ABAW: Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 

Signet Classic with Afterword by Joann Morse

I read this book the first time in college. I passed on an opportunity to read it in tenth grade, choosing instead The Catcher in the Rye.  Last year when I read Pride and Prejudice With Zombies, these were my reflections:

This book was just fun. I loved Pride and Prejudice when I read it in college, but with a kind of romantic distance. I appreciated Elizabeth’s wit and marveled at the restraint exercised in a society of manners. This zombie redaction heightened my appreciation of the original, particularly of the potential for reading humor between the lines.  Grahame-Smith elevates the innuendo even further. I lost count of the number of ‘ball’ jokes. He is able to infuse Austen’s work with something else besides zombies, a sense that the characters have actual bodies. In the novel of manners there is a sense that anything corporal or bodily is just not talked about as if it isn’t there. I don’t recall once thinking of Elizabeth’s body in any way beyond a holder for a gown or a hand proferred. There was no sense of her physically. Graham-Smith though, gives Elizabeth and her sisters bodies that fight and feel. Oh yes, and they sweat too, though the low word ‘sweat’ does not appear in the pages of the book. Elizabeth and Darcy at different points suffer from “exercise moisture.”  

Another word that appears rarely in this zombie book is ‘zombie.’ Epithets abound, but my favorite is “manky dreadfuls.” That should totally be the name of a punk band.  

Grahame-Smith’s rendition gives Elizabeth Bennett a body and some deliciously bawdy wordplay. But it strips away Austen’s brilliant emotional shifts. Grahame-Smith’s book turns much of the narrative into action, whereas Austen is able to make a plot that occurs to a great extent through the thoughts of the main character and give it the emotional and intellectual intensity of a story where “more stuff happens. Austen’s novel creates tension not with action, but with a juxtaposition of characters and a pointed lack of action at times. We feel suspense through what is not said, through what cannot be performed within the strict restraints of manner.

I suppose there is something to be said in a discussion about the nature of independence and self-realization in the book. Elizabeth is able to make choices on her own terms without completely thwarting polite convention (as her sister does), and in doing so is able to find an intellectual partner in a marriage that at least potentiates greater happiness than any of the models offered. I’m uncertain though, whether Austen really holds up any marriage as a positive outcome, starting with her jibe in the opening line. 

My real interest though, the part of the writing that just stunned me this time, was the illustration of shifts in thought and sympathy. Austen can take a character from one vehement position, and walks us step-by-step through various arguments, showing us how the emotions of the thinker begin to change, not completely, and not abruptly, but to the point that by the end of the chapter, a different sympathy exists. Think, for example, of the chapter when Elizabeth receives the letter from Darcy after his rejected proposal. In it he explains the truth behind some of her ill-conceived assumptions. The letter by itself does not convince Elizabeth of his worth, it is her own internal argument. At the beginning of the chapter she almost despises him and his insulting pride. At the end, she does not yet love him, but she does feel compassion for him and sorrow and shame for the pain she has caused him. A useful model for subtlety of description and unfolding thought and action.