Tag Archives: Pride and Prejudice

Great Fall Reads: Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” & Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?”

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On a recent vacation, I was fascinated by Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, a smart 1,003- page novel about the perils of being rich and female in the 18th century. 

And then Burney pointed me in the direction of Jane Austen, when, on page 930, she repeated the phrase PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (all caps) three times. 

Yes, Jane Austen took the clever title from Burney’s Cecilia. 

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most popular novel, and  perhaps it is her best. Austen herself said modestly that P&P was “rather too light & bright & sparkling,” but her fans are enraptured by the romantic comedy and witty dialogue.  

She borrows tropes from her favorite 18th-century novels and adapts then neatly to fit domestic fiction.  But she is never conventional:  she veers off course during love scenes, or, in Mansfield Park, goes so far as to make Edmund, who is the closest thing to a hero in the book, so indifferent to Fanny that we almost prefer his rakish rival.  In P&P, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are so mismatched that Elizabeth’s father and her older sister can’t believe it when she says they’re engaged.

In a way, I know what they mean, but it is all part of the comedy. Austen’s heroes are often deeply flawed.  Darcy insults Elizabeth at a ball, deplores her silly mother’s character, and later during a marriage proposal adds that he tried to resist his love because of her disgraceful family.  How do they get together? You have to read the book.

The Concept of a River’s Personhood

 Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is a River Alive?, explains the concept of rivers as living beings.  Part nature writing, part travel writing, part science, this beautiful book is a lyrical description of rivers and their need for protection.   On his journeys to three countries he “meets” rivers and converses with scientists and activists. He paints a convincing portrait of the personhood of rivers.   He even refers to rivers by the relative pronoun, who.

I had no idea there was a Rights of Nature movement.  In many countries, rivers are now protected by law. Macfarlane says that a city council in Sussex in England “has acknowledged the rights and legal personhood of the River Ouse.”   

I picked up Macfarlane’s book because of a near-total fish kill in two rivers in the Midwest.

 A year and a half ago a fertilizer spill in southwest Iowa  killed over 750,000 fish in the East Nishnabotna River in Iowa and the Missouri River in Missouri.  It was a near-total fish kill in both states.

I understand that the rivers will come back – but this was a tragedy. As far as I know, no new measures have been legislated to protect the rivers.

“Pride and Prejudice” & “You’ve Got Mail”

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Nora Ephron’s enchanting comedy, You’ve Got Mail, is my favorite film version of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Directed by Nora Ephron and written by Nora and her sister Delia Ephron, it is not an exact retelling but is playfully allusive. Set in New York in the ’90s, it is also a romance of bookshops.

Ephron’s modern Elizabeth and Darcy meet on AOL and fall in love over their charming emails. They don’t know each other’s real names, and have never met “face-to-face,” but they are in the same business (sort of). Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) owns a small children’s bookstore and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks)  owns Fox Books, a national bookstore chain.  The two are about to become business rivals:  Kathleen’s shop is in jeopardy because a branch of Fox Books is opening around the corner.

A modern Darcy and Elizabeth in “You’ve Got Mail”

We are expecting a Frank Capra movie, where the little guy, i.e., Kathleen’s bookstore, survives. But Fox Books puts Kathleen’s bookshop out of business. Of course they are the perfect couple and we are delighted when they fall in love; yet because her shop closes, a large part of her future is missing from the movie. Coldn’t Joe have saved her bookshop? That would have been lovely. Will she work at Fox Books? But one of her former employees is now in charge of the children’s book department. What will her role be exactly? Shouldn’t Ephron have wrapped things up better professionally for Kathleen?

The best thing about re-watching You’ve Got Mail is that it inspired me to reread Pride and Prejudice. In one of my favorite scenes, Joe reads P&P, because it is Kathleen’s favorite book. He comically wonders aloud which character is Pride and which is Prejudice.

On this rereading of Jane’s most beloved book, I noticed immediately that Darcy lacks Joe Fox’s charm and good manners. Both are rich and good-looking, but Darcy doesn’t have much humor. At a country ball, Darcy declines to dance with the local girls. And when his friend Mr. Bingley suggests that he ask Elizabeth Bennet to dance, he answers.

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough tto tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

Elizabeth overhears this and laughs at him. Of course later in the novel Darcy falls in love with her and proposes. But, being Darcy, he adds that he is embarrassed by her family. And it takes Elizabeth and us readers several more chapters to realize Darcy is afflicted by pride (or is it prejudice?) and that Elizabeth has been afflicted by prejudice (or is it pride?).

By the way, Austen took the title, Pride and Prejudice, from Fanny Burney’s Cecilia. 

Near the end of that brilliant if sprawling novel, Burney writes, “The whole of this unfortunate business… has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE.” 

Price Tags in “Pride and Prejudice”

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Pride and Prejudice is a comedy about love, or an existential comedy about the incongruity of love. Elizabeth Bennet’s friend, Charlotte Lucas,28, marries a ridiculous vicar she does not esteem because she has no suitors and wants a home of her own. Twenty-year-old Elizabeth, the spirited, witty heroine, is not seduced by money or status. She nobly declines to be charmed by Mr. Darcy after he is rude to her at a ball.  Darcy is impossibly handsome, impossibly rich, and impossibly snobbish.  He concedes that Elizabeth has fine eyes and that her older sister Jane is pretty but despises their mother, the ineffably silly Mrs. Bennet.  

Elizabeth may resist the love of lucre, but everything comes with a price tag in Pride and Prejudice. Every income and/or estate is analyzed down to the last penny. Mrs. Bennet is joyous when Mr. Bingley, a well-to-do young man, rents Netherfield and brings a small party, among them his best friend Darcy and his own two sisters. Mrs. Bennet hopes fantastically to marry off one of her daughters to Bingley.

Soon the whole town is buzzing about the money. 

We learn:

“Mr. Bingley inherited money to the amount of nearly a hundred thousand pounds.”

His two unpleasant sisters “had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and associating with people of rank.”

And then there is Darcy, the hero of this love story.  Everyone at the ball is impressed “with Darcy’s fine, tall person, handsome features noble mien, and the report which was in circulation within five minutes of his entrance of him having ten thousand a year.”

He alienates the people of Meryton by refusing to dance with the local girls.  After all, money can go only so far in gaining esteem.  Elizabeth continues to hate him, even after he changes his mind about her and begins to make overtures of love.

During this fourth or fifth reading, I questioned whether Darcy is “Pride” and Elizabeth “Prejudice.”  Darcy and Lizzie both seem to me to personify both qualities. Who is proudest, who is most prejudiced? Lizzie is pert and abrupt with Darcy, misunderstanding his character on the word of an attractive soldier who spreads vile rumors about him.  And when Darcy proposes to Lizzie, he is so rude that he actually say he has tried to defeat his love for her because of her deplorable mother and family connections.. Who would not say “No” to that? Darcy’s social skills are terrible!

But Darcy comes to the rescue when the youngest and silliest Bennet sister, Lydia, elopes with a libertine. Only later does Lizzie learn that Darcy negotiated with and paid the man to marry Lydia after he had tracked them down.

And then, ZOWIE! Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle vacation in Derbyshire and decide to tour Pemberley, Darcy’s estate. Elizabeth can’t help but think she could have been the mistress of this great house.  And when they run into Darcy, let us just say there is chemistry between Darcy and Elizabeth.

There is more comedy to come, because everyone is confused about Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy. No one, not even her older sister Jane, believes Elizabeth should marry Darcy.  Mr. Bennet strongly advises her to think again.  He believes she is marrying for money.  “My dear Lizzie, I would- I do congratulate you – but are you certain?  Forgive the question – are you quite certain that you could be happy with him?”

And “Are  you out of your mind to be accepting this man?  Have you not always  hated him?”

All this is hilarious, of course, though it raises certain issues: penniless Elizabeth and rich Darcy are in love, but Darcy has paid for her esteem by helping Lydia.  Yet it is a completely satisfying ending of a marriage plot. Austen wickedly leaves us with a few questions, but this is a gentle comedy.

The Enigma of Mr. Darcy

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 Mr. Darcy is an enigma. I find him romantic against my better judgment. I recently reread Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s most famous novel, and as always I enjoyed it. She entertains us with a portrayal of the comic chaos of the Bennet family, the charming relationship between quick-witted Elizabeth and her too-kind older sister, Jane, and the boisterous younger sisters, bold Lydia  and coquettish Kitty, and tedious Mary, who insists on singing and playing the piano at dinner parties – to no one’s enjoyment.  


But then we get to the sparring romance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.  How did this happen? Of course I know how – but Mr. Darcy is an enigma.

I am always cautious of Mr. Darcy.  I am delighted to fall in love with him, but in the first half of the novel I ask myself, Who is that man?
        

Matthew Macfayden and Keira Knightly (2005)

Mind you, viewers of the film versions have reason to trust Darcy’s transformation.  Colin Firth, in the superb TV series (1995), is apparently remembered for his wet shirt scene, which does not occur in Austen’s novel: what I  remember is his believable transition into a charmer.  And then there is the sullenly gorgeous Matthew Macfadyen in the movie with Keira Knightley (2005) – who can keep her eyes off him?  Macfadyen, too, is a beliveable charmer, but Austen’s Darcy is Delphically inscrutable.  
               

Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle (1995)

In the beginning of the novel,  Mr. Darcy is grumpy. He refuses to dance at a small-town ball, though his friend, Mr. Bingley, who has been dancing with beautiful Jane Bennet, urges him to dance with Elizabeth, because there are not enough men.  Mr. Darcy wounds Elizabeth’s feelings:  she overhears him say of her, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; I am in no humor at present to give consequence to ladies who are slighted by other men.”

That is brutal.  But Mr. Darcy goes further:  he disapproves so highly of Mr. Bingley’s falling in love with Jane that he persuades him to move back to London.  And he convinces him that Jane is superficial, and that the Bennets’ connections are embarrassing and beneath him.

Not to give away the plot,  but Mr. Darcy changes his feelings and proposes to Elizabeth.  He is rude:  he says he has fought against his love for her because her family and connections are so beneath him, especially Mrs. Bennet and her relations. Elizabeth refuses the proposal in no uncertain terms. 

But later, Mr. Darcy does become gallant.  And when we contrast him with the soldier, Wickham, so handsome, so sympathetic, and popular with the Bennet girls …well, appearances are misleading.

I love Mr. Darcy.  But just once, I wish Jane Austen would (have) create(d) a male character I could truly admire.  Reluctant Marianne in Sense and Sensibility is married off to Colonel Brandon (who  falls in love with her in her teens, when he is 35), after her lover turns out to be a cad; Knightley in Emma is intelligent and courteous but again much older and too much a father figure, I think; Edmund in Mansfield Park, the clergyman who is kind to his cousin, Fanny, and with whom she falls in love, throws over all good sense when he falls in love with worldly Mary Crawford-  is he worth Fanny’s love?  The only Austen hero I love and admire is Captain Wentworth in Persuasion.  He is not only intelligent, kind, and fun, but actually sexy – don’t you think?

Walter A. Raleigh, an English scholar (1879-1922), wrote of the men in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:


She knows a lot; and I believe she knows what she doesn’t know.  At least, I shouldn’t like to believe that she thought she knew anything about married people or young men.  Her married people are merely a bore or a comfort to the young – nothing to each other.  Her young men, by Gawd!  I will take only Darcy and Bingley.  Of course they have no profession – they have money.  But there is no scrap of evidence, no indication, that they can do anything, shoot a partridge, or add up figures, or swim or brush their hair.  They never talk of anything except young women, a subject taboo among decent young men.  (I find that women mostly don’t know that men never talk intimately about them.  Jane didn’t know this.)   Well, Darcy and Bingley have only one object in life – getting married, and marrying their friends one to another.

It is incredible, immense, yet it deludes you.


I did laugh at this, though I recall that Darcy invites Elizabeth’s uncle to go fishing at Pemberley when Elizabeth and the aunt and uncle are exploring the grounds as tourists.  That is something, isn’t it? We do not, of course, see the fishing scene!

Being in love with a fictional character can be a trial.  What do you think of Mr. Darcy?

This is, by the way, one of Jane’s most magnificent novels. The films are great fun, but are not to be compared to the book.