My wife was amazed at how much I am enjoying Pride and Prejudice. "I don't know", she replied when pressed as to the source of this amazement. "It just doesn't seem like a YOU book."
In the interest of full disclosure my wife, upon first reading many years ago, disliked the book. While traveling for a summer in England during college one of her travel companions (a Lit Chick to the fullest measure, I am told) was aghast at the realization that my wife and never read Jane Austen or either of the Bronte sisters. She read multiple works by the three and found Pride and Prejudice to be her least favorite of the three. "Elizabeth just seemed dumb and floofy", she continued.
I have to admit that at first glance Elizabeth does seem pretty "dumb and floofy", but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
I walked into this novel with half-baked preconceptions (I'd use the word "prejudices" but I don't want to seem too clever) and enough culturally absorbed reference points to fill a snuff box. For the first few chapters I was laughing out loud enough to make my son wonder what was going on and my daughter to scold me for interrupting her schoolwork. So far the wit of this novel is the most enjoyable part.
Mr. Bennet has to be my favorite character with Mr. Darcy being a close second. If you know me personally I doubt that you are shocked by this. My first instinct is to believe it is because they are two of the few prominent male characters, but I think it goes a bit deeper than that.
I feel that in my life I have one foot in each of the characters. Both are caught in a society whose games they only wish to play as minimally as necessary, and are not ones to suffer fools.
Darcy is the younger man with years ahead of him and obviously deeply wounded, but not one to mope about it...though I was one to mope about it and write horrible poetry... I love that his trust and opinion of a person, once violated or earned, is extremely difficult to shift. His biting wit and double meanings of phrases delights me to no end. I know he seems rude, but if I was at a party he'd be the one I'd want to meet and get to know.
Mr. Bennet (who in my mind I see as Tom Wilkinson and was surprised he never played. Real tragedy. He'd be perfect.) I relate to as a father. I love his minimal nonsense outlook on life. I'm sure he adores Mrs. Bennet despite the fact that he calls her on her ridiculous points. I feel the most for him after reading about the entail. Five daughters and once Mr. Bennet dies there is no way to provide for them or his wife. It is honorable that he doesn't complain, openly, about the situation. Were I in that situation I'd be trying to marry my daughters off to anyone who would have them because it is, in fact, a fairly desperate circumstance. He'd be right to have that disposition, but instead he takes time and care. Possibly my favorite exchange is after Elizabeth's refusal to the proposal of Mr. Collins,
"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. -Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."
I love that Father's heart that still, in desperate circumstances, wants what is best or his daughter even if it means destitution in the future.
They are both fairly grumpy but capable of great love and so I see them as very similar sides of the same coin...and one I quite like and find in myself.
Mr. Bingley is pretty much an non-entity to me so far. He's there. Jane likes him. Everyone likes him. Meh. Bingley's sister is a bit of a snake. Wickham is clearly the Hugh Grant character of Bridget Jones' Diary.
And that is rather the problem. So much of it I wonder if I'd feel the same if it wasn't for all the cultural osmosis I've involuntarily ingested over the year. That's not to say that I'm not enjoying it. I certainly am and plowing through it at twice my normal rate, looking for spare minutes and a dedicated hour if I can manage it to sneak away to read. I do wonder if that cultural osmosis has tainted my opinion of Elizabeth, because right now I agree with my wife. She's pretty dumb. But then again, given the title, maybe that is the author's intent. She IS perfectly situated in temperament between the level headed and prudent Jane and her two younger sisters, the flighty and crush obsessed Catherine and Lydia. I find myself hoping that we get some more situations with the youngest, the book worm Mary.
My wife delighted me the other day when she told me she got Pride and Prejudice on audiobook for her commutes. I have loved it when, in the past, we happen to be reading the same book. We have some of the best conversations of our married life during those times. Especially during Atlas Shrugged. Those were pretty epic sessions. She did caution me not to get too used to it since she'll certainly not be walking into War and Peace with me. That's fair, says I. I'm a little scared of Tolstoy myself. Pretty sure I'm going to need a wall chart to keep and a "Cliff's Notes" on that one.
I left our young heroines (see...I can't really call Elizabeth a heroine...sigh...maybe my opinion will change) at the end of Chapter 21 where Jane relates to Lizzy the contents of a letter from the young Miss Bingley that indicates the party has left Netherfield and is not likely to return...at which point Mr. Bingley might be engaged to...Darcy's SISTER! (*dun dun dunnnn*)
(Seriously...with a location name like Netherfield...Austen was kind of asking for a novel Zombification. Just sayin'.)
I was truly delighted that quite a number of times this novel sent me running for my Webster's Dictionary. I'm a big word nerd (I've been known to read the dictionary for fun...and laugh while reading it due to a particularly ingenious etymology) so that was quite a treat.
Ductile: Maleable.
Panegyric: A public speech or published text in praise of someone or something.
Laconic: Using very few words
Asperity: Harshness in tone or manner
Eclat: Brilliant display or effect
Hauteur: Haugtiness of manner; disdainful pride
Probity: The quality of having strong moral principles; honesty and decency.
Also I discovered for the first time "&c." at the end of one of the letters. I had never seen that before in all my life and delved into my book of "style" and found that it is one of two abbreviations for Et Cetera.
When the couples were described as "at loo" during one of the evenings Jane was ill at Netherfield I knew I had to be missing something. As an Anglophile and adorer of all things BBC related my only reference for the word "loo" was the lavatory, the water closet, the toilet. I knew that couldn't be it. Apparently "Loo" was a card game in which people gambled for money. Another game discussed was "Vignt Un" (Twenty One in French) which we know today as Blackjack. "Piquet" is similar to Spades or Hearts but played with a deck of 32 cards instead, and "Whist" is one of the root games that spawned what retired women the world over know as Bridge. Apparently "Whist" was one of those "minute to learn, lifetime to master" sort of games. Personally, I love old games like this (seriously. I bought a game called "Funny Bones" primarily because of it's historical legacy as a game played by Romans using knuckle bones) and I may have to see about digging up the ancient rules for it. Also I did some digging and found that the "quadrille" they dance during the ball at Netherfield (that was a "dance of mortification" for Lizzy due to Mr. Collins) is from whence we get Square Dancing here in the good ol' U S of A.
All in all it's been a great read. The whit and the subtle and overt biting comments back and forth are what really keep me going back to the book.
See you all at the next third of the novel.
Yours,
&c.
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