Might Jane The Virgin's Biggest Abstinence Proponent Actually Relax Her Opposition To Premarital Sex?!

In the time it has been my pleasure and privilege to write about Jane The Virgin, I think I have mostly focused on all the wonderful things about it: the truthfulness of the portrayal of Jane's best friendship after her motherhood; the way it's made Rafael into a three-dimensional character; Rogelio. But my feelings about Alba have remained more complex. As it's been presented to us, Jane The Virgin doesn't get her titular designation if not for the pivotal speech during which a younger Alba tells a very young and impressionable Jane how important it is that she not ruin her "flower" -- a lesson that seems hypocritical in retrospect once we learn that Alba's reaction to the news of her daughter Xiomara's unplanned pregnancy was to direct her to have an abortion. (She didn't, and Jane is the result.) Alba's judgmental attitude has hung over her daughter and granddaughter and over the show itself...but this week's episode might suggest that her reign of chastity-belted terror is about to draw to a close.

I am not a crackpot. I just think Alba's mind might be ready to open up in a major, character-redefining way.

One of the plotlines in this (rather busy) midseason return involves a visit from Rogelio's adored mother, Liliana. Everyone can tell she's in a mood from the moment she arrives, and when Jane gets her away from the rest of the family and encourages her to open up, she does: the reason her husband, Manuel, didn't join her on this trip isn't that he's too ill; it's that he's gay, and he's left her for a man. Jane manages to keep this secret for almost half a day, but then tells Xiomara (when, to be fair, she thinks Xiomara already knows), who goes on to tell Alba. And while one might expect a noted prig like Alba to respond in a less than loving way, she absolutely does not. "Poor Manuel," she says,

Off Jane's mute surprise and approval, Alba explains.

This feels like a huge change of policy in the Alba administration! Her intense conviction that one not engage in premarital sex may have been rooted in the teachings of the Catholic church, but if she's joined a congregation in which a fellow parishioner feels free to make his sexual orientation public, Alba's priest must be fostering a very inclusive and welcoming atmosphere. (If it's the same priest we met last season when she mistakenly developed a crush on him in PT when he was out of his collar, then...that would stand to reason; he seemed pretty easygoing.) Officially, homosexuality is still not sanctioned by the Catholic church, but there are definitely priests who have a Pope Franciscan "who am I to judge?" take on the issue, and it's lucky for Alba's friend Byron (who we eventually meet, as an attendee at a doomed dinner intended to help Liliana to appreciate the diversity of human sexuality) that he's been warmly accepted into a spiritual family.

It's even more lucky for Alba that she's found Byron at a time in her life when, it seems, she needs to consider viewpoints that might have previously felt alien to her. The crumpler of symbolic flowers to whom we were introduced in the pilot didn't strike me, then, as someone who spent much time weighing new ideas. Alba was, one presumes, taught to live according to immovable moral principles. When Xiomara became pregnant under sub-optimal circumstances, it was because she had violated Alba's laws. The misogynistic flower parable Jane heard was clearly meant to avoid her turning into another Xiomara; there were no corollaries about contraception or self-determination or consent or safer sex practices that can't lead to pregnancy at all WHICH I'M SURE EVERYONE READING WHO HAS TEENAGED CHILDREN goes over all the time even though it can be embarrassing because it's important and, in fact, antifeminist not to. Alba didn't need to get into all that because Alba knew one way to live and that made it, by definition, the right way.

But this Alba is different. This week's Alba can approve of a man who, pretty late in life, has figured out how he wants to live. She can celebrate his decision that being true to himself is more important even than the marriage vows he's breaking. She speaks the language of acceptance because she's made a friend who can to teach her to be an ally.

If this Alba can understand that Manuel has the right to sexual self-expression, and that he couldn't be happy if he didn't exercise it, can it possibly be much longer before she makes the intellectual leap and grants those same rights to Xiomara and Jane? Might we dare to hope, even, that Alba might meet another man (this time, ideally, not a priest) and gets premaritally swept off her feet herself? Abstinence is, of course, a fine option for anyone who chooses it. But Jane has had abstinence imposed upon her, by Alba, through emotional manipulation and implied threat. In so many other ways, Alba is -- like the show itself -- staunchly feminist, and respectful of the choices Jane has made with regard to motherhood and her career. If Alba won't listen to Xo when it comes to sex, maybe Byron can explain to her how her own hangups about sex have stunted the lives of the women she loves most in the world, and get her to back off. But I actually think Alba's very close to getting there on her own. I am not a crackpot.