Rereading Jane Austen, _Pride and Prejudice_

[mmcirvin]

This was the other free novel included with the Android Kindle reader. I remember it being one of the pieces of required college reading I liked the most, but I didn't really remember that much about it.

I think I saw more in it this time around. I don't have a lot to say about it that isn't already covered well on its TVTropes page. But when I first read it, I remember mostly liking the characters of Elizabeth Bennet and her father: the clever, cynical, wisecracking ones. This time around, I think I was more able to see the faults Austen portrays in both of them and how they eventually start to recognize those faults and mitigate or work around them. Also, the chafing against the social system they're in that all of these characters do, though Austen never makes it completely explicit. Mr. Darcy is a subtly written, complicated character too: a gentleman with excessive class-consciousness but also real nobility of character, combined with a kind of introverted social ineptitude.

But what really struck me this time is Austen's skill at writing all the various types of completely horrible people: the backstabbing social saboteur; the moralizing prig without a speck of empathy; the charming, self-justifying, sociopathic cad; the loaded high-class tyrant and the people who suck up to her. As well as those who, without being outright nasty, perpetuate the nastiness through lack of perspective or simply to survive.

Comments

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I love that novel, of course, and identified strongly with Lizzie, of course. Mr. Darcy does not come from arguably excessive wealth but otherwise much resembles Mr. Darcy from the book. Which, of course, is why he's called that. ;)

I remember on my most recent reading sympathizing a bit more with Mrs. Bennett. Even though Mr. Bennett is more likeable, it's his wife who recognizes that finding marriages for all their daughters is necessary to secure their futures.

People talk about Austen's books as romances, but I love them for their sharp observations of human personality and behavior.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she's a profoundly irritating person, but her driving obsession is basically motivated by what a woman had to do to survive, especially in a family with no sons (which is the main financial motivator of much of the plot).

And Mr. Bennet, for all his entertainment value, seems like he's just decided he's screwed and given up on anything other than viewing the world with detached amusement for three quarters of the book.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

...And, yeah, I was thinking of your references to your Mr. Darcy. Based on my very dim memories of the book I couldn't initially see why you called him that; I mostly remembered what was going on between Darcy and Elizabeth as Hollywood-esque unresolved-sexual-tension hostility. But it's not quite that, actually, and there's a lot more to him.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I'm on the verge of finishing Mansfield Park, which is the second Austen book I've read, the first having been Pride and Prejudice. (I've also read P&P&Zombies-- it's hilarious. People don't argue, they just do battle. Lizzie vs. Lady Catherine is an epic fight.)

I've seen movie versions or miniseries of all but Northanger Abbey, and I note in both of those stores, as well as Sense and Sensibility that there's always an uneasy scandal that, much later when the facts come out, reveals everyone's true colors. Actually, S&S has a big scandal and a smaller one. Persuasion is more subtle, and involves the main character having a misunderstanding the nearly torpedoes her happy ending.

Scandal is a strong word for what in some cases amount to hidden engagements-- one gets the sense that those sorts of things went on a lot with the young people, in those days, living within the social order and defying it with secret pacts that cause them to act so unexpected to the outside world.

You mention: "the backstabbing social saboteur; the moralizing prig without a speck of empathy; the charming, self-justifying, sociopathic cad; the loaded high-class tyrant and the people who suck up to her."

These characters reappear often enough in the other stories-- though there's no Lady Catherine in Mansfield Park, her trait is split among a few other characters.

I don't know if you've read any Connie Willis, but she's a writer of excellent character-driven SF and she clearly knows her Austen and her PG Wodehouse, to name another genius master of the "manners comedy." She's also an unabashed Anglophile (because of or in addition to, one wonders), and all of her protagonists are constantly frustrated by self-involved idiots, bureaucrats, secret pacts, high-class tyrants, and a couple of MacGuffins that'll make you laugh out loud.

The exception is to that style among Willis's works is one of hear earliest and best stories, a Hugo and Nebula-winning short called "The Last of the Winnebagoes," which the future marches on for humans, but man's best friend has met his apocalypse (as have, for the most part, recreational vehicles). But I strongly recommend her time-travel books: Short story "Firewatch," and novels "Doomsday Book," "To Say Nothing of the Dog," (which leads you to the rewarding read of Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog")) and this past year's outstanding 2-volume Novel, "Blackout" and "All Clear," set in the London Blitz, concurrent with Firewatch.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I remember reading "Last of the Winnebagoes" a long time ago. I've heard a lot of UK readers complaining about the portrayal of 1940s English culture in "Blackout/All Clear".