Sitting on the floor of my bedroom, everything covered in glitter. I've been making elephants...
And while making elephants, I decided to pop in the Keira Knightley version of "Pride & Prejudice" onto the DVD player. Let me just say, I know this movie like the back of my hand. I don't even have to watch it, I know it so well and I could probably quote half of it to you if you asked.
But I've been reading the book again lately and realizing that I don't know the book as well as I think... too much Keira if you ask me. I'm in the midst of a 7-week book discussion of P&P through my church and reading it again makes me realize I probably haven't actually read it since college... maybe high school? It's been a long time.
Which brings me to my next point: the movie is terrible.
Here I've been living on fluff when I could've been digesting real meat comparatively speaking. No surprise though. Tends to be the case with books and movies. With Jane Austen in particular. I guess I'd just allowed myself to settle for the live-action version.
And as I've been reading, I've been realizing some things, namely that Elizabeth doesn't like Mr. Darcy. And not just a little and not just on the surface. The girl genuinely dislikes him for a large portion of the book. All along, I think I've been seeing the story through the lenses of Romanticism... as in, thinking that she has this love-hate attraction to him; that she liked him all along somewhere underneath the cool exterior she presents and finally succumbs to him when she just can't take it anymore. Nope. Not the case. Austen is a Classicist through and through and so, we have to take her at her word when Elizabeth claims her dislike.
Elizabeth doesn't begin to fall for Darcy until... get this: she realizes he's good. And she only realizes he's good when she goes to Pemberley and sees his estate and how well it's taken care of and is told by the servants that he is the best master one could ever ask for... that they've never heard a harsh word from him and they've known him all his life.
When she tells him no initially, he goes away, owns up to his mistakes, and works to make amends. And then of course he pays for Lydia and Wickham's scandalously patched-up wedding and commission. The man is amazing. Which is why she marries him.
When you think about all he did for her, it's pretty incredible. Granted, it's fiction. But even in real life there are men like him. I know this because I've seen them. Other girls I know have married them. My grandpa is one of them. And mine is out there somewhere...
At the end of Season 4 of How I Met Your Mother, Ted's ex-girlfriend tells him a joke about how one time she got caught speeding on her way up to her parents. The state trooper stopped her and said, "I've been waiting here all day for you..." at which point she told him, "Officer, I promise I got here as fast as I could!" And then Stella turns to Ted and tells him that his person, the "mother" that he spends the entire series searching for, is coming to him... just as fast as she can.
I heard a song on the radio the other day (which I don't usually listen much to but every now and then I'll turn it up), which I thought was so beautiful... totally captures the way I've been feeling lately, which is an odd mixture of hope and longing, complicated by a radar that's still in the "off" position... for the most part ;) The lyrics are extremely cheesy, but the song is beautiful. And it's too bad that somehow this song had to end up in a trendy movie about a vampire couple... :/ Curse you, Twilight.
"... How can I love when I’m afraid to fall
But watching you stand alone
All of my doubt suddenly goes away somehow
One step closer
I have died everyday waiting for you
Darling don’t be afraid I have loved you
For a thousand years
I love you for a thousand more...
...All along I believed I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me...
... One step closer..."
from the song "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri
He's coming just as fast as he can, Katie.
Dear Katie,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I have to disagree on one hand, and agree on the other. Let's say, for friendship's sake, that I agree with your conclusions. Elizabeth finally sees Darcy in a different light, while she felt only disdain and a particular dislike for him. BUT (I would have italicized the 'but' if I had been given that possibility, capitalization is too harsh), Austen is not a Classicist, she definitely is a Romantic and a Realist, even a die-hard one.
Granted that her works (though not all) have to be inserted into that transition period from Neo-Classicism to Romanticism, but her Realistic buffets of the novels of sensibility (now the title os S&S takes on another perspective) pertain too much to Romanticism, even though she had to make her stories look like those novels she criticized by convention, thus her novels appear on the surface to be Classical works.
She really dislikes Darcy for all the reasons you know, but don't forget that the former title of P&P was "First Impressions". There is no liebestod (in italics please) for Elizabeth, only hate and contempt. She finally opens her eyes on him thanks to a series of events she might easily have overlooked.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." (The incipit of the book, as I'm sure you know ^_^) That was the tenet of the society she lived in, the lot of every young man and woman. Elizabeth doesn't want this, she wants someone who will uphold the same values as hers. She doesn't realize (the word is to be connected to Realism) that Darcy does indeed harbour those values.
Thus, the real questions are:
what blinded her initially to Darcy's intrinsic goodness?
Has Darcy shown her her who he really was?
Was he given the opportunity to?
Did he give himself this opportunity?
Was there a conflict of strong characters?
Did the conventions of society not do them any harm?
Were they ready to see themselves in such a light? (Here the former title "First Impressions" seems to me to be of crucial importance)
I do apologize if my reply is too lengthy, and if it hurt you somehow. I just thought I could bring another perspective to your reflexion. No harm meant.
None taken. I'm willing to definitely see her more as a Beethoven -- a transitional author, that is. A realist, I definitely see. And yes, she criticizes the notions of both sense and sensibility which had become so popularized and... how do I say this?... distorted in meaning. (I can elaborate on that more later in person if you want to talk about it). Anyway, yes she criticizes. But in my mind, her works still have many classical elements in them, especially when you compare them to the novels of the Bronte sisters. To tell me that Austen is a Romantic in the same vein as they are is to tell me that Beethoven is a Romantic just like Brahms or Mahler. I just don't buy it. In my mind, Beethoven stands on his own as a transitional composer and I can easily see Austen in the same light.
ReplyDeleteI never said she was a true Romantic, or even a Realist. You're right about her as much as you're right about Beethoven. But she cannot be called a Classical author. There are classical elements in her novels, but she uses them, the better to mock them. I could venture and prove (but that would require more than an email to do such a thing) that she almost - if not entirely - freed herself from the old Classical conventions *in her novels*. The Bronte sisters's novels are, for me (again), 85% Romantic, 15% Gothic, 0% Classical. Sure we can talk about it.
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