Pride and Prejudice and the Beauty of Justice

Growing up, I heard the word "judging" used frequently -- often pejoratively by those telling others in the church to stop worrying about other people's dress, adornment, and behavior. My mother would earnestly rejoin that while we cannot judge the heart, we must judge between right and wrong. What often got left out of these discussions was the necessity of careful judgment in pursuing justice. In Jane Austen's Philosophy of the Virtues Sarah Emsley explores the role of judgment in treating others with justice.

Like Sense and Sensibility, Emsley views P&P as exploring the vital question of "how to be truthful and civil simultaneously" (83). However, the latter novel's dramatic plot combines Elizabeth's livelier personality  to heighten the tensions of the virtues, and to present what Emsley considers the best of Austen's "living arguments".

As "light, bright, and sparkling" as P&P is, it is a controversial novel. Feminist critics have devalued Austen's marriage plots as humiliations to the heroines and "complicit in bourgeois ideology" (85), while a host of male critics have been more appreciative. Nevertheless, every Janeite has at some point encountered the complaint that a novel set around the Napeolonic wars contains no politics. Emsley points to Aristotle's teaching that the question "How shall our life together be ordered?" is the "central issue of politics" (84). In this light, Austen is highly political in a way that trascends her time and touches the politics of our own. Ultimately, Emsley believes critics are a little too ready to take Austen's word on the "light, bright and sparkling" question, and fail to realize that this is actually "the most serious of Austen's novels..." (84). This view is reinforced by Plato's theory that the genius of tragedy is the same genius as that of comedy.

Emsley's explores righteous anger that seeks to "set things right"(89) and both enables, and springs from, the Christian love and joy displayed in the novels. Again, danger lies on both sides of the mean of good temper. Emsley contrasts Lady Catherine and Mr Collins as opposites -- he overreaches the mean with his obsequiousness, she with her cantankerous impertinence. Personally, I would argue that both are manifestations of their extreme selfishness, directed into seemingly opposite channels by their widely different social positions. An example of those who keep to the mean -- exercising judgment in their anger and civility -- are the Gardeners. They are willing to believe good of Mr Darcy quite readily, but are justly angry with Lydia when she arrives at their home, unrepentant and still-thoughtless.

Especially perspicacious is Emsley's explication of beneficial prejudice (perhaps comparable to proper pride) which leads Elizabeth to reject Mr Collins, while Jane, "apt to like people", might conceivably have accepted him. Elizabeth does not, after all, become so changed by her "just humiliation" as to become unjudgmental like Jane. Rather, Elizabeth and Darcy's early judgments are condemned because both both "judge others before they judge themselves" (95). Correct judgment involves looking closely at situations, judging one's self before judging others, and judging one's self more strictly. This process of correct judgment is an art, and therefore "harder to achieve than the correct execution of technical skill" (97). Emsley effectively demonstrates that "good judgment does not by any means come easily to Elizabeth" following her moment of discovery, but she does become less hasty in her pronouncements as the novel progresses (101).

We few, we happy few, we Janeites are especially fortunate in being able to enjoy Austen's balanced perspective on judgment. Characters in her novels who judge hastily and without humility are educated through their mistakes, but judgment remains vital to the heroines who navigate deceptions and pitfalls to achieve happy endings. Judgment is also the prerequisite to appreciating Austen's finely tuned sense of irony, which relies on the difference between what ought to be and what is. Lastly, judgment is vital to Austen's equally subtle sense of morality. Emsley concludes that critics Maskell and Robinson "are right that Jane Austen goes further than Socrates does in his suggestion that 'The unreasoned life.. is not worth living'; for Austen, 'a life without judgment... would not be a human life at all'" (105).

February Reading Roundup

(The short and exceedingly belated version.)

Currently Reading: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (reread, of course); Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry's Greatest Generation by Daisy Hay; Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America by David S. Reynolds; Imprison Him by Miriam Wood; and peeking into Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith by Kathleen Norris. (No promises to complete all of those!)

On indefinite hiatus: The Red Queen by Philippa Gregory (audiobook)
At first I was fascinated by the protagonist precisely because she is holier-than-thou and rather like Dorothea Brooke. But finally she tried even my patience too much. Besides, I already know the outcome of the story. Right now I'm more tempted by Gregory's next novel about Anne Neville (with all the recent Richard III excitement) or Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell works (because of her fabulous speech on royal bodies that caused a storm among the inane British media).

So, of course I didn't complete nearly as many books as I hoped, but here's the roundup.

Journey out of Darkness by Karen Lemonds

The testimony of a woman whose rebelliousness led her into hard drugs, promiscuity, the occult, and mental illness at a startlingly young age. Very interesting, but interspersed with lengthy sermonizing. She said she had hesitated writing the book, since as a young girl she's read similar testimonies and been attracted to the (seemingly) glamorous and exciting lives depicted. Certainly this can be a problem in testimonies of deliverance from darkness. However, I confess she was too conservative for me, with her conviction that reading novels (even classics) played a part in her degeneration. (This is an ultra-conservative Adventist viewpoint I may post on soon.)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This was my reread for the 200th anniversary of its publication. I confess I wondered how much I'd get out of reading it for (probably) the sixth time, but it charmed me as much as ever. It never ceases to remind me that true love is self-examining, self-sacrificing, and self-controlled. On a slightly different note, I've succumbed to watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries on Youtube. Yes, it requires suspension of disbelief that a sensible young lady would post so much of her life on the internet, but it is a fascinating exploration of ways Austen does (or does not) translate into modern narratives.

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers

This is the first Sayers mystery to feature Harriet Vane and it (and she) did not disappoint; I finished it (almost) in one day. Besides some intriguing revelations on the tricks of quack spiritualism, this book is special because it portrays a "fallen woman" who has had a lover not as angel, victim, madwoman or seducer, but as an autonomous human being. I can't wait for a free-ish day to devour Have His Carcase, Ms Sayers!

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I confess I'd read it several years ago, but it wasn't a well-annotated edition and I wasn't as familiar with Elizabethan English, so it didn't stick in my mind that well. My friend Caroline has said Hamlet is one of her literary crushes. Frankly, I'm too like him in character to say the same. How come Shakespeare understands me (everyone) so well? Yes, you're Great, sir.

 Possible/Probable Reads in March:
Death of a Sales Man by Arthur Miller
Forbidden Fruit: Banned, Censored, and Challenged Books from Dante to Harry Potter by Pearce J. Carefoote
Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers

Weekend Quote #1

Many months ago now I signed up for the Weekend Quote meme hosted at the Half-Filled Attic blog. I can't promise to post every weekend, but hopefully it will make my updates more frequent. I certainly have more than enough quotes/passages I'd love to discuss.

This week's quote is from Pride and Prejudice, volume II, chapter 12. In many ways I consider the following chapter (13, or 36, depending on the edition) the heart of the novel. In Emma and Northanger Abbey the heroine's moment of self-knowledge comes at nearly the end of the novel, precipitating the romantic denouement. But Lizzy's revelation ("Till this moment I never knew myself") comes almost at the dead center of the novel.

But what I want to focus on here is how Darcy ends his letter:

"This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr. Wickham. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he had imposed on you; but his success is not perhaps to be wondered at. Ignorant as you previously were of everything concerning either, detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination.
"You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night; but I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of everything here related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of Colonel Fitzwilliam, who, from our near relationship and constant intimacy, and, still more, as one of the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of ME should make MY assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you.

Darcy's letter starts quite resentfully. His main goal is to clear his character; his former sentiments toward her "cannot be too soon forgotten". But by the end of the letter, he once again demonstrates respect for her, removing any blame from her easy acceptance of Wickham's story. There's a slight thread of resentment in the emphasized me and my, but again there's that tenderness in the "God bless you".

It seems to me that, although he may not realize it himself, writing this letter renews Darcy's love. Reading the letter is Elizabeth's gateway to self-knowledge, writing it is Darcy's.

(Well, that's not much, but I had to start this meme with something.)