The 'Seeming' Reality

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 155571


Neri:

> In fact Elizabeth isn't much duped. True, she believes Wickham's story
> about Darcy in the beginning, because she doesn't have any data to the
> contrary. But she never falls for Wickham. She realizes herself that
> he's not a very admirable person, even before she finds out the true
> story about him. And she has respect for Darcy almost from the
> beginning. She only thinks she hates him because he's proud, which is
> true, and because she suspects he ruined the engagements of her
> sister, which is also true. So in fact, the only things that Elizabeth
> is really duped about are Darcy's feelings about her and her own
> feelings about him.

Sydney:

*blink*  Um, did we read the same book?  Of course Elizabeth's
mistaken about Darcy's motives and his whole character.  She is ready
to believe he defrauded a man out of his inheritance, and that he
wilfully destroyed the love of Bingley and Jane because Jane wasn't
rich enough.  When she finds out the truth, she's hardly just, "huh. 
so that's what really happened."  She's like:

"Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She
wished to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, "This must be
false! This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!" "

It's only when she goes back over what she knows rationally about both
of them that she realizes how much she's been distorting her
perceptions.  And she was most certainly duped by Wickham.  She was
fantasizing about marrying him even without any money, and never
pegged him as a wastrel:

"The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay
to Mr. Wickham's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she
could bring no proof of its injustice......As to his real character,
had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of
enquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner, had established him at
once in the possession of every virtue."

It seems to me if Elizabeth isn't substantially wrong about both of
them, the book shouldn't be called "Pride and Prejudice", but "Pride
and the Girl Who Was Right Most of the Time", and while it might have
a PLOT, it wouldn't have a STORY-- certainly not a story that rightly
has a place among the classics!  Shouldn't all great literature be in
some way about human transformation?  The story takes Lizzy from
someone who says:

   "It is difficult indeed -- it is distressing. One does not know
what to think."

   "I beg your pardon; one knows exactly what to think."

To someone who says:

"How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself
on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have
often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my
vanity in useless or blameable distrust. How humiliating is this
discovery! yet, how just a humiliation!...I have courted prepossession
and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned.
Till this moment I never knew myself."

Jane Austen's plots are most emphatically not about people who are
basically right in their first instincts about people and only have to
give slight tweaks to their impression of "who fancies who".  She's
not P.G. Woodehouse!  Her characters are profoundly wrong about other
people precicely because they trust their instincts, which are biased
and self-absorbed, over their reason and generosity:

"Heaven forbid! -- That would be the greatest misfortune of all! -- To
find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! -- Do not wish me
such an evil."

"Determined to hate"... now let me see, where have I heard that before:

"You are determined to hate him, Harry," said Lupin, with a faint
smile, "And I understand; with James as your father, and Sirius your
godfather, you have inherited an old prejudice."

"Prejudice", eh?  I've often thought about posting on how closely the
Harry/Snape relationship follows the dynamics of the Elizabeth/Darcy
relationship, with the love angle taken out and the stakes raised. 

-- on their first meeting, Snape/Darcy unjustly insults Harry/Elizabeth
-- H/E suspects S/D of larger and larger evils-- from being unpleasant
to being evil, from being a jerk to stealing the Stone, from being
prideful to being a tyrant who disregarded his father's will.
-- at a critical moment, a third character, ignorant of its import,
let's slip a vital, damning piece of information about S/D.  In P&P,
Fitzwilliam mentions hearing about Darcy separating Bingley from some
girl (actually Elizabeth's sister);  in HP, Trelawney inadvertently
outs Snape as the eavesdropper on the Prophecy.
-- H/E confronts someone with this new information, feeling vindicated
about his/her opinion.  The language is pretty close in both books:

"Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been
indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any
consideration would tempt me to accept the man, who has been the means
of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?''

As she pronounced these words, Mr. Darcy changed colour; but the
emotion was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her
while she continued.

compare with:

".. He told Voldemort about the prophecy, it was HIM, he listened
outside the door, Trelawney told me!"

Dumbledore's expression did not change, but Harry thought his face
whitened under the bloody tinge cast by the setting sun. For a long
moment, Dumbledore said nothing.

-- H/E broods upon the hated figure:
"When they were gone, Elizabeth, as if intending to exasperate herself
as much as possible against Mr. Darcy, chose for her employment the
examination of all the letters which Jane had written to her since her
being in Kent"; 

and, "So when he arrived at the fight, he joined in on the Death
Eater's side?" asked Harry, who wanted every detail of Snape's
duplicity and infamy, feverishly collecting more reasons to hate him,
to swear vengeance.

Of course, seeing as JKR doesn't have to get to the point where we
want Harry and Snape to get married (;)), she can raise the stakes,
and also make Snape much nastier than Darcy.  Plus of course, JKR
doesn't write on "little pieces of ivory" as Austen described herself,
she writes big stomping fantasy, so the betrayals and nastiness are
about murder and wars and so on rather than rudeness.

I don't think it's a cooincidence that nearly all of JKR's favorite
books-- Emma, I Capture the Castle, Little White Horse, etc.-- are all
about protagonists who are very smart but turn out to have
misinterpreted a lot of what goes on.  It is, after all, the whole
story of Philosopher's Stone.

As for what other assumptions are going to be reevaluated in book
VII-- my money's on the historic Gryffindor/Slytherin split, with its
tantalizing contradictory versions.  Anyone who has read "Little White
Horse" will get the same feeling I think!

-- Sydney, apologizing for all the Jane Austen, but feeling she must
be rescued from an intimation of triviality.