P&P Journal: Chapters IV-XIV

Happy New Year. Here's to hoping 2010 is exciting and full of adventure.

In my first post, I may have seemed somewhat unimpressed by the novel and skeptical of this whole enterprise, but over the ensuing ten chapters I have come around to a greater appreciation for nearly all of the characters. Lizzie is pretty and witty and gay as only the heroine of a musical should be, almost to the point of seeming artificially wonderful - like she's been getting wit-enhancing steroids and endearment therapy - but not entirely, and I find myself enjoying her scenes quite a bit. Darcy is still kind of a jerk, but at least he has a motivation now: he's proud (Oho! I wonder who'll be prejudiced, eh?). Darcy sees himself as residing on a higher plane than the flock of mere mortals who mill about the cuffs of his trousers, and it makes one wonder why Bingley puts up with him at all (except that Bingley is kind of an airhead and probably doesn't get a lot of Darcy's jokes but likes how cool and arch he is).

Bingley's sisters are, as far as I'm concerned, the Siamese cats from "Lady and the Tramp." They are ill-equipped to handle Lizzie, who manages to keep them in check with nonchalance (sprezzatura, in the Castiglione sense?) and I think this is predominantly what attracts Darcy's admiration, whatever he may say about her eyes. Lizzie does with innocence and ease what Darcy has, I suspect, studied and practiced. Lizzie's slight bumpkin roughness - muddy stockings, et al. - only shows her to be so much more naturally (Naturally, in the Rousseau sense?) accomplished and elevated. Untrained and unpolished, she can already match wits with even Darcy, and he must find that positively exhilarating. [Editor's note: There are, in my opinion few things more attractive in a woman than a bantering wit, so perhaps I am injecting my own biases into this account, but... ah, fuck it, this is a blog, not a lit crit article for Wanking-to-the-Victorians Monthly (next month's featured article: Going Gay For Lord Byron); I'm allowed to be biased.]

Disturbing digressions aside, I'm also interested in the kind of authority each character is given. Because the narrator has a clear presence but is not a character, the facts zie (I was tempted to write "she," but I don't want to or get tangled up in the intentional fallacy or gendering the ostensibly ungendered) presents are accepted to be, within the armature of the fiction, truth. Hir (and again...) commentary on the opinions of the characters themselves also sets hir up as an authority figure, and thus it is interesting to see who among the cast is thereby correct. So far, I would venture, the Bingley sisters have been given more credit for correctness than anyone else, and it does make me wonder. There is a deep narrative of social privilege and the authority of wealth/class in this book which I'm sure I will have to tackle in this journal sooner or later.

All in all, I'm very impressed by all of Austen's characters. But Mary especially. I mean, you can hear the crickets chirping in the awkward silence following every stultifying speech she makes, and that's just based on the artful way Austen has constructed her dialogue. Very cool. Oh, and I've recently met Mr. Collins. He makes me want to chuckle and vomit at the same time. In other words, I like him.