Pride and Prejudice 1813 Passion with Class Jane

Pride and Prejudice - 1813 Passion with Class Jane Austen (1775 -1817) – the Quentin Tarantino of the middle classes.

‘Mills and Boon written by a genius’ P. D. James (Popular crime novelist) For thy sweet love remember such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings. (Sonnet 29)

Point of View Dual third person point of view – narrative voice, but also from the perspective of some of the characters, mostly Elizabeth Bennet. What effect does this have upon the reader? Frequently we get the narrative voice and then Elizabeth’s -- two different perspectives. This technique places us alongside Elizabeth, but also allows us to see/note when her opinion of an event/person is incorrect – when she jumps to false conclusions. Because there is a qualifying narrative voice, which tempers the reader’s sense of perspective.

Wickham -- seducer [Wickham] was declared to be in debt to every tradesman in the place and his intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman’s family. Every body declared that he was the wickedest young man in the world. . . Elizabeth, though she did not credit above half of what was said, believed enough to make her former assurance of her sister’s ruin still more certain. . . [Vol III, chpt. VI]

Richard III Richard: If I did take the kingdom from your sons, To make amends I’ll give it to your daughter; If I have kill’d the issue of your womb, To quicken your increase, I will beget Mine issue of your blood uplon your daughter. (IV, iv. 294 ff) Elizabeth: Yet thou didst kill my children, Richard: But in your daughter’s womb I bury them. (IV. iv. 422 -3)

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. ’ Chapter 1 – opening lines

Is the novel gossip elevated to a fine art?

Rereading Pride and Prejudice gives one a sense of Proustian ballet beautifully working itself through in the novel’s formal centrepiece, the deferred but progressive mutual enlightenment of Elizabeth and Darcy in regard to the other’s true nature. -- Harold Bloom [‘Introduction’ to Bloom’s Major Literary Characters: Elizabeth Bennet (2004) – a series of essays by a number of well-known literary critics]

Darcy’s first marriage proposal After a silence of several minutes he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began, “‘In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. ’” [Vol II, Chpt. ll]

Collins – his proposal to Elizabeth ‘Chuse properly, chuse a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her. “Allow me, by the way, to observe my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manner beyond any thing I can describe; and your wit and vivacity I think must be acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and respect which her rank will inevitably excite. ”’ [Vol I, cpt XIX]

First impression of Darcy “[was]discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance. . . He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again. ’ [Vol I, chpt lll]

Of Elizabeth Bennet’s character She had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous. (chpt 1, p. 9)

‘. . . I have seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. -- We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb. ’ ‘This is not a very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure, ’ said he. ‘How near it may be to mine, I cannot pretend to say. ’ (Vol I, chpt 18)

Darcy = contrived (corsetted); bound by convention Elizabeth = implusive/natural/generous. ‘she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous’ [vol I, Chpt 111] (although we must remember that she rushes to judgement rather quickly). ‘haughty, reserved, and fastidious, and his manners, though well bred, were not inviting. ’ [Vol I, chpt 4] Elizabeth on her way to Netherfield – arrives with ‘weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise. ’ And, of course, mud-splattered petticoats.

Town/Country – Art/Nature ‘It seems to me to shew an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum. ’ [Vol I, chpt VIII] -- Bingley’s sisters – Miss Bingley and Mrs Hurst. Their ‘appalled’ faces

Formal & Wilderness Gardens ‘while beauty is usually associated with the smooth and the neat, such as the gently sculpted landscapes of Capability Brown with their smooth lawns leading down to placid lakes; picturesque beauty tends to have a wilder quality with rougher textures. ’ - Reverend William Gilpin (1724 - 1804)

Martin Amis on Pride and Prejudice ‘Finishing the book for perhaps the fifth or sixth time, the present writer felt all the old gratitude and relief: undiminished catharsis. These days, true, I wouldn’t have minded a more detailed conclusion – say a twentypage sex scene. ’. . . ‘One may wonder what she has to say to the current crop of twenty year olds, for whom ‘love’ is not quite what it was. Today love faces new problems [including ‘futurelessness’ and ‘nationwide condom campaigns’] But maybe the old opposition, of passion and prudence, never really changes; it just sways on its axis. ’

Darcy’s second proposal “I have struggled”, but “You are too generous to trifle with me”. Note pronouns ‘Elizabeth feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. . . he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable. They walked on, without knowing in what direction. . ’ “he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. . . ” [vol. lll, chpt. XVI]

2 nd proposal