Pride and Prejudice: a load of Balls

[rhythmaning]

Last summer, frankie_ecap and coughingbear signed me up for the blog a Penguin classic scheme: I had to read a book, write a review of it, and post it on the Penguin classic blog.

It took me many months to get around to finishing it; and now the blog refuses to recognise me. Maybe it will be working tomorrow.

Edit: I have now submitted it - only to find that once posted, reviews are selected at random to be displayed. So I can't even direct you to it!



This book was so familiar that I found it hard to read. Everyone knows the story – they have either read it before, heard it adapted on the radio, seen on big or little screen in several different versions – that I found it hard to get past the baggage: when I imagined the characters, I saw Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, not Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. I wasn't reading a book by Jane Austen, I was envisaging an adaptation by Andrew Davies.

I found it hard to get beyond this history – this says more about me than the book, true. I can't remember if I read Pride and Prejudice before, or if I simply absorbed so much about it that it felt like I had read it. If I had, it was a long time ago – thirty years or so.

It was strange to approach it afresh, then: everything about it was so familiar, I was waiting for things to happen.

It wasn't helped by the edition, either: the blurb by Meera Syal telling me it was the “funniest book ever written” (she's read them all, then?), and others on the back dropping it clearly into the territory of romantic comedy - “the DNA of all romantic comedy” (Syal again). I know I shouldn't, but it was hard not to hold her 21st century publisher's blurb against the early 19th century Ms Austen. This wasn't helped by the complete lack of context in the book: this is a world famous classic – about as classic as classic can be – but there was no introduction, nothing to help set the book in the social or political milieu of the time.

And this was what I wanted to know: I was intrigued by the economics of romance two hundred years ago, how the game was played – I found it hard to follow the rules of what was allowed, things that readers of the time would have taken for granted. (I took other things for granted – such Darcy walking from the lake in slow motion. I am surprised Ms Austen omitted that scene.)

To start with, I therefore struggled to make much progress; no number of reminder emails from Penguin urging me to post my review could get me back to finish the book. It was a long train ride that did that, and coming back to it made it a lot easier. Maybe I hadn't been in the mood for a costume drama before; coming back to it, I was able to let it was over me.

Few of the characters have much to commend them, aside from Elizabeth, her father and her aunt and uncle. Her mother and younger sisters irritate (that must be the comedy, then), Darcy is so pompous and snobbish that he is hard to warm to when he does cheer up. Her father has the best lines, although aside from appearing as dance partners or foils for female chatter, the men are generally silent or bounders.

The women are more closely observed – the clear focus of the book: women dominate, although they have little power: if married, they are at the whim of their husbands, if not, they are eager to find one. But they are also resourceful and political: unable to inherit, they need men to see them through the world: they connive and plot, the men merely pawns in their plots. Men appear to have the power – if only because they have the money - but it is women who rule the roost, whether it's Bingley's scheming sisters or the deeply irritating Lady de Bourgh (who has plans of her own for Darcy).

Much of the action happens at balls: dances are the centre of the Bennet's social world, Mrs Bennet trying to marry off her many daughters. Dancing seems to be the only way these nineteenth century women could meet men; one wonders how the species survived. Suitable men were rare: their finances played heavier than their looks or personalities (especially if you were Mrs Bennet).

The deeper I got, the more I warmed to Elizabeth, Darcy and their plight: unable to speak out for themselves, they tied themselves in knots, trapped behind assumptions and misunderstandings. I ended up enjoying it a lot, although I could never leave my own baggage – my own prejudice, perhaps - behind.

Comments

[fiendish-cat.livejournal.com]

I had read lots of other Austen before I came to read P&P (not till my early twenties I think - though luckily before the TV series) and whilst I do love P&P I still prefer some of her other work.

(Bride and Bollywood is the best adaptation if you ask me!)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Did you mean Bride and Prejudice (http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0361411/)?

Are you still in India? Surpised you were keeping up with LJ ... I hope you are going to post about your trip!

[white_hart]

I just noticed your review on the Penguin Classics site, and thought I'd come and comment here rather than there (somehow I missed it when you first posted).

I'm rather surprised that you've come away with the idea that women "rule the roost", though. To me it's the exact opposite. Yes, a woman may exercise power in her own household, but the whole point of the novel is that the single most important thing in a woman's life is making a good marriage, because there is no way for her to exercise any power outside it. At the time, women were treated as their husbands' chattels; life for a woman in a bad marriage would be unpleasant and inescapable, while an ummarried woman was seen as a charity case at best and an unpaid skivvy at worst.

Yes, the world Austen writes about seems narrow and closeted in domesticity, but that was the only world available to women then. The scheming and manipulation in the attempt to make a good match is rather like a Regency version of The Apprentice...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I meant to post that my review had finally been published - they sent me an email. I must go and look at it!

You are of course right that within the book, a woman's power is vested through men - husband, brother, cousin (I can't remember any sons!) - but the story is driven by decisions women make: they decide that there is going to be a ball, that they have to go to London, that their brother can't see Elizabeth.

Aside from Darcy and Wickham making thier own good and bad decisions, men actually feature very little. The story may be about the effort to get a man, but men themselves didn't seem particularly important. The society depicted seemed to me to be defined by women, and men were their tools.

[white_hart]

Well, it's true that the domestic arena which is the focus of Austen's novels is very much a female space, but only because it's the only space the women have; the men occupy a different world, where there are politics, and war (despite the references to soldiers and sailors in most of the novels it would be easy for a casual reader to completely overlook the fact that there was a war taking place), and business, all of which the women are completely excluded from. Men only ever interact with women in the women's space, and they are far less present in it because they have other choices; the women have to be there.

To me, saying that the men don't seem important because they're less present is a bit like saying Godot isn't important because he never actually appears...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Btw some of the comments on the Penguin blog very much reflect your views.

[white_hart]

That's probably because I'm right ;-)

I do feel that you've missed the point of the novel somehow...

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

I would say that I saw different points...

And you know - we could both be right!

[white_hart]

I find it rather depressing that you say you can see "women running everything and men being marginalised" in a novel from a time when women had no economic power and a social influence very much dependent on the positions of their male protectors, I'm afraid. Rather like all the people who try to tell me that "feminism has gone too far" and society is now biased in favour of women.