Pride & Prejudice

The actuarial post I promised last time has been pushed off to a later day.

I finished Pride & Prejudice for the second time earlier today and I want to tell you my thoughts about it.

But first, a whole lot of background information.  Just to warn you, this will be a long post, my longest yet.

Sometime in the middle of December something clicked I guess.  I decided I wanted to make some changes to my lifestyle.  One of those was to reconnect with friends / acquaintances / classmates from my past.  I’ve done a terrible of keeping up with people throughout the years.  I’ve let my partial introvertedness (yes, I’m making up words now, just go with it) get in the way of keeping up my relationships.  I also managed to not stay in the same city for more than three years in a row.  Because of those two things I gradually lost touch with a lot of people.  I was probably one of the longest holdouts for a Facebook account – besides my dad of course, he still doesn’t have one.

One of the people I wanted to connect with again is Kamiah.  You can find her blog here.  She is one of those people who will brighten your day just because she is around.  She is extremely intelligent and she had/has essay writing skills that maybe, maybe one or two other people in the school could come close to matching.

I, on the other hand, was like a bull in a china shop during English classes.  I took out my disdain for the classes and the teachers on a couple of occasions.  What I really didn’t like were the teachers that expected us all to adopt their interpretations of a particular story or essay.  I thought of it like art, how one person reacts to a piece of art can be vastly different from the next person.  There were two different teachers in sophomore and junior years that I remember going off on.  I think both were really lazy with their lesson plans and hadn’t planned on student dissent.  The junior year teacher was expecting us all to react the same way to some part of Romeo and Juliet.  I disagreed with her and had the disposition that day to challenge her about it.  I did some sort of Socratic style of questioning her to get my point across.  It was one of those things where a great number of my classmates were in awe of what I was doing and how I was attacking with gusto.  I remember getting a lot of compliments about it after class and for the rest of the week I think.

At the time I wasn’t very thrilled with older British literature.  I had no real affinity for Shakespeare or any of the other writers that I just lumped together as antiquated and out of touch with modern times.  I think I also took umbrage that we hardly ever got to use modern, populist works.  I loved Michael Crichton books and had read a lot of his books.  He writes characters that have flaws and are not one-dimensional, just like the older authors.  He also puts these characters in situations with moral ambiguities, just like the older authors.  There is also sometimes an aspect of ethics involved, especially in his science fiction works.  Oh, by the way, he is also the one who created ER, filled with all sorts of dramatic elements.  But, not once did Crichton come up in English classes, or even more popular modern authors.  About the newest we got was a short story by Isaac Asimov, just so that the teachers could say that they at least touched on science fiction.

Anyway, I’m getting off on tangents (that phrase sounds like too many college professors, but I digress – oops, there’s strike two)

Back to Pride & Prejudice: Kamiah writes about her love of this novel and movie so often that it made me wonder what I was missing.  I looked at Jane Austen’s page on Wikipedia and realized I had never read one of her works.  I had just lumped her in with all of the other older English and early American authors.  I think I might have fallen asleep in the middle of the Sense and Sensibility movie, but I can’t remember.  So, I told myself that if I found the time I would go to the library and check out the movie or something.

Several days ago I was shopping for chocolate milk at Hy-Vee after a swim workout (no not at Costco (story here), Costco doesn’t sell chocolate milk) and I ran into one of those bins that have previously viewed movies for sale for $2.99.  These are the ones that don’t even come with the full case.  They just come in a paperboard sleeve.  Most of my movies came from Blockbusters that were closing in Omaha, and nowhere near full price, so I’m not adverse to used movies.  I wasn’t expecting much, but I found a lot of good ones.  I did find the entire Bourne Trilogy, which was an awesome find (story here).  There were also the last two of the Swedish version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.  The books were good, but I have to watch the movies in order, so they have to wait until I find the first one.  In the second to last row I ran into Pride and Prejudice.  Hey, what do you know!  If I don’t like it I’m only out three bucks.

It was the Keira Knightley from about seven years ago.  I couldn’t tell from the sleeve it came in.  It could have been a previous version ripped to DVD.  That’s a good start.  I like her.  She and Natalie Portman are virtual copies of each other, except for the accent thing.  I give a slight edge to Portman as my favorite young actress.  My favorite older actress is hands down Judi Dench.  Wait! Dame Judi Dench is in this movie, too, awesome!  There isn’t a movie in the world that she can’t make better just by gracing the screen.  It gets even better when I see who is playing Mr. Darcy, Matthew Macfadyen.  I know him best from the excellent BBC show MI-5 – check this show out if you have the chance.  Then we also have Donald Sutherland and Rosamund Pike.  Plenty of good actors and actresses in this movie instead of just famous faces we sometimes get in movies.  The only actor or actress’s performance I didn’t like was whoever played Caroline Bingley, yuck. 

   

Now that you know that I approve of the actors let me get to the story.  I am absolutely a fan boy over the story and characters!  I wasn’t expecting nearly as much out of the story as I received.  It blew me away.  This isn’t a story that appeals just to women as I had feared.  There was also a limited amount of Ye Olde English, which made me happy.  It made my day to see a lead female that actually is allowed to have intelligence, wit, and sarcasm.  I found myself identifying with parts of the good and bad character traits of the three potential suitors – Mr. Darcy, Mr. Wickham, and yes, even Mr. Collins – along with Elizabeth

There are two people I think have personalities very much like Elizabeth in real life.  One is Kamiah, and the other is my ex-girlfriend.

Oh my, it’s really late.  I’ve got to wrap this up so I can get to bed.  I could go on analyzing the characters, and I’d love to, but I’ll leave you with some of my favorite quotes:

Mr. Darcy :

“I can’t boast of knowing more than a half a dozen women in all of my acquaintance that are truly accomplished.”

“My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever”

“I find it perfectly adequate” – describing the country estate he was staying in, after Mrs. Bennet was throwing out tons of complements in an effort to impress

Mr. Collins – the perfect comedic foil for advancing the plot:

“Oh, believe me, no one would suspect your manners as being unrehearsed” – Elizabeth smacking down Mr. Collins at the dinner table when he is first introduced

“It is my intention, if I may be so bold, to remain close to you throughout the evening” – nominee for worst pickup line ever?  Nah, but close

The whole proposal he made to Elizabeth was hilarious to me.

Mr. Wickham:

The banter back and forth about the ribbons and buckles between Elizabeth and Mr. Wickham was great

Elizabeth:

Elizabeth: “It is your turn to say something, Mr. Darcy.  I talked about the dance.  Now you ought to remark on the size of the room or the number of couples.”

Mr. Darcy: “I’m perfectly happy to oblige.  Please advise me of what you would like most to hear.”

“No, I prefer to be unsociable and taciturn”

Mr. Bennet:

“Mary, dear [?? I couldn’t hear], you’ve delighted us long enough.  Let the other young ladies have a turn”, telling his daughter that her singing wasn’t good.

“So, you’re mother insists on you marrying Mr. Collins – “ … “ – Lizzie, from this day onwards, you must be a stranger to one of your parents.  Your mother will not see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”  This is his most memorable quote.  It might be the best from all of the characters.

“I cannot believe that anyone can deserve you, but it seems I am overruled”

Lady Catherine de Bourg

 “You’ll be in nobody’s way … in that part of the house”