Fun with Lizzy and Darcy, or My Take on Pride and Prejudice

Because it was nearly a half-century since the last time I devoured Pride and Prejudice, I must say I had few expectations before reading. I was not surprised that I enjoyed it so much, but I did not expect to become so personally embroiled in the confrontations between characters. My emotions at times were over the top!

When Elizabeth first meets Darcy and she makes very quick judgments about his entire character and being, I longed to take her aside and tell her he's probably just shy. In other words, if people say little, how do you know, really, what they're like? I actually felt angry with her and embarrassed for her, as if I were in the book.

From that early point in the novel, my desire to prevent characters from doing their worst, kept me overly involved. "No, no--Don't say that." And,  oh, how I yearned to stuff a handkerchief into Mrs. Bennett's mouth! How I wanted to make Jane less saintly! (I even desperately desired to know what on earth Mary was studying. We never find out, not really. What are her goals exactly? Where does she see her studies taking her on the path of enlightenment? I'm afraid she's just a stock character, but Austen portrays all the stock characters so well.)

My favorite scene takes place during the time of  Lady Catherine de Bourgh's "visit" to Longbourn, when she arrives in her high-minded  chariot from Kent to lay down the law to Elizabeth. When they go onto the grounds at Longbourn to take a walk and talk, Lady Catherine morphs into the villainess I had been hoping she would become. When Elizabeth does not demur to L.C.'s class and station and holds her ground, Lady Catherine is piqued to exclaim increasingly robust protests of Elizabeth's imagined manipulations. In other words, L.C. goes off her rocker! Oh, I did love that--how rewarding it was to read it.

By the end of the novel, John Collins ("the Reverend") sends his last demeaning missive of chastisement to the Bennetts. And even he, in so doing, looks so much more ridiculously absurd than he did before, and Austen uses the word "obsequious" to describe his actions. All through the novel, this perfect adjective to describe Collins was just out of reach for me, though I searched my brain inside and out. 

I was rather shocked that the very first time Elizabeth entertains less than hostile opinions of Darcy, comes when she is gazing upon the magnificence and beauty of Pemberly. Hmmm. Elizabeth is totally human.





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