She doesn't work for you

[anghraine]

[reposting from wordpress]

This is a pithy little saying they have over at Austenblog. I don’t often post there but I lurk– and, needless to say, completely agree with the sentiment.

 

Everyone quotes Jane Austen, usually to suit their own purposes, and often completely failing to take into account the context. It seems that critics and fans are constantly trying to stuff her into a box. She was conservative. She was radical. She was a proto-feminist. She was upholding the establishment. She was the greatest author known to mankind. She was narrow-minded, mean, and limited.

The other day, I had a discussion with somebody who insisted that in Pride and Prejudice, Darcy is completely and utterly ‘conventional’ (whatever that means) until Elizabeth ‘kicks his arse' (cue the cheering squad). And of course, I argued– not the opposite — I suppose that Darcy cares a great deal about obeying the ‘letter of the law’ but that’s about as far as it goes — he is quite happy to bend them to suit his own purposes. And we both argued it back and forth with various canonical citations (her: Meryton insult; me: he’s the only person in the whole novel who thinks Lydia would be better single and ‘ruined’ than married to Wickham). Any Janeite worth his/her salt can argue anything from canonical citations. (Though I stand by my ground in the argument, probably because I’ve read, and been rendered ill by, the conventional standards of what made a woman ‘accomplished’– needless to say, being well-read was not among them. The old Mary Mitford school of thought — Jane is the model of femininity, and Darcy suffers a want of taste in preferring Elizabeth.)

Honestly, I’m starting to think you could argue that Darcy — or anyone — is a pot-smoking, free-loving hippy from the text.

And I just happened across a truly appalling article. Apparently Pride and Prejudice was voted the most romantic book of all time by some people.

I am all for saying it’s a great love story. (It’s great, in my opinion, because it’s a love story that isn’t a romance, and thereby avoids the pitfalls of the genre – when not actively subverting them.)

Some particularly memorable lines:

‘Mr Darcy’s first proposal is the epitomy of snobbery, as he describes how he wants to marry Elizabeth in spite of her vulgar, bad-mannered and poor family, who are in a completely different class from himself.’

Completely agree until ‘bad-mannered’– and then– yes, Elizabeth may be deluding herself, a little, when she insists that she will move in the same sphere as Mrs Darcy that she did as Miss Bennet (or, more probably, using Lady Catherine’s adherence to technicalities against her), but she is quite right that they are, technically, of the same class. Poor? On two thousand a year? Completely different class? Please.

‘Pamela by Samuel Richardson, which heavily influenced Jane, was the first romantic classic.’

It did? You know, if I had to pick a single Richardson to influence Austen (self-righteous sneer here — Janeites is an old enough term to hang on to, but ‘Jane’ smacks a bit much of the ‘dear Aunt Jane’ school of thought), it would probably be Sir Charles Grandison. And I’d be much more likely to go for — just perhaps — Burney or Edgeworth (who are never ‘Fanny’ or ‘Maria,’ thank the good Lord).

I can’t say I’d call Pamela especially romantic, either, except in presenting the ‘reformed rake‘ stereotype at its appalling best.

‘the conflict between the feisty heroine, Elizabeth, and the sexy hero, Mr Darcy, relates to a classic misunderstanding creating tension between the characters as they each have wrong impressions of the other’s character.’

Is it just me, or is Darcy’s character almost universally wrapped up in the word ‘sexy‘ these days? And is this not completely reductionist? And does this really have anything to do with Austen’s character at all, or is it just Colin Firth’s smouldering gazes (or Matthew Macfadyen’s plaintive ones)?

The only good thing about this, as far as I can tell, is that I can dwell comfortably and smugly in my ivory tower, content with the knowledge that at least my preference has absolutely nothing to do with romance, since the lack of romantic-romance is what makes Pride and Prejudice enjoyable in the first place.

Oh, here it is.