgenstern, Nash and Shapley. However, according to UCLA professor, Michael Chwe, Jane Austen, a renown English female author of 1800s used game theory in her novels where the characters make decisions based on the ideas of game theory. The female characters in Jane Austen’s novels constantly have “strategic perspectives” on marriage, deciding what is the option for them to choose to have a proper marriage. Decision in marriage and choice of spouse is matter of tradeoffs where the outcome of marriage can have costs and benefits. For example, in “Pride and Prejudices,” Jane Bennet is interested in marrying Mr. Bingley, a wealthy bachelor who is also interested in Jane. However, because of Mr. Bingley’s sister, Caroline Bingley, who highly disapproves of Jane, Jane is hesitant in marrying him. When she comes by this dilemma, Elizabeth Bennet says “If, upon mature deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you by all means to refuse him.” Through this comment, we can understand the strategic thinking involved in marriage. In this case, Elizabeth is implying that marrying Mr. Bingley is the dominant strategy for Jane because it far outweighs the cost of the Mr. Bingley’s sisters’ disapprovals.
Above table is the potential payoff matrix for Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley’s marriage. For both Jane and Mr. Bingley, marrying will bring benefit to them because they are both in love with each other and are interested in marriage. However, the benefit of Jane in marrying Mr. Bingley will be slightly lower than Mr. Bingley because she may undergo hardship due to conflict with Mr. Bingley’s sisters who are against their marriage. When one of them wants to marry and the other doesn’t want to marry, the one who does not want to marry will have 0 benefit where they will be unaffected. However, the person who wanted to marry the other will have negative cost because they will be heart broken by the other person’s response. When they both decide to not marry, they will both have negative payoff because they will be heart broken by the fact that they cannot marry the person that they are in love. Especially the payoff for Jane will be lower than Mr. Bingley because with her social status, she will not be able to meet another suitor like Mr. Bingley. Through analyzing this payoff matrix for Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley, we can see that the dominant strategy for Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley is marrying each other. And the nash equilibria for the relationship between Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley is strictly marrying each other.
The above example is just one of the simple payoff matrix within the novels of Jane Austen. Throughout different novels, she introduces the strategic thinkings through female characters who both view positive marriage as something that will help them advance economic and social status. Viewing Jane Austen as a game theorist who employed strategic thinking on her female characters shed us a new light in analyzing her literature in a whole different way. Just like Dr. Chwe examined Jane Austen’s literary works using ideas of game theory, it will be interesting to employing to analyze other literary works using ideas of game theory to give a new perspective in literature analysis.
Source: