Pride and prejudice
Published Jan 19, 2018 12:05 am
By Kerry Tinga
Last weekend I had the pleasure of being a bridesmaid (for the first time, finally receiving my years-late promotion from being a flower girl) at my cousin’s wedding. There was laughter, hugs, and the inevitable tears as she walked down the aisle in a beautiful white gown, said her vows, and the happy couple were officially declared husband and wife. That was, of course, not even close to the end of the celebration because there was the reception afterward, which had the long-awaited first dance of the couple: It was to Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You,” and I hope someone reading this recognizes where that is from, imagining that wonderful scene at the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary right now.
A GREAT LOVE STORY Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice teaches us that a happy relationship goes way beyond romance
This article is not about marriage and weddings and love and what all that means to me because I am only 20 years old and have no real clue about that sort of stuff yet, except that mine will be absolutely beautiful if the time comes. Rather, as I heard the song playing I began to think of the film, and from the film I began to think of the movie, which was a modern reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice. I am surprised I have written so many articles without having brought up Pride and Prejudice yet. It is my absolute favorite novel and I try to read it at least once every year or, if not, watch the film adaptation, a masterpiece directed by Joe Wright numerous times. There are other loose adaptations that are equally enjoyable, from the Indian Bride and Prejudice to Lost in Austen to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and even the YouTube adaptation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
The novel has one of the most famous first lines of literature, perhaps after “Call me Ishmael” but that does not really have any meaning to it as a standalone line—“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” the very sentence that opens the novel.
Then, for the next couple of hundred pages or so, Jane Austen used the rest of her ink and paper to write about how absolutely untrue and foolish that line is, proving its irony and the importance of marrying for love and all that it stands for. Do not worry, I promised I was not going to talk about love and what that all means, and I won’t, and neither does Austen. The wonderful thing I love about Pride and Prejudice, and why you should, too, is that as the forerunner of all modern “romance” novels, it is less about romance and more a story of self-discovery framed as a romance novel. It seems to me that what Austen tries to tell us is that to love and be loved is not just about finding the perfect guy, finding a wet-shirted Mr. Darcy coming out of a lake, but that it is by becoming your complete self, by recognizing and working on your faults, that you allow such fortune to shine on you.
The heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet, is an intelligent young woman with aspirations as well as faults. The heroine of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, her name being in the title, is a not as intelligent, not as young,a woman with aspirations but many, many, many more comical faults. I see myself as standing somewhere between the two, not having the amazing cheekbones of Keira Knightley in the 2005 film adaptation, but also not embarrassing myself as often as Renee Zellweger does. Yet even at the beginning for Renee Zellweger, Bridget Jones is all about working on oneself, her diary is her own account of that journey of self-improvement with the elements of romance somehow finding their way in there naturally.
Throughout Pride and Prejudice there is a lot of tension between Lizzy and her romantic interests. There is the dastardly Mr. Wickham and the brooding Mr. Darcy, filled with the “will they or won’t they vibe” that every ready or watcher falls into. The real tension of the novel, however, is within Lizzy herself, her pride and her prejudice, hence the title (it is a bit too obvious, and that may be the only fault in the entire novel). The real question when reading Pride and Prejudice is not whom she will end up with, or will they get together, but first and foremost who, in fact, she is. It is toward the end of the novel that Lizzy has her “a-ha” moment, not simply an epiphany of her feelings toward one of the male characters but one of self-discovery.
“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.” (Italics added)
It is the romance novel every little girl should pick up and read as soon as they can get past the 17th century language with words like “genteel” and “supercilious” (or they can just have a dictionary with them while they read it). And if you don’t have a copy, let me know, I have several.
A GREAT LOVE STORY Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice teaches us that a happy relationship goes way beyond romance
This article is not about marriage and weddings and love and what all that means to me because I am only 20 years old and have no real clue about that sort of stuff yet, except that mine will be absolutely beautiful if the time comes. Rather, as I heard the song playing I began to think of the film, and from the film I began to think of the movie, which was a modern reinterpretation of Pride and Prejudice. I am surprised I have written so many articles without having brought up Pride and Prejudice yet. It is my absolute favorite novel and I try to read it at least once every year or, if not, watch the film adaptation, a masterpiece directed by Joe Wright numerous times. There are other loose adaptations that are equally enjoyable, from the Indian Bride and Prejudice to Lost in Austen to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and even the YouTube adaptation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
The novel has one of the most famous first lines of literature, perhaps after “Call me Ishmael” but that does not really have any meaning to it as a standalone line—“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” the very sentence that opens the novel.
Then, for the next couple of hundred pages or so, Jane Austen used the rest of her ink and paper to write about how absolutely untrue and foolish that line is, proving its irony and the importance of marrying for love and all that it stands for. Do not worry, I promised I was not going to talk about love and what that all means, and I won’t, and neither does Austen. The wonderful thing I love about Pride and Prejudice, and why you should, too, is that as the forerunner of all modern “romance” novels, it is less about romance and more a story of self-discovery framed as a romance novel. It seems to me that what Austen tries to tell us is that to love and be loved is not just about finding the perfect guy, finding a wet-shirted Mr. Darcy coming out of a lake, but that it is by becoming your complete self, by recognizing and working on your faults, that you allow such fortune to shine on you.
The heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth (Lizzy) Bennet, is an intelligent young woman with aspirations as well as faults. The heroine of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary, her name being in the title, is a not as intelligent, not as young,a woman with aspirations but many, many, many more comical faults. I see myself as standing somewhere between the two, not having the amazing cheekbones of Keira Knightley in the 2005 film adaptation, but also not embarrassing myself as often as Renee Zellweger does. Yet even at the beginning for Renee Zellweger, Bridget Jones is all about working on oneself, her diary is her own account of that journey of self-improvement with the elements of romance somehow finding their way in there naturally.
Throughout Pride and Prejudice there is a lot of tension between Lizzy and her romantic interests. There is the dastardly Mr. Wickham and the brooding Mr. Darcy, filled with the “will they or won’t they vibe” that every ready or watcher falls into. The real tension of the novel, however, is within Lizzy herself, her pride and her prejudice, hence the title (it is a bit too obvious, and that may be the only fault in the entire novel). The real question when reading Pride and Prejudice is not whom she will end up with, or will they get together, but first and foremost who, in fact, she is. It is toward the end of the novel that Lizzy has her “a-ha” moment, not simply an epiphany of her feelings toward one of the male characters but one of self-discovery.
“Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.” (Italics added)
It is the romance novel every little girl should pick up and read as soon as they can get past the 17th century language with words like “genteel” and “supercilious” (or they can just have a dictionary with them while they read it). And if you don’t have a copy, let me know, I have several.