Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Pride and Prejudice

I hope you have read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.  If you haven't, you should.  Because it is fun and fun is good. (Stolen from Seuss)  Also, if you haven't, just go back to your life, cuz this is gonna be boring...might be anyway.

I have been listening to P&P almost constantly for the last several weeks because my Audible.com credits don't renew until June and I have listened to my whole library.  *Sob*  So, I have been immersed in the world of Darcy and Elizabeth and I have been noticing little things about the story.  What's that I hear?  A gasp of excitement.  I know!  I am thrilled too.  If I could just go back to my Jane Austen class in college...

So, here we go!

First, while throughout the text, Darcy is "pride" and Elizabeth is "prejudice" I am beginning to see that the reverse is actually true.  Stunner...I KNOW!  Lizzy's entire dislike of Darcy comes from injured PRIDE.  He calls her "tolerable" to her face and she gets a little huffy about that.  As you would!  From that moment she is determined to dislike him (you might call that prejudice, but that throws off my analysis).  Darcy, who is undeniably proud, is determined to undervalue the residents of Longbourn because of their (comparative) poverty and coarseness and misses the spark of beauty and vivaciousness that later captivates him.  Voila! Prejudice!

Second, while Mrs. Bennett basically has no sense and is the laughing stock of her entire neighborhood, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is similarly ridiculous.  Austen, while enmeshed in the social fabric of her time is able to see through it and reveal that...women can be cranky, avaricious and preachy no matter their income!

Third, there are literally millions of words written about the mercenary nature of love portrayed in these books, and I am not going to add to them, but I will just say that I am getting a little tired of persons with "no fortune" having a cook, a maid and a man.  Let's just call them what they are...people richer than I am but don't have their own reindeer forest.  Shocking!

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