In John Keats’ famous short
poem, “On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again,” he remarks that
“When through the old oak forest I am gone,/Let me not wander in a barren
dream,/But, when I am consumed in the fire/Give me phoenix wings to fly at my
desire.” Obviously art is not life, so
in some respect we look to books (among other things) as a kind of escape. Not, I hope, merely to bury our heads in the
sand or even to indulge in voyeuristic fantasies; instead, it is a kind of
leave-taking of the earth by trying on new forms—an entirely new identity. Thus it is not a “barren dream,” but a way to
kindle our fiery passions into new life, rising on the “phoenix wings” of an
author’s thoughts. The best works of
art, such as King Lear seduce us out of our workaday world and offer us
visions of new worlds which seem tantalizingly close to home. Many a book lover would jump at the chance to
live in his or her favorite book, even as a minor character; these worlds are
not necessarily ‘better’ than our own, but the presence of the author assures us
they are observed and shaped by a loving hand (even if Gloucester’s eyes are
gouged out and Cordelia is hanged!).
Ultimately I think we identify with the creator, and want him/her to
guide our own lives, welcoming us home from exile and marrying us off to our
Fitzwilliam Darcy or Elizabeth Bennet.
Which brings me to reason for writing this post, as I recently sat down
to read Pride and Prejudice once again—so many times now I’ve frankly
lost count.
In a certain sense, this is a
difficult book to re-read. After all,
there are two very famous adaptations based on the book that imagine every
particular, and the plot has been so much discussed and appropriated that there
are no longer any surprises. Even Mansfield
Park and Northanger Abbey have moments where you forget a certain
detail or conversation and nearly fall over backwards in surprise. Not so Pride and Prejudice, where one
conversations leads seamlessly, but predictably, to another, and the inevitable
union of Elizabeth and Darcy is nowhere to be contradicted, much less by
Elizabeth’s doubting—and often clueless—narration. In some sense, it reminds me of Jerry
Seinfeld’s quip against people who keep books at home—roughly, “why keep them
around, are you really going to read them again?” Indeed, why read Pride and Prejudice again
when you know everything about Darcy, about Wickham, about the contents of that
fateful letter which unmasks them both?
Is it merely to relive familiar haunts, or indulge in the sheer romance
of a well-told love story?
Ironically, Keats never really
tells us anything about King Lear—what brought him back to it, what his
favorite scenes are, his favorite characters, his favorite lines. What emerges from his poem is the sense of
beholding a sublime moment in art, like watching an advancing thunderstorm roar
in the distance. We’ve seen thunder,
rain, lightning, even hail dozens—perhaps hundreds of times. Why see it again? Because it’s a powerful, visceral experience:
it lives and breathes, and seems quite capable of flicking us out of
existence. True, the experience of
reading King Lear is quite different from Pride and Prejudice,
but in the end both are sublime in exactly this way. I never get the feeling I’m reading a work of
‘art’ fashioned by a writer consciously shaping characters and situations to
conform to an overall theme. No, this is
as natural as the wind and as musical as the ocean. While in the presence of such works you are
at once awed by the power that dared to conceived it, yet consoled by the
reality that it does exist and that you can be part of it, even if only
for as long as it takes to read the book.
And the book is never quite the same book you picked up before, even if
you know the plot and can recite all the dialogue verbatim. You are older; you are wiser; you are sadder;
you are more content; you are looking for solace; you are looking for
inspiration; you are reveling in Austen’s syntax the way you sit back and bask
in the melodies of a Mozart piano concerto.
In short, it’s not the story or the characters—however divine these
are—but the sheer pleasure of being swept away by something larger than
anything we can dream into existence.
Even if she could.
And yet, there are many surprises when you re-read Pride and Prejudice. The most obvious one for me is the sheer
audacity of Austen’s prose. By audacity I
mean her fearless ability to be witty at everyone’s expense—no small task for
an unmarried spinster! Not that wit was
something new (Congreve and Fielding had that market cornered several
generations earlier), but to see a woman doing it—and doing it so artfully—is a
marvel to behold. Take, for example, the
hilarious (in a darkly comic sense) letter Mr. Collins writes to the Bennet
family upon learning of Lydia’s elopement:
“I feel myself called upon, by our relationship,
and my situation in life, to condole you on the grevious affliction you are now
suffering under…No arguments shall be wanting on my part, that can alleviate so
severe a misfortune; or that may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be
of all others most afflicting to a parent’s mind. The death of your daughter would have been a
blessing in comparison of this…[Lady Catherine and her daughter] agree with me
in apprehending that this false step in one daughter, will be injurious to the
fortunes of all others, for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly
says, will connect themselves with such a family. And this consideration leads me moreover to
reflect with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last November, for
had it been otherwise, I must have been involved in all your sorrow and
disgrace.”
In his usual tone-deaf way,
Collins says exactly the wrong things in a letter meant to console. Yet he goes much further by his sheer
stupidity in claiming to know what a parent would feel—and then suggesting that
it would be better if Lydia had died!
What parent would think or feel so?
In classic satirical fashion, Mr. Collins invokes his duty rather than
his love, and then goes on to thank himself, more or less, for not marrying
Elizabeth; otherwise, “I must have been involved in all your sorrow and
disgrace.” That Austen could even devise
this speech is a testament to her genius.
This idiot of a clergyman is too concerned with his own position and
prosperity to ever think of another’s feelings, even for the few minutes it
must have taken to write this letter. Invoking
Lady Catherine as his unimpeachable authority, he reminds the family that they
are ruined socially and that this may well be the last letter he writes them
(unless he really takes pity on them!).
What kind of response did he imagine from such a letter? Hilariously, I’m sure he expected them to be
deeply moved and appreciative of his “condescension.”
Now imagine Austen writing this:
an unmarried woman, the daughter of a clergyman herself, who dared to write saucy
novels lampooning the pretensions of her wayward society. It was not for nothing that her nieces and
nephews took great pains to excuse her conduct posthumously, reminding readers
that “She did not rank any work of Fielding quite so high. Without the slightest affectation she
recoiled from everything gross. Neither
nature, wit, nor humour, could make her amends for so very low a scale of morals”
(Henry Austen, Biographical Notice). Certainly, too, such a deadly satirical
portrait was never drawn for life—goodness no!
And we know this for a fact, since Henry Austen also reminds us, “She
drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never
from individuals.” Of course not!
The satirical humor in this
novel is so extensive and varied that an entire encyclopedia could scarcely do
it justice. It ranges from the dark
humor above to a more gleeful, self-satisfied mockery, as in the case of
Caroline Bingley’s attempts to mock Darcy out of love with Elizabeth:
“I particularly recollect your saying one night,
after they had been dining at Netherfield, ‘She a beauty!—I should as soon call
her mother a wit.’ But afterwards she
seemed to improve upon you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one
time.”
“Yes,” replied Darcy, who could contain himself
no longer, “but that was only when I first knew her, for it is many months
since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”
He then went away, and Miss Bingley was felt to
all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but
herself.”
Like Fielding (who we know she did read, as her letters mention her reading
Tom Jones with Tom Lefroy, her
one-time beau), Austen is able to dissect society to its mean artifices and
petty triumphs. Yet what makes this
novel more than an exercise in 18th century wit is her deep
compassion for all her characters, even the ones who seem on first glance to be
trivial buffoons. Mrs. Bennet comes in
for great mockery in the novel, and yet once Elizabeth is made to realize her
own prejudices against Darcy, she also realizes how rashly she has judged her
own mother. On the same hand, she has
given her father all too much license to be wise and discerning. As Austen writes,
“Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and
that appearance of good humour, which you and beauty generally give, had
married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in
their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished
for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown…She had
always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his
affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not
overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal
obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own
children, was so highly reprehensible.”
This is a sober moment in the
book, when the satirical ribbing of Mr. Bennet becomes more sinister than the obsequiousness
of Mr. Collins and his like. No wonder
Elizabeth is Mrs. Bennet’s least favorite daughter (as she, herself, reflects
before trying to marry her off to Mr. Collins); Elizabeth had grown up largely despising
her small-minded obsession with getting husbands. However, one could just as easily argue Mrs.
Bennet was being more of a realist than her husband, who seems to have washed
his hands of all five daughters long ago.
That she cared to provide for them—even in her crass, misguided way—says
a lot about her character, as well as Elizabeth’s inability to read parental
affection.
Elizabeth’s character, too,
moves remarkably and believably from an eager, satirical ‘wit’ to a more
cautious woman of feeling, suddenly aware of having to read people as people—not
as characters in this or that romantic novel.
As a great reader, she naturally sees the world in novelistic terms—all the
more so when characters take their cue from fiction (Wickham, Collins, and in
some aspects, even Darcy). But no
romantic hero is spun from whole cloth, and we only discern character by re-reading, much as Pride and Prejudice itself is better appreciated once the plot is
known and we can read for character, rather than plot. Ironically, it is Darcy’s letter that teaches
her to stop ‘reading’ and truly look. It
is a lesson learned previously by Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, who imagines herself in a Gothic novel, and
Marianne Dashwood, whose beau seems to have skipped right out of a Walter Scott
novel. Yet Elizabeth is a step removed
since we see how she changes much
more gradually and artfully. Catherine
is thrown out of the Abbey and Marianne takes to her sick bed—all very
convenient, in some ways, to affect a grand transformation. Nothing actually happens to Elizabeth other
than a proposal which she refuses. What
makes her change is not the plot; it is herself. She decides to change based on emotion and
reason (or sense and sensibility,
perhaps).
The same, of course, is true
for Darcy; he teaches her to read just as he, himself, learns the importance of
being read. As he remarks after his second
proposal,
“I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection of what I then said, of my
conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has
been many months, inexpressibly painful to me.
Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you behaved in
a more gentleman-like manner.’ Those
were your words. You know not, you can
scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time, I
confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”
As a proud and dignified man,
he had no interesting in what ‘those people’ thought of him. He ruled himself—quite well, if he dared say
so himself—so the opinions of a Mrs. Bennet or even an Elizabeth Bennet
reflected more on their own meager abilities.
For Elizabeth, however, he realizes the pain that a single glance, a
single misplaced word can bestow. Few
people want to consciously cause pain, yet few realize how easily pain is
dispensed upon the ‘underlings’ of the world.
Not surprisingly, Darcy changes the way most of us change: we fall in
love with one person, and through that person we begin to see the world. Initially he wants to be kind to her, to protect
her, be civil to her aunt and uncle, and then to her wayward sister, and then…well,
he’s become something of a decent human being.
This is one of the few novels I can think of where education is the means of romance.
They learn to be people before they fall in love, which is the polar
opposite of almost any other novel or movie that even flirts with romance. Is education sexy? Not surprisingly, Jane Austen can make
anything sexy.
I could go on and on,
obviously, but I’ll end here with the observation that Pride and Prejudice should be revisited, and often. When Austen initially wrote the book it was
an epistolary novel entitled “First Impressions.” She drastically re-wrote the book to reflect
more Romantic tastes (I imagine the first version might have sounded a bit more
like Lady Susan or her unfinished
novel, Catherine), though this
central idea, how we read and misread the world, remained intact. All reading is a mixture of pride (I’m too
good to read those sorts of books!) and prejudice (oh, I know where this is
headed!) yet this invites all sorts of confusion and misdirection. To be truly educated, the novel suggests, is
to read yourself before you read others.
To listen before you pronounce. And
to fall in love with the person who most captivates your intellect, regardless
of their class, background, or parents(!).
I fell in love the first time I read Pride
and Prejudice at 17 or 18 without even knowing why, and later felt almost
embarrassed for doing so (it’s a chick book,
isn’t it?). Good books, however, and
neither ‘chick lit’ nor ‘Young adult’ nor ‘world’s classics.’ They are simply there, waiting to be read,
and waiting to bear us off on the “phoenix wings” of desire. Until our next reading…
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