This is a great reading. Their relationship may have a lot of passive/aggressive stuff. He'd need to prove his masculinity, maybe. Or be doom-eager. What we know about Betty is she loved order. She was a highly regulated, orderly person. He must've been really aggravating?? He was chaos.

A factor I've been mulling is EE's by many signs being a secret Catholic, probably as of 1984 when her brother famously converted, and she talks a lot from the late 1970s on about the Virgin Mary as a major inspiration. It's probably behind the virginity talk of P&P. So is she Mary to a dead Jim-Jesus?