On Rereading Pride and Prejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged that “the first challenge you face when writing about Pride and Prejudice is to get through your first sentences without saying ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged…’”

And there, with a little quote from Martin Amis, I’ve taken care of that prerequisite to this post.

Is there any felicity in the world superior to rereading a beloved book? I'm not sure how many times before I've read P&P, but it is a book which must always be read with delight and no less fascination because one knows the plot perfectly.

My views on Elizabeth Bennet are perhaps the most altered. Of course Lizzy is one of the world's most universally loved heroines and I'm far from ceasing to love her. Indeed, I think I love and respect her more because I recognize better than before the strength of her faults. Certainly, in comparison to her mother and sisters she is a model of propriety and one wonders what exactly it is that makes her and Jane so much less vulgar, although they have received little more direction than their other sisters. This http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol22no1/ellwood.html article cites Doris T. Robin in deducing “that initially Mr. Bennet was an actively involved father, drawn to little Jane by her beauty, serene benevolence, and self-discipline (conspicuously like and unlike her mother), and drawn even more to little Elizabeth by her quick intelligence (very like his own). In the early days, he would also have been supported by hope that the crucially necessary boy was just around the corner.  Robin holds that it is thanks to his involvement that the first two daughters thrived and became secure personalities, in spite of their hopelessly childish mother.”

But Elizabeth, with all her virtues, is a Bennet sister. Her easy prejudice and pride, in so easily discerning a character on first impressions, is well known. She is also easily infatuated with Mr. Wickham, and her behavior, unintentionally, is too forward to Mr. Darcy. Most interesting are her father's words to her after the announcement of her engagement. “I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery.” Here we see something fascinating. Perhaps Elizabeth could never be so vulgar and entirely heedless and unthinking as Lydia; as her father declares, she has something of quickness about her. But this pronouncement is still strangely disturbing. What would have happened to Elizabeth if she had considered practicality and married Mr. Collins? Probably something very ill, though I cannot quite conjecture what. But certain it is that a man like Mr. Darcy, whom she can respect, is as necessary to Elizabeth's good character as she is to his recognition of his selfishness and pride.

Of course in looking at Mr. Bennet's sobering words to Lizzy, one should not ignore his own utter culpability in the degradation and disgrace of his family. He has been softened in the film versions ( http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no2/seeber.htm ) but Mr. Bennet is a character almost as reprehensible as Mrs. Younge (the woman who facilitates Georgiana and Wickham's elopement). Yet Austen writes of him in a manner which decrees that like Elizabeth, we must continue to love him, even while acknowledging those points in which he has been negligent.

It's fascinating to view the way practical concerns – namely money – were so much a part of thoughts about marriage in those days. Charlotte Lucas I condemn less than I ever have, despite the revolting nature of marrying without respect. However, Lizzy would have turned out worse than Charlotte or Mr. Bennet in such a situation.

But Elizabeth’s refusal of Mr. Collins hardly brands her a poster girl for romantics. She has several experiences where she knows her feelings could be deepened into love, but she exercises control over her own feelings. Even after acknowledging her feelings for Darcy to herself she can decide, “If he is satisfied with only regretting me, I shall soon cease to regret him at all.” Mr. Darcy can actually afford to be more romantic than Elizabeth. With his fortune he could not easily expect a refusal from a girl with no better prospects, so there was on that head no reason to repress his feelings.

In conclusion, P&P is the story of how Elizabeth escapes a dysfunctional* family, but also makes choices to ensure that she does not perpetuate the shame that seems to be her birthright. As stated before, without Darcy, Elizabeth would degenerate. This is what makes P&P one of the great love stories of all time - not dramatic declarations of the impossibility of living apart, nor the fairy-tale aspect of “the poor girl gets a prince” - no, it’s how Darcy and Elizabeth grow, learn of themselves and become better people because of their love. Still, one can't ignore the question of what would have happened to Elizabeth if not for Mr. Darcy. There's a certain fascination in what is undoubtedly a macabre prospect.

And yet it must never for a moment be forgotten that Jane Austen does not write of dysfunctional families with pathos, but rather with keen and biting irony. Her novels teach us to declare with Elizabeth, “Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me and I laugh at them whenever I can.”

This is the charm and power of P&P. It can be considered a morality play, with a self-respecting, yet thoroughly human heroine, delivered through the medium of laughter. For who of us who love Elizabeth do not dearly love to laugh?


(* dysfunctional not to the stringent, violent or abusive degree we may understand that word today, but certainly to a degree which is morally negligent and reprehensible and brings shame and lasting unhappiness to the family.)

And a final interesting quote:
“In Pride and Prejudice, everything about Elizabeth—her poverty, her inferior social position, the behaviour of her family, her initial preference for Wickham, and her refusal of Darcy’s first offer of marriage—all these things ideologically should lead if not to death, at best to genteel poverty and spinsterhood.”
Karen Newman, “Can this marriage be saved:  Jane Austen makes sense of an ending,”