Pride and Prejudice

[beatrice_otter]

There are some takes on P&P, and the characterization of various characters, that frustrate me whenever I see them.  For example!

1) Elizabeth is determined to only marry for love! ... uh, no, that's Jane, at least if we're talking about the book.  In the various adaptations, sure, Elizabeth talks about marrying for love and how important it is.  But in the book, Elizabeth is more concerned with whether or not she respects any prospective future husband.  Love is great!  I'm sure she would prefer it!  But after watching her parents' marriage (and knowing that they believed themselves in love when they married, that's why her father married beneath him) what she wants most out of marriage is mutual respect.

2) Elizabeth is so unconventional and breaking social conventions left and right! ... uh, no, that's Lydia.  Elizabeth cares very deeply about courtesy and propriety, in some cases too much.  Why does she hate Darcy, to begin with?  He is discourteous and flouts propriety (i.e. doesn't dance or talk to anyone at an assembly.)  Why does she like Wickham so much?  Everything he says and does (that she knows of) is courteous and proper.  He knows how to project a surface veneer of Proper And Courteous Gentleman.  Now, Elizabeth doesn't let her desire for courtesy and propriety to blind her to the ways that people can be rude, cruel, mean, or selfish despite being (on the surface) everything that is proper, but that doesn't mean she doesn't like propriety, it just means she wants it to be real and not just surface hypocrisy.

3) Elizabeth's perceptions of everybody and everything in the novel are absolutely true and impartial! ... uh, no, one of the major themes of the book is Elizabeth realizing that she is an unreliable narrator and doesn't always judge people very truly.  She's an intelligent and perceptive woman, but nobody is perfectly impartial, and even at the end of the book she certainly is not.  It is good to take her evaluations of other people, and what she believes they are thinking and feeling, with a large grain of salt even at the end of the book.

4) Mr. Bennet is the Good Parent and Mrs. Bennet is the Bad Parent! ... uh, they're both pretty bad, actually, just in different ways.  Mrs. Bennet's flaws are obvious, but that's because Elizabeth loves her father more than she loves her mother, and so she's more critical of her mother.  But, look, Mr. Bennet has known for years that Mrs. Bennet is not a very good mother, that she's not doing anything to help their kids grow and learn and become good people with decent educations.  And how does he respond?  By alternately ignoring the issue and mocking his wife and any daughters he thinks are silly.  At best, that's neglect.  And, yeah, he likes Elizabeth best and treats her better than the others!  But that doesn't make him a good parent.  It just means he's playing favorites as much as Mrs. Bennet is.  Jane and Lydia are treated well by their mother because she likes them (although the lack of discipline and boundaries has done some damage to Lydia), and Elizabeth is treated well because Mr. Bennet likes her, but Mary and Kitty are kinda screwed over by both parents.

I find the first two more annoying than the second two, because they're caused by modern ideology being imposed on Elizabeth.  She's the heroine, so she must therefore think and behave the way a woman we can relate to would, so she must think about love and marriage and social conventions the same way we do.  We believe that True Love is necessary for marriage, so therefore Elizabeth must.  We believe that most of the social conventions of the Regency were stupid, so therefore Elizabeth must, too.  We see Elizabeth the way we think she ought to be, instead of the way she actually is.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

THANK YOU!!!!!

[beatrice_otter]

You're welcome!

[sixbeforelunch]

A lot of Austen fic is really fic of the various adaptations, especially the 1995 miniseries or the 2005 movie, more than the books themselves. Both of those were, IMO, more forgiving and sympathetic to Mr Bennet (and in the case of the 2005 movie Mrs Bennet also) than the book itself. And even people who might otherwise prefer to hew close to the books often still have trouble with portraying their favs in ways that are, to modern readers, Promblematic.

When I was in the fandom, one of my biggest pet peeves was married Elizabeth declaring she wouldn't wear a cap, and you could tell it was either because the writer thought they were ugly or had an issue with married women being expected to cover their heads. Like...I get both of those things, but Elizabeth would absolutely wear a cap because that was the fashion and the expectation and she's not a flout society sort of person. Sigh.

Honestly, though, historical fiction always says more about the era it's written in than the era it's set in. Thackeray's illustrations for Vanity Fair put his heroes in Victorian fashions despite its Regency setting because "I have not the heart to disfigure my heroes and heroines by costumes so hideous; and have, on the contrary, engaged a model of rank dressed according to the present fashion."

[beatrice_otter]

I know it's really fic of the adaptations, and I sympathize because sometimes I have trouble remembering what's the 1995 version and what's the book. But if you're going with characterization from an adaptation, label it that and don't try to tell me it's fic of the book. As for being Problematic, if you want to write or read something about characters who think in modern ways, then why the hell are you writing and/or reading fic set in historical time periods? This is why I can't read hardly any Regency AUs despite loving genuine Age-of-sail fiction.

Yes, Elizabeth would absolutely wear a cap. And you're right about historical fiction; that was the only thing I disliked about the 2019 Little Women, the ways in which they chucked some historical things out the window to make things look/feel more modern but which got in the way of letting the characters be themselves.

Ah, well, it was not as horrendous as the 1940s Pride and Prejudice starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier.

[lilacsigil]

Mr. Bennet is the Good Parent and Mrs. Bennet is the Bad Parent!

One thing I really liked about the 2005 adaptation is that it didn't do this. Elizabeth and Mr Bennet obviously got along well, but his dangerous indifference to Lydia was made nice and clear.

[beatrice_otter]

That's part of it, but it's not just indifference. It's also that the only time he notices, talks to, or mentions the younger girls, it's to take potshots at them. And because he's witty, and they are frivolous and flighty, and because we see this through Elizabeth's eyes (and such barbs are never turned on her), we accept it and even find it funny and right. But then you step back and look at it and think about what that might be like to be one of the girls he only notices if he can laugh at, and things start to look very different.

[mindstalk]

Interesting points!

[beatrice_otter]

Thank you!

[domarzione]

One of the things that struck me on my first reread of the book as an adult was how bad a parent and husband Mr. Bennet really is and that really changed my view of the story as a whole. We're not supposed to like Mrs. Bennet much but I ended up feeling bad for her because the only response she gets to her concerns, be they frivolous or very real, is cruelty and she's not always bright enough to see that.

[beatrice_otter]

Mrs. Bennet really is as bad as we tend to think she is. But that doesn't mean that Mr. Bennet is right to treat her the way he does. And I wish people could see that. It's one of those complicated situations where nobody is behaving the way the should or treating other people the way they should, and doing harm to those around them in the process.

[anghraine]

Cosigned! I think one of the most significant moments wrt Elizabeth's concern with propriety is after the letter, when it hits her that Wickham's behaviour was actually improper in its own way and therefore she should have realized that something was wrong with him. Her sense of propriety still shapes how she thinks of the world, but she comes to draw a much sharper distinction between real propriety and personal charm/flattery than she did at first.

(I'm also w/ you on the first two being particularly aggravating.)

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah. "I should have known he was not to be trusted because he was improper!" is not the response of a great iconoclastic free spirit.

[lokifan]

Rediscovered this very elderly tab and STRONG AGREE. That annoying historical fiction thing where the sympathetic people have to have modern views is irritating. And Mr Bennet gets let off WAY too easily by a lot of people. Mrs Bennet would drive me much crazier to live with but she's the one trying to make sure her daughters are sorted long-term.

[beatrice_otter]

Well, Mrs. Bennet understands the problem better than Mr. Bennet does, but a) she hasn't been doing things like saving money to add to their dowries (which will help them get husbands and give them something to live on if they can't/don't marry), or hiring masters so that they are Accomplished Women (which will help them get husbands) and b) even taking as granted that they HAVE to marry, it really matters WHO you marry. That makes a HUGE difference in quality of life. Which Mrs. Bennet should know from experience! and yet she doesn't care about it at all.