hahayou got it!
The satirist asks the most stupid 'why'-questions and in that, Austen makes you wonder about people.
Most readers, though, see P&P as the quaint little story, but it is much more fun. We are all in therewondering why everything. It's pretty scary
.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Austen is admired by critics for both the quality of her novels, and their importance in the development of the art form. Austen's exact contemporary (and admirer) Sir Walter Scott may have been the most popular novelist of all time (in terms of the percentage of novels sold). Nonetheless, the novel went Austen's way -- not Scott's way. That is, it moved toward realism rather than toward romance.
Scott's novels abound in bombast and eloquence. From memory, I recall the conversation between Rebecca and Bois de Gilbert in "Ivanhoe". Gilbert has asked Rebecca to run off with him, which is tempting mainly because her other option is to be burned at the stake. Rebecca hesitates, though, thinking that Gilbert's promises to marry her may be lies. Gilbert, as villainous a creep as any reader could desire, responds, "All the laws of man and God have I borken, but my sworn oath, Never!" Scott's villains were more heroic than most heroes.
Austen is equally eloquent with Scott, but less bombastic. Hers is the quiet humor of the real world. She is probably the first "realistic" novelist -- earlier novelists like Fielding, or Scott, filled their books with action and adventure, and their characters with genius. Pride and Prejudice is probably the least typical (and most popular) of the Austen novels because it is a bit more of a fairy tale than the others, with it's rich, dashing hero and it's witty, fiesty, Cinderella heroine. However, in general, Austen's novels are as quiet as an English Country Lane. Some readers prefer the precipices of Switzerland -- but the novel has wandered down Austen's country lanes for two centuries now, with some excursions to Dublin, Moscow, and a variety of sanitoriums.
The "petty drama" is one of the aspects that I enjoyed most!
The title of the book is a very apt description, as the actions clearly show how "pride" and "prejudice" colored the viewpoints of the characters, which would ultimately serve to injure the characters. Collins is a wet noodle, Wickham is a smooth talking shyster, and Darcy is a noble and kind man. These realizations only come about as the story progresses and Elizabeth for one, has a hard time fixing her preconceived notions.
I really enjoyed this book, it was a bit plodding at first, but the action picked up soon afterwords. I think getting past the part where Jane is deathly ill away from him is required to get to the "good part" for some people, so to speak.
I am 4/5 of the way through this novel now. I am trying to finish it because I hate bailing on a book. But it's not pleasurable reading. I intensely dislike the main character. There is not one whit of empathy for her.
That this book is an enduring classic says very uncomfortable things about humanity, I think. Somewhere in the evolution of the cerebral cortex, things went horribly wrong. After the basic survival and hunting/gathering instincts had been biologically provided for, there became leftover mental processing power to dwell on the inconsequential.
God help us all.
Gee, Taco. If you can hate on Elizabeth Bennet I shudder to consider your possible reaction to Emma Woodhouse or Marianne Dashwood! You have zero empathy for one of the most popular heroines in the history of fiction.
I'll grant that Miss Bennet is proud (or is it prejudiced?), but who objects to that in a woman? Women should be proud, and lovers should be prejudiced (what, after all, is love other than a form of prejudice?). Why is prejudice a such good thing: as Hamlet said, "Use every man after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping?" Only the prejudiced, after all, can think WE'RE so wonderful.
Those points are very interesting. Is love, even love or belief in the nobility (or divinity) of humanity a prejudice?Originally Posted by Ecurb
If love of the world is a prejudice and prejudice is a conclusion prior to investigation, then disdain for humanity must therefore be the inevitable reasoned conclusion arrived at after a thorough investigation.
I keep seeing the blank in the name of the area, "----shire."
Can anyone explain why this blank exists in P&P?
Haha, that first point is great! But I think then that disdain is the conclusion of a thorough investigation provided that the person doing the investigation and reaching disdain as its conclusion is prejudiced to find still worse than the prejudice he already had. Otherwise he would not find disdain but bewilderment.
So, '--shire' and 'the river A', 'the village of P'... Those things often occur in earlier literature (19th century and earlier) because they have the same effect as putting 'B looked at me this afternoon. Would he be in love with me?' in your diary. If anyone reads it, you can be sure (not really) that he won't know who B is, but the story is still true and writing his initial allows you to write about it comfortably. So it is with the things above. Before the 18th century, things were supposed to be always true when written down. When the novel came about, people were not so accustomed to fiction yet so as to distance themselves altogether from the place the story happened. Not like we are now. It is very rare that people will go and visit a place where something happened in a novel, although there are a few exceptions like The Da Vinci Code. So, in order to prevent people from identifying the characters (surely, they must exist
But, more than not identifiable from a direct perspective or making it 'truer', it also gives your story a more general idea. If you were writing about characters in Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, your story would become more restricted and would not be about the whole of England. Now, it is about the whole of that society, although, taking pains, you can actually more or less situate the place where Meryton is.
Is that a bit clear or is it a bit muddled?
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
"Love is the dillusion that one woman differs from another." -- H.L. Mencken
Those of us less cynical than Mencken might soften the sentiment to: "Love is the biased opinion that one particular woman is superior to all others."
I bet Austen would not disagree with that. Our "prejudices" lead us to pair up with others for a variety of reasons. Mr. Collins had his own material and shallow ambitions. Elizabeth was willing to go through the potential "cost" of having an old society benefactor face off against her over love. When I first started the book, I felt she was making a radical commentary about the state of marriage and women in her time, much like Emma Goldman would say in more crude, less thought out, less well-written way. Elizabeth's progress towards marriage had me rethink that perspective however, as she came into her own and saw the folly of her "prejudice," and perhaps D's "pride."
A guy named Arnie Pearlman (who posts on Austen-L list and others) has a theory that Austen (in part) represents herself in P & P as the maligned Mary Benet. Mary, of course, is the "accomplished" and "intellectual" sister, who likes to perform on the piano and moralize at the dinner table. But Jane Austen likes to toy with her readers. Some of Mary's comments can be read in two ways. For example, when Bingley and Darcy show up near the end of the novel, Mary says to Elizabeth, ""The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them; do we?"I bet Austen would not disagree with that. Our "prejudices" lead us to pair up with others for a variety of reasons. Mr. Collins had his own material and shallow ambitions. Elizabeth was willing to go through the potential "cost" of having an old society benefactor face off against her over love. When I first started the book, I felt she was making a radical commentary about the state of marriage and women in her time, much like Emma Goldman would say in more crude, less thought out, less well-written way. Elizabeth's progress towards marriage had me rethink that perspective however, as she came into her own and saw the folly of her "prejudice," and perhaps D's "pride."
A straightforward reading shows Mary as naive and perhaps jealous. Perhaps she is. However, perhaps she is expressing Austen's own opinions. After all, Austen and her sister Cassandra remained unmarried (we know Jane turned down at least one eligible suitor). In her letters, Jane pokes fun at the status of wives as unpaid servants, and as breeding machines. Many wives had 10 or more babies -- and many died in childbirth.
Here's Mary talking to Elizabeth about the Lydia affair: "This is a most unfortunate affair; and will probably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other the balm of sisterly consolation…..Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of
virtue in a female is irretrievable -- that**one false step involves her
in endless ruin**-- that her reputation is no less brittle than it is
beautiful, -- and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour
towards the undeserving of the other sex."
Again, the initial reading portrays Mary as a prosy, moralizing fifteen-year-old know-it-all. Indeed, in all of the movies, the scene is played that way – with Mary moralizing in front of the entire family. However, in the book, Mary is talking to Elizabeth alone – and perhaps Mary (if we see her as a feminist Jane Austen surrogate) is warning her sister about the dangers of men and marriage. Jane was, like Mary, the most accomplished girl in the neighborhood (one of the most accomplished of all time, in fact) – and mightn’t she see trading that for a life as a domestic and breeding machine as a poor trade off?
Sounds plausible. Mary lacks social nicety but, direct like a sledgehammer, there is truth in all she utters though she speaks rarely. Here's a few quotes.
...her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.
They found Mary, as usual, deep in the study of thorough-bass and human nature; and had some extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to.
To this Mary very gravely replied, "Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me—I should infinitely prefer a book."
Mary petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield; and Kitty begged very hard for a few balls there every winter.
Mary was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet's being quite unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to mix more with the world, but she could still moralize over every morning visit; and as she was no longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own, it was suspected by her
father that she submitted to the change without much reluctance.
"Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself"
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