Dear Modern Austen: Can I marry someone for a European visa?
Wedded To My European Fantasy asks Modern Austen whether marriage always needs to be for love.
Dear Modern Austen,
I’m bringing this question to you because some days my own answer is yes and others it’s no. I know that marrying for a visa or anything other than love is just as vulgar as marrying for money, but here’s my predicament: I find myself in a situation where I’ve had the privilege to move to Europe, but staying in here, especially the country I’ve been living in for the past six months, will require a resolution to my visa issues. These issues have prevented me from getting working papers, setting up a bank account, and feeling settled. Now I must decide if I should take my chances with extending this country’s visa, trying my luck in another EU country, or simply giving up my dream of living in Europe and returning to the United States. Or, I could get married, which has been suggested to me more than once by strangers, acquaintances, and friends. (OK, maybe people who actually know me aren’t seriously on board, as they don’t think I’m serious when I say that I’m on the lookout for a European I could marry. I don’t even know if I’m serious…)
That’s done here, you know. I’m sure it happens all the time in the U.S., too, but I only notice it here now that I’m faced with that option. When you’re an immigrant among immigrants in a country with some of the worst bureaucratic paperwork processes, everyone you know has visa issues. And everyone is desperate to resolve or find a way around them. If you can somehow claim EU citizenship and get a passport, that’s the golden path. But for me, Modern Austen, that path might need to be a walk down the aisle. Well, nothing as traditional as that. If there was ever proof that marriage is merely a union of paperwork, it’s getting marrired for a visa. Once I have it, I would be able to stay in the country and stay in Europe. After five years, I would officially be a resident. So, really, getting married would be a pretty small means to getting the future I want.
There are a few ways I could go about this. I’ve heard stories of people paying someone a few thousand euro to marry them to get papers with no other strings attached—it’s purely a business transaction. My friend from Albania’s ex-husband still occasionally sends money to a woman he married in a different city, but other than that he never sees her. So one option is to pay a stranger to get married on paper. Another is to find equally desperate friends and acquaintances who, perhaps, need U.S. papers. The marriage could still be only on paper, but it would be a little less transactional. The final, and probably least realistic, option is to make someone fall in love with me so that they want to live together and have a more traditional marriage (not that I’m traditional). I suppose this would be the rom-com version of my visa story: Girl goes to Europe, girl falls in love with a European who would be heartbroken if she left, girl has visa trouble, European asks her to marry him and live happily ever after. It would also be the version where I get married for more than paperwork. And, after all, what right have I to get married for anything less?
I don’t need to live in Europe, and my life doesn’t depend upon this visa. I could go back to the U.S. and quell these visa woes for good, but what’s the fun in that? Where would the excitement in my life be? The truth is that I’ve reached an age where getting married “for real” would be a nice-to-have, where my conception of love isn’t based on two people who are right for each other getting together at the end of the movie. I’m a romantic about many things, but love doesn’t seem to be one of them. I do want to lead a romantic life, and that life I picture for myself is in Europe. So I’m willing to forego loving a person for loving a place.
At least that’s what I tell myself. As I said at the start of my letter, I go back and forth on whether it’s a good option, on whether it’s the right thing to do. Isn’t marriage sacred? Isn’t love? Is it only OK to marry someone for a visa if I also love them? That would significantly decrease my prospects. My prospects, my prospects, my prospects. The only prospect that matters to me right now is of my staying in this country. The man comes second. I only care about what the man can give me: A secure path to a European life.
What do you think, Modern Austen: Can a girl get married for a visa?
Wedded To My European Fantasy
If there’s a personal matter you’d like Modern Austen’s advice on, you can send her a message. Please indicate whether you’re comfortable with your letter being published, & do use a clever pseudonym.
“‘My dear aunt,’ she rapturously cried, ‘what delight! What felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! What hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing.’”
— Pride & Prejudice, Vol. II, Ch. IV
Dear WTMEF,
What are men to legal pathways to European citizenship? For you, they may very well be the stepping stones to building that pathway, either through marriage or some other means.
I often wonder what Jane Austen really thought about marriage &, more importantly, Love. We get snippets of the truth, I think, in her novels & letters to Cassandra & niece Fanny Knight, all of which seem to say, “if you must marry, do make sure it’s a good match on both sides.” Difficult when a woman almost always needed marriage more than a man. “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor,” Jane wrote to her niece on March 13th, 1817, “which is one very strong argument in favour of Matrimony.”1 Yes, Jane understood “marriage [to be] a great Improver,”2 as she wrote to Cassandra 9 years earlier, knowing very well that marriage provides a woman’s income. But she was a romantic when it came to love.— In the same letter to Fanny Knight, she tells her niece that she “could not wish the match” with a Mr. Wildman who was vying for young Fanny’s affection “unless there were a great deal of Love on his side.” Jane urges her “Donot be in a hurry,” because she’s certain “the right Man will come at last,” & he will be “more generally unexceptionable than anyone you have yet known…[&] you will feel you never reallly loved before.” Jane was 42 when she wrote this letter to Fanny, & I can’t help wondering if she was saying it to herself as much as to her niece. Had Jane Austen believed that she would “meet with somebody more generally unexceptionable than anyone [she had] yet known”? And since she had not, could she not marry for anything less?
Does this mean that you shouldn’t marry for a visa? Marriage can be a double-edged sword when it comes to a woman’s freedom—at least for 19th-century women—& Jane knew it. In marriage, she would gain income & security but lose the freedom of belonging to herself (as much as any woman at that time could belong to herself). That, for Jane Austen, could only be worth it if she were in Love. In fact, she “consider[ed] everybody as having a right to marry once in their lives for love if they can.”3 Take heart that Austen says once for love, WTMEF;— the woman she’s referring to in this letter to Cassandra is a widow, Lady Sondes, who if I had to guess had made a seemingly unsuitable match for her second marriage, but if it was love… Perhaps there’s always time to be in love, to marry for love, if you should want to.
If we look to Austen’s heroines, it seems that she wanted them tor marry for more than material gain. Yet notice how they happen to find love with men of considerable fortunes & well-managed estates;— these were signs that they were men who didn’t squander their money & knew how to treat their property. Anne Elliott is a heroine who didn’t marry above herself in terms of station, but by the time she was reunited with Captain Wentworth he’d made his fortune & name as a decorated Naval officer. Still, Persuasion lacks the fairytale quality of Austen’s earlier novels. Jane was older when she wrote it, & her views of love & romance had changed. She was also more sympathetic to the choices people make in life. After all, Anne Elliott first rejects Wentworth because Lady Russell persuades her that, materially, he was not a good match, & marriages cannot survive on love alone.
Like Austen’s heroines, you seem to have a pretty clear understanding of your situation & options. You’re weighing what your head & heart are telling you, you’re trying to unravel the guilt you feel about using marriage to reach the future you want. What is marriage if not a step toward the futures we want? But your concern is really over whether you should love the person you’re marrying. You want it all to end like a romantic comedy &, personally, so do I, because it’s always nice when a loving relationship can grow from the oddest of situations.
And if it can’t be for love as well as a visa? I would say that choosing to marry for the life you want is as difficult a choice as Jane’s to never marry. Marriage for a woman in the Regency era was almost always essential, but Austen rejected it—she’s believed to have turned down as many as 3 offers despite the security they would have provided her. She had a higher calling—her work!—that provided some income, & she had to put that above marriage if she couldn’t marry for love. For you & many Modern Heroines, marriage is a nice-to-have. We’re mistresses of our own Fortunes & can choose to delay or never marry at all. Unlike Jane (or her heroines), we don’t need Love to compel us to take that step.— Though it is important to remember that even Lizzy Bennet understood that it was always best to fall in love with a man of great Fortune!
In terms of marriage & being the Mistress of one’s Fortune, Emma Woodhouse is the most Modern Heroine Jane Austen has given us. Emma is pretty, clever, & rich. She’s Queen of Hartfield & Queen of Highbury. More importantly, her father’s estate isn’t entailed away from her, so she can enjoy a proper income. Emma Woodhouse is the heroine who has no need, wish, or intention of marrying because she has freedom enough on her own. “Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing!” are the very words Austen has our heroine say. For “without love, [she] is sure [she] should be a fool to change such a situation.”4 Her freedom would vanish because she would belong to her husband, & since marriage could do nothing to improve her situation only something as impractical as Love could lead her to it.
Marriage, for Emma, is the harder choice, & I believe it’s the harder choice for many modern single women. Single women who can earn an income & have a life that isn’t dependent on a husband. For you, dear WTMEF, it seems only the hope of a European visa can move you to matrimony. Marriage is the harder choice, & today it isn’t even a necessary expression of two people’s love for each other. Has it ever been? Marriage has historically been used to secure alliances, to keep sex & procreation sacred. Love, technically, is not needed, but in Jane’s view it makes marriage better. In your view it makes marriage better. In my view it makes marriage better. It brings meaning to what is naturally transactional. But don’t think that love is all that moved Emma Woodhouse to marry Mr. Knightley.— Combining Hartfield with Donwell Abbey was the same as expanding a kingdom. She sought improvement in marrying Mr. Knightley.
The problem I see here, WTMEF, is that marriage should be a Great Improver to a woman’s situation at all. Why can’t it be just as easy to stay single & obtain a visa? Why, in 2024, should being a single woman still feel unstable? I would say that society has a dreadful propensity for making single women feel like they’re in a waiting room. Waiting for their real lives to begin when they marry & have a family. Waiting, dare I say, to be considered real people. And so, to be considered real, we need to give up our freedom, our independence, our claims to ourselves. In fairytales & in Austen novels, marriage is the end of a single woman’s story. But you, my dear WTMEF, imagine a different end—not even an end, but a full European life.
Because this world wants single women married, why disappoint it? There was a time it would have been your best chance at securing a future. Go forth & use it that way now.
Yours,
<3 Modern Austen
If there’s a personal matter you’d like Modern Austen’s advice on, you can send her a message. Please indicate whether you’re comfortable with your letter being published, & do use a clever pseudonym.
See letter to Fanny Knight, 13-4 March 1817, pp. 346-349.
See letter to Cassandra Austen, 20 November 1808, pp. 159-162.
See letter to Cassandra Austen, 27-28 December 1808, pp. 166-169.
See Emma, 1815, Vol. I, Ch. 10, p. 82.