I started reading this novel with a certain amount of my own prejudice. As I mentioned before, most of what I knew was patchy at best. What I did know was that Lit. girls, who I do have the utmost respect for (Seriously, vapid cheerleader types have nothing on you ladies.), would rabidly consume every iteration of the movies and mini-series and be reduced to group swooning and fawning. I didn't get it...and as far as the swooning bit, I still don't get it...however...
That being said, I have finished Pride and Prejudice in its entirety and am ready to give my personal verdict on it...in good time.
The final third of the novel is where things really start picking up. Lydia runs off to Brighton, elopes with Wickham which sends everything into a complete tempestuous tizzy, quite naturally. Before the elopement is revealed, Lizzy and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner visit Pemberley while Darcy is away. Lizzy learns that Darcy is an altogether different fellow when at home, a far more likable person who is quite honorable and generous to all about him regardless of station. She meets his sister and just as she questions her refusal of him the Jerry Springer train wreck that is Lydia Bennet and George Wickham hits.
As the family is dealing with this crisis Mary gives one of my favorite lines, "...we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other, the balm of sisterly consolation." (LORD, I love language.)
Mr. Bennet throws down and goes after Wickham. Upon his return Kitty has the ill sense to bring up how much better she would have behaved to which he declares, "And you are never to stir out of doors till you can prove, that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner."
Things fall as they do, and Wickham and Lydia are...pretty much perfect for each other but the worst sort of people to everyone else, which is evidenced when they happen by Longbourn after the wedding.
Bingley returns to Netherfield with Darcy, and thus begins the renewed courtship of Jane. After the engagement Lady Catherine de Bourgh arrives to dissuade Lizzy from being engaged to Darcy, not that Darcy has asked. Chapter 56, which I refer to as the Clash of the Titans, is by far my favorite part in the novel. Why? Because this is where Mr. Bennet gets paid.
What do I mean by that? I've previously stated that the two characters I identify with the most, and are my favorites, are Darcy and Mr. Bennet. Whether that is because I'm male or not, I'm not sure. One of the elements of this novel is how the Bennet girls fall along a spectrum somewhere between their father, a very rational, logical, honorable man, and their mother who is flighty, fairly ditzy, and overly concerned with appearances and the social ladder. Jane, Elizabeth, and Mary land closer to their father and Lydia and Kitty are rather closer to their mother on this spectrum. It has jumped out at me from the start what kind of a father Mr. Bennet was and how much he tried to instill in his daughters. He was a man, more than just about anything, concerned with their happiness and well being. While Mrs. Bennet just wants to see her daughter's married to anyone at all, Mr. Bennet actually wants to see them married to the right person. As I mentioned, he valued logic and rationality over the social order, and Lizzy's battle of words with Lady Catherine is something I dearly wish Mr. Bennet could have overheard. All his work investing in her paid off right there. When later she agrees to marry Darcy her father is so confused in her acceptance, as he should be given how much Lizzy has kept from everyone. He is at such a loss as to why she would agree that he isn't sure he knows who she is anymore. Mr. Bennet tells her that it's more than just about pretty dresses, assuming that he's misjudged her actions and maybe she is more like her mother than he thought. Thankfully she talks him down from that ledge by revealing more about the situation.
As a dad I can only hope to be there one day to find out that my own daughter actually took to heart everything I've expended so much effort to teach her and it has aided her well.
I was struck so completely, once everything was revealed, by just how honorable Darcy was. I want to leave some surprises for those who may not have read the book, which means glossing over the best bits, but to learn just how far he would go to fix his own mistakes and take care of those he loves was quite wonderful. His ability to admit when he was wrong and grow as a result is more admirable than I can describe. It's something that I have always tried to do once I realized that once a man can honestly admit (And self admit might I add. Someone forcing him to admit he was wrong doesn't work.) when he is wrong and has been wrong...a man can work wonders.
"What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your accusations were ill founded, formed on mistaken premises, my behavior at the time, had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence."
Quite predictably Darcy gives my favorite line of the whole novel when asked by Elizabeth when it was that he first fell in love with her.
"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."
First of all, dang...that's smooth. Secondly, I know those words to be sincere because they mirror precisely how I felt about the beginnings of love with my wife. Every other girl I dated I knew what I liked, where, when...but with Shelly...Heck, I don't even remember our first meeting because it all just blended together as if she'd always been there.
The closest I can get to a moment where I knew it was love was when she stepped off a plane and I was waiting there for her. This was back in the days when you could actually wait for a person at the arrival gate, in that enchanted world before 9/11. She stepped off and, no joke, everything slowed down and the color drained from everything around except her. There was never any going back after that, and still isn't.
So, overall what do I think of Pride and Prejudice?
Jane Austen is an absolute master of the novel. There is no single writer in all of modern fiction that I think even compares with her...at least in this single work. It isn't merely that it is entertaining and witty, which are all virtues that her work has. The thing that sets her apart, in my mind, is in the understanding of her characters. Not once did I read this novel and think "These people are crazy. There's no one out there like this." Everyone knows a Lizzy, or a Mary, or a Charlotte Lucas, and most people know two or three Lydias. This can be accomplished by other writers by providing a certain archetypal homogenized character development. Austen provides us with strikingly individual and fully realized characters...in 3D, as it were. And the truly amazing thing is that you don't know someone LIKE a Lizzy or a Mary, you know someone who IS a Lizzy, or a Mary.
In my experience the only other author that has had this sort of talent was Dickens. Granted, after I read the other 100BYSRBYD I may add more than a few names to that list, but she still beats out all modern authors I've ever read. Also surprising is how accurate she is in writing her male characters. It's often difficult for an author to create that vivid and true to life personality in a character that is opposite in gender to themselves. Austen is the Gene Kelly of this. It's hard as all get out, but she makes it look easy.
Final Word; There is a reason that this novel still finds a place on our bookshelves 202 years later. It truly is a book you MUST read before you die.
Pax,
W
PS. Please +1 and comment here on your experiences and favorite parts of Pride and Prejudice.
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