Multiple Reading Personalities

I’m drowning in notes like these. Half a notebook of them.

Pages upon pages, summaries, thoughts, feelings, digressions. I feel like I’m beginning to get it, to understand how it works, but I’m not sure “I’m feeling it”. The magic of Combray — the first part of the first book in the In Search of Lost Time series — is long gone.

I’ve abandoned my excruciatingly slow reading pace for the end of Les jeunes filles (Within a Budding Grove), just so I could enjoy the text more, and as the narrative itself was picking up I had a really good time with it. I feel like I intellectually understand most of what the text is telling me, be it the story or the vision of Art, the importance of writing by one’s own vision, the filtering of reality which is not the weakness but the mark of a true artist; and yet I am still ill at ease.

(My apologies for the discombobulated post; it reflects my state of mind).

La Recherche is written by a narrator (which I’ll call Marcel, though that might be up for debate) largely inspired to Proust by himself — convoluted construction intentional. Proust was however adamant that the narrator was not him, and he indeed constructed Marcel’s life with noticeable divergences from his (and attributed other aspects of him to other characters). What is more, the narrator is telling his life through the prism of memories — something one could forget in the immediacy of the narration, but which obviously (the title says it well) is at the core of the novel. Memories and imaginations are so closely related as to be indistinguishable in Proust’s world… That is yet another caveat against taking the tale at face value.

Against this foggy background, Proust and Marcel both strongly assert that their only goal is to fish for these “deep truths” which reveal reality in the light of the creator’s idiosyncratic vision (careful, I’m reaching into my 50-cent words jar today!)

My problem is, I’m not sure I trust either of them.

For an “anti-intellectual” writer, one who wants to talk from the immediacy of sensations, Proust is incredibly wordy, and so theoretical that a lot of the material for his novel originates in earlier essays (gathered for the most part in the Against Sainte-Beuve collection I read along the novel). That’s the least of my worries: Proust’s interest with homosexuality and Jewish identity, for instance, are unquestionably genuine, but the incoherent ways he talks about them make me wonder whether he is honestly reflecting his inner conflicts or more simply lacks self-awareness in these matters. Another example might be in the romantic obsessions his young hero develops for unreachable girls. Is he depicting some true aspect of his romantic self (with a substitution of a “she” for a “he”, which I would not consider deception in the world of fiction); or is he just reflecting the cover-up lie he used for many years, when he pretended to be madly in love with women he could not have, to dispel any doubts as to his real sexuality?

These are some really big examples, and once these questions breach the trust between reader and writer/ narrator, everything else follows: by the end of his vacation in a chic hotel, was the initially rude lift operator really talkative, or is Marcel rearranging facts to claim one more social victory? Did the nobleman really stare at him unprovoked, or did he do something to attract attention? Did he really miss such train accidentally, or did he never really mean to follow through with his romanesque but unrealistic move? Am I meant to wonder about all this?

I’m hoping further volumes will help, but at that stage I feel like I’m trying to find my way by the moonlight in a beautiful, “Lewis Carollien” maze. I’m still unsure whether I like the feeling or not — but these sure are interesting times.

“Je suis un optimiste aussi, répondit Igor. Le pire est devant nous. Réjouissons-nous de ce que nous avons.”
(“I’m an optimist too, replied Igor. The worst is yet to come. Let us rejoice in what we have.”)

Most of my reading these days is class-oriented, and it is an interesting experience in and of itself. There’s Proust, which represents an enormous amount of reading and demands close attention: I’ve never really read like this, taking notes, consulting commentaries, reading a novel and its author’s critical writing in parallel, and generally making myself be so deliberate (some would say mechanical!) about it. Some days it’s really hard and brings too much effort between the text and me; other days (like today), it can be really rewarding and glorious, when some deeper understanding, some new connection appears.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

At the beginning of the week, I went through a rough reading patch. Proust tasted dry and pompous. I decided to break my “one book at a time” rule, at first with very short reads. Nice… but unsatisfying. So I went to my TBR pile intending to pick a book at random: I choose Guenassia’s novel out of pique, because with its 750 pages, it was the thickest of the pile and mocking me and my Proust block.

It was of course a little paradoxical, looking for a breather in the longest book available, but Le Club turned out to be the right choice. A simple, generous book, it leaves its reader ample space to daydream and feel without demanding too much thinking. It is unfortunately not translated in English yet, but it’s been published so recently that I hope it will be soon: I’d love to share it with my husband, as it tells a lot about Paris without ever making it its subject (which avoids all the nostalgia and cliches and generalizations that seem to go hand in hand with this city).

The book’s hero, Michel, is 12 years old when the book starts in October 1959. We follow him through the next five years, until the summer after his baccalauréat. I guess if one was looking to criticize the novel, the main issue might be that in these five crucial years, Michel doesn’t seem to change a lot. The story, or rather the stories, are not in him but around him: in the collapse of his parents’ marriage, in the experiences of the Eastern European refugees who gather at the café Michel and his friends go to, in the political and intellectual effervescence of the early 60’s, in the books Michel reads voraciously, in his first love stories, in the repercussions of the Algerian War on French society… There’s an undercurrent of bitterness in the book — as Guenassia said in an interview, there’s probably not one character in his large cast who doesn’t commit a betrayal at one point or another, Michel included.

And yet the overwhelming feeling left by the book is one of delight, of the richness of the world and of the human experience. All these betrayals, even the worst, stem from aspirations, desires, idealism; and no matter how low men (and women!) fall, there’s always a measure of redemption for them. There is something very comforting in this book, something optimistic in the ease with which Michel makes friends with everyone, in the way the book tells us we all belong, we all have have fascinating stories to tell, in its amusement with human weakness which isn’t so much oblivious to the amount of pain it might inflict as deliberately forgiving, a choice of to smile and take it lightly.

I imagine there might states of mind where this glibness is not welcome, but for cold, damp winter days when one needs to know that the world of men is alive and well, and that not every motion of the soul needs to be scrutinized, nor can be – it is perfect.

“aussitôt la vieille maison grise sur la rue, où était sa chambre, vint comme un décor de théâtre s’appliquer au petit pavillon (…); et avec la maison, la ville, depuis le matin jusqu’au soir et par tous les temps”

“immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion (…); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers” (translation found here)

The first volume of In Search of Lost Time, Swann’s Way, is composed of three long chapters to which I reacted fairly differently. I came relatively unprepared to Proust: I had read the second part of Swann’s Way, Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love) in my early twenties, and blasphemously, I had been neither awed not befuddled by it. I found it to be a much easier read than I had been led to believe; at the same time, its genius didn’t leap out at me.

Missed connection.

The first part of Swann’s Way – Combray — deals with the summer months the unnamed narrator, then a child, spent with his family away from Paris in his aunt’s house in the village of Combray. This first chapter, which contains the madeleine anecdote (in which the narrator regains the emotional memory of his childhood when tasting the same type of cookie he used to get as child), simply blew me away. Proust starts with a longish, slightly nauseating account of the child’s bedtime ritual. I say slightly nauseating because the drama of it, the great question is: will Maman come kiss me goodnight? His longing for her struck me as both disturbingly amorous (and he does, indeed, compare his desire to the one Swann experienced when in love with a courtesan) and heart-wrenching in the loneliness it betrays. This detailed and intense memory is all that subsists in his memory of his summers in Combray; it is like a point of light, like the flame of a candle in darkness. Other memories can be accessed; but they are rational, affectless and dry, facts more than feelings.

 That is, until he tastes a madeleine dipped in tea, and all of it comes flooding back. Proust obviously was proud of his idea to compare this process to a Japanese paper unfolding into wonderful shapes when dropped in water, but I saw it as flows of light (which is why I chose the quote above): first there’s is darkness, against which the one illuminated room of the narrator shines brightly; then the door is opened, and light starts cascading down the stairs, rushing through the entire house, seeping through the door and window frames into the streets, pushing them open to crash over the village and into the nearby fields. It’s a magical feeling of dawn lighting up an entire world and then holding it into the light to sparkle and be examined; once in a while, a bold ray of light even reaches out further than Combray and extends all the way to Paris or Balbec, in Normandy. It really is breathtaking, but Proust doesn’t stop there: in the world he just created, which at first seems to be mostly a world of things and places, he starts dropping characters. They’re initially introduced mostly through their social connections to the narrator’s family (the old family friend, the faithful servant, etc); their best traits are revealed, they all seem pleasant and lovable — what we are told probably is what is openly said about them (the one exception in all this pleasantness is the early mention of Swann’s “unsuitable” wife — but is it really a negative when it tickles the narrator’s fancy so much?). Then Proust starts mentioning a few things his family didn’t know about their acquaintances – Swann’s worldly connections, Legrandin’s reputation as a writer. At first it is all very positive; but then we ineluctably progress to the darker sides of the characters, Françoise’s (the maid) brutality against the other servants, Legrandin’s snobbery, aunt Léonie’s ridiculousness… This gives depth to the conflict that Proust seems to be introducing as a central point of the Search: a desire to go both Swann’s way (the side of arts, freedom, easy women…) and Guermantes’ way (the side of respectability, history and religion). He shows how the narrator’s family cannot imagine both sides could ever coexist: an uncle is forever rejected when Swann meets an actress at his hotel, a friend who idly insinuates that aunt Leonie “lived the life” is banned from the house, and Swann himself is only accepted as long as  he keeps his distasteful wife and daughter under wraps. With so much interdict to recommend her, how could our narrator not fall in love at first sight with Swann’s daughter, Gilberte? That is exactly what happens at the end of Combray.

Don’t worry — I will move much faster through the last two parts of Swann’s Way! The second part is Swann in Love. It felt like a more traditional story, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Set years before Combray, it tells rather exhaustively the love story between Swann and a woman, Odette de Crecy, who is in every way not right for him. “Love” could, and I think should be taken sarcastically here: while Odette might have had a crush on Swann for a week or too, it is obvious she rapidly outgrows it in favor of a more solid feeling of greed for his money and his connections. As for Swann, he develops an obsession for the woman despite her not being his “type” physically, intellectually or emotionally (amusingly, Proust seems to find overcoming a lack of physical attraction much more surprising than the other two). Swann’s love is what used to be called un amour de tête (love from the brain), in opposition to un amour de coeur (love from the heart); he is in love with an image he created for himself out of a Botticelli painting, a music phrase and a good dose of laziness. From such charming beginnings, Swan and Odette’s affair slowly descends into an elegant sort of abjection. I’m sure my reading is totally unorthodox, but since the character study was a little overwrought for me, what this ended up feeling like was — a mystery. I kept focusing on one question: is Odette the “unsuitable” woman Swann ends up marrying? Pure rooting interest (against, of course) kept me turning pages. Perversely, Proust leads his reader all the way to the death of Swann’s interest for Odette — without ever answering the question.

The answer, however, is contained in the last part of Swann’s Way, Place Names: The Name. This third part is much shorter, and truncated by Proust for publishing purposes, which is shockingly perceptible in the abruptness with which it ends. The writing is lovely, starting with long musings on everything there is in the name of a place, all the colors and smells and ideas a few syllables can convey… And yet, how deceptive names are, being both less than and besides the reality of a place. This idea of one being driven by illusions, led astray by one’s imagination of the world (names here, image in the case of Odette in the previous chapter) rather than by the world itself, is immediately illustrated again in the young love of the narrator for Swann’s daughter Gilberte. The passion is built on wind, and the narrator is never happier with Gilberte as when she is away. She is after all only a vivacious, friendly girl of flesh and blood, not her friendship with his beloved writer Bergotte, not her beautiful mother with her sinful past (we meet the mother, but in case you haven’t read the book — I’ll keep her name to myself), not a theatre play with a famous actress: and it is really these things the narrator is in love with.

Woo, that was some note! I’m afraid it’s not really adapted to a blog, but I wanted to put some ideas down before going to explore this website dedicated to reading Proust.

“un immense oiseau de nuit qui les regardait de ses yeux de braise, et qui semblait accroché aux cordes de la lyre d’Apollon!”
“an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the string of Apollo’s lyre (translation found at Classic Reader)

The Phantom as The Red Death — illustration from Castaigne

This week-end was near perfect: Chris and I went to Kentucky with our friends B and G, going from Bourbon distillery to horse racetrack (where I bet on the darkest horse I could find, in honor of The Black Stallion – and won!), from city to nature, and from activity to long breaks at the motel. I finished the Phantom of the Opera just before we went to visit the Lexington Cemetery, a peaceful place of nostalgic beauty. Its atmosphere is perhaps one of the reasons that the Phantom finally settled into my mind as a tragic figure rather than the monster he also is. There were interesting parallels to Frankenstein, in the “if only his creator – or men – had been a little more merciful”…  (“peut-être l’eût-il été [un ange] tout à fait si Dieu l’avait vêtu de beauté au lieu de l’habiller de pourriture” — “), though in Leroux’s work there seem to be a greater fascination for the links between pain and genius, where Shelley seemed to have less sympathy for her creation.

The novel is both simple in its dynamics (a love triangle, a mystery to be solved) and ornate in its details; it mixes tragic romance with comedy, murder mystery and tragedy. It however never felt disorienting or labored thanks to fast facing, frequent comedic touches and what impressed me most – Leroux’s complicity with his readers. He shamelessly cultivates it by not only addressing them directly, but also including them in spirited mockery of some characters such as Mme Giry or the extremely secondary “juge d’instruction Faure”. How infinitely wiser, smarter, and better informed we feel! And how I wish Gaston was one of my friends, or even better, a coworker with whom to grab coffee and make fun of everyone else. Knowing full well, of course, that he’s probably had a few laughs at your expense too.

The story itself is that of the mysterious events that happened at the Opera between the time a director is found murdered and that a diva disappears with a viscount. The diva is Christine Daae, a young woman whose least secret is how her voice miraculously became more beautiful than any other; the viscount is Raoul, who loves her with all the stubborn passion of a man who cannot imagine anything beyond him; in-between them stands the long shadow of the Phantom, a creature of many talents and macabre taste who lives under the Opera. I must confess to liking him much better than that brute of Raoul (who is initially depicted as naïve, childish man, and who, like a rotten kid, throws jealous tantrums at the slightest provocation). The Phantom himself borders on the homicidal, and acts with a staggering mix of greed and disdain for others, but with such grandeur and such style that it takes incredible efforts to remember that this guy is a murderer and a torturer… I’m afraid I failed at it most of the time, and kept wishing for his triumph.

All in all, the Phantom was just delightful. Everything felt just right, down to the varied and colorful characters, down to the unrealistically sarcastic dialogue (“D. – Vous êtes superstitieux ? R. – Non, monsieur, je suis croyant” — “are you supersticious?” “No sir, I believe in God”). Leroux stops at nothing to entertain, not even at lifting lines almost straight out of Victor Hugo (“C’était l’heure tranquille où les machinistes vont boire”, “The peaceful hour where thirsty stage managers pass” switching the original lions with a more urban type of beast). Works for me.

Oh, and that ends my participation in the R.I.P. Challenge IV, I think, as I prepare to immerse myself in Proust for a few weeks!

“As her sight glanced again upon the grave, she could not forbear enquiring, for whom it was prepared. He took his eyes from the torch, and fixed them upon her face without speaking.”

Strike 3 for the R.I.P. Challenge! The most authentic gothic novel in my reading list, The Mysteries of Udolpho is book-ended by scenes of simple happiness in the Gascony house of the Saint-Aubert family; in between these, much travel, much adversity and many preposterous twists and turns sprawl on the pages of Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 novel. There’s good fun to be had in dark castles and secret passages, among mysterious voices and ghostly apparitions, but there’s also a quantity of unnecessary devices and digressions. If a modern editor were to travel back in time and inform Radcliffe that more is not always better – and if she also decided to put in a good word for consistency in point of view – I believe I would be a perfectly content reader.

When we first meet Emily Saint-Aubert, she seems to have the perfect life: loving and wise parents, a comfortable house with a well-stocked library, a lovely park. Emily is her parents’ only surviving child, having lost two brothers a few years back (an information given by Radcliffe with amusing  offhand brutality:  after describing a charming pastoral scene, she mentions that Emily’s father’s “first interruptions to the happiness […] since his retirement were occasioned by the death of his two sons”). This last is an example of unnecessary information. Nobody in the novel cares, neither therefore does the reader, and the fact has no bearing on the plot. Why bother?

The first seven chapters are similarly protracted, and I frankly felt that they belonged to the back-story, or at the very least should have been summarized in one chapter. In jest, Emily’s parents both die, leaving her in an embarrassed financial situation, and she meets a young man, Valancourt, whom she is attracted to. That’s it for the plot – the rest is all description of nature, gay peasant dances (I kid you not) and philosophical musings. One of these asides was about Emily’s education, in particular about teaching her to govern her sensitivity (Emily’s father teaches her that “sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions” and illustrates his point with the example of “persons [who] turn from the distressed […] because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated”). This type of moral education, so obvious until the 19^th century, seems to have gone out of fashion with the emergence of the ideas of “teaching by example”, “letting children become themselves”, and probably with the idea that human beings are born good (merci Rousseau!). I for one feel that I would have benefited to be taught what to do with excessive sensitivity – or with laziness, vanity, discouragement, etc. – but I’m not sure how other modern readers would enjoy these passages.

So back to the action: it picks up when the now-orphaned Emily is assigned to the care of her aunt, Mme Cheron. A silly, insensitive woman who delights in having power over others, she immediately indulges her petty impulses by coming between Emily and Valancourt. She also marries an Italian nobleman of suspicious character, and takes Emily away to Italy. There, amid enemies sly or brutal, Emily will have to fight for her virtue and her happiness in settings ranging from magnificent Venice palazzi to a ruined gothic fortress in the Apennines (and more – it is the rare chapter that doesn’t involve some change of setting). Bucolic promenades finally give way to treason and supernatural apparitions. The story from this point on is convoluted and coincidental to the point of absurdity, but with such lavish imagination, the only way to not enjoy oneself is to be impervious to the genre entirely. Of course, in the end, reason (if not probability) and courage will prevail, the worthy will be rewarded and villains will be punished.

I think it might read Radcliffe again in the future, but with a slightly different approach. As a writer, she is able of surgical wit, especially when criticizing fashionable society (for instance: “Madame Clairval, though a woman of fashion, was far less advanced than her friend in the art of deriving satisfaction from distinction and admiration, rather than from conscience”, or “the party continued to converse, and, as far as civility would permit, to torture each other by mutual boasts”); this ability to encapsulate realms of meaning in a short sentence sometimes even shines through without irony, an even rarer gift (for instance, when talking about the process of falling in love, she mentions “the danger of sympathy and silence”). She is unfortunately also inclined to great enthusiasm and lengthy descriptions for all things nature and heroines “full of timid sweetness” – not my cup of tea. I might just skip these passages in the future, as I skipped a majority of the poetry - editing as I read, in a way.

“l’épouvantable éducation de ce monde, où, dans une soirée, il se commet en pensées, en paroles, plus de crimes que la Justice n’en punit aux Cours d’assises, où les bons mots assassinentles plus grandes idées, où l’on ne passe pour fort qu’autant que l’on voit juste; et là, voir juste, c’est ne croire à rien, ni aux sentiments, ni aux hommes, ni même aux événements“

“the abominable education of this world where, in an evening, more crimes are committed in thoughts, in words than the Law punishes, where soundbites murder the highest ideas, where one is only considered as strong as he sees clearly; and there, seeing clearly means believing in nothing, neither feelings nor men, nor even events” (quick and dirty translation)

Eugénie Grandet by Danielle Scarpa Kos

With perhaps the exception of Thomas Hardy, I am unfamiliar with non-French authors as preoccupied with questions of class and the major social changes of the 18th and 19th century as the holy trilogy of Flaubert, Zola and Balzac. Of these, Zola was long my favorite, probably because of his more easily understood idealism; re-reading Eugénie Grandet, however, was a great occasion to let Balzac grow on me – the elegance of his writing, the delicate irony married to acuity of observation (“ce combat secret… occupait passionnément les diverses sociétés de Saumur” – “this secret battle… engrossed the diverse societies of Saumur“), the neatness of the book structure where every scene felt necessary.

There are very few characters to like here: le père Grandet, the formidable shadow hovering over the entire book, is probably the most detestable of all. A devoted miser, he has built a huge fortune on ruthless cunning, breaches of trust and tireless exploitation of his fellow humans. For all this he is enormously admired in his home town of Saumur. The man lives like a pauper with his wife, his daughter Eugénie and his maid Nanon, an outcast he opportunistically rescued. Some vague reasons are provided for his greed: a destitute childhood, a predator’s taste for victory in business matters – but most of all, the picture is that of a man obsessed beyond reason or understanding, for whom is impossible to feel sorry.

Grandet has only one child, his daughter Eugénie, whose prospects attract suitors whose only charms are money and ambition. She herself is quite oblivious to all things romantic, until one day her cousin Charles is sent to spend some time in Saumur. They fall in love. Alas, the true motive for Charles’s visit is that his father, on the verge of bankruptcy, has sent him away while he commits an “honorable suicide”. Grandet arranges to have his nephew sent to the colonies to try and remake his fortune – and to keep this poor suitor away from his daughter. Charles gone, life goes back to its mean routine, with Grandet descending ever more into avarice while Eugénie endlessly waits for her lover’s return.

It will be years before Charles comes back to France. By then he has become the Grandet he was always meant to be, a selfish, obdurate man who dismisses his past promises to contract a marriage he thinks more advantageous. Eugénie discovers the truth at the same time she learns that the disgraceful bankrupcy is still looming. She decides to settle her cousin’s debts and resigning herself to a loveless, sexless marriage to one of her suitors. The rest of her life will be spent in quiet resignation, first at the sideof her callous husband, then as an even-richer widow.  While she will do some good with her immense fortune, she will remain a prisoner to it to the end – isolated from every true feeling and living in the barren existence that is all she has ever known.

Quite peculiar to Balzac is his extremely harsh indictment of individuals. Society, place, circumstances – these are understood to play a role in the human tragi-comedy, but Balzac’s cynicism is unmissable. Individuals are despicable and society heinous; this is made worse by the growing fascination with money he denounces, but he doesn’t see human barbarity as either new or receding. The only admirable characters, individuals touched by a true idea of religion, are represented by Eugénie and her mother; they are frankly so angelic as to lack nerve. Nanon is an exception, the only other character who is overall positive despite some flaws – and my favorite in the book, with her obstinacy to make the best of life and her readiness to compromise for it.

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

Peacock Plumes by Erik Veland

Re-reading my notes on Pride and Prejudice almost a month after they were written, I was amused to see how faithfully they reflected my experience with reading Jane Austen: a great many early remarks, both laudatory (Such sharp wit! Such ability to sum up a scene in a few well-chosen details!) and annoyed (Disjointed structure! Unnecessary intrusion of the writer’s opinion!)… Then, about a third of the way into the story, notes stop. I was so fully taken in I forgot to think about what I was reading.

Yet I did not love Elizabeth Bennet: while I thought she was a great character, I’m not sure I would like her very much as a person. The second in a family of five daughters, Elizabeth is her father’s favorite – a quick-witted girl with a judgmental/ gossipy/ cynical streak. Her older sister, Jane, seems the traditional model of female perfection: selfless, beautiful, loving and naïve. The three younger sisters appear as counterpoints to this onslaught of qualities: one of them, Mary, is typecast as the plain-looking girl who tries to compensate her lack of looks through culture, and comes out looking ridiculous; the other two, Kitty and Lydia, are two brainless girls maniacally addicted to fun. The family is rounded up with a nice-but-weak paternal figure and a mother who is the prototypical Austen airhead married woman (like Mary Musgrove in Persuasion, Mrs. Bennet is self-centered, intellectually limited and crassly manipulative).

As if such a family wasn’t enough of a liability, the Bennet girls’ marriage prospects are also limited by their lack of financial expectations, their father’s estate being entailed to their nearest male relative. Mrs Bennet, for all her shortcomings, seems more aware than anyone else of the real danger of poverty the situation places her daughters in, and is intent on marrying them as well and as fast as possible.

An opportunity seems to present itself for Jane when Mr. Bingley, a rich gentleman, rents the nearby estate of Netherfield. An attachment immediately begins between the two of them; unfortunately, Bingley’s two sisters and his friend Darcy, afraid that the match would be unfavorable, separate the two lovers by attracting Bingley to London and convincing him that Jane has no true attachment to him.

Elizabeth meanwhile has conceived a strong dislike for Darcy: not only did he disdain her at a ball, he is also believed to have wronged Mr. Wickham, a militia officer she is fond of, and she suspects his interference between Jane and Bingley. Of course she will slowly discover that he was (mostly) innocent, and he will realize his attraction to her; and when they both have overcome their ‘pride and prejudices’, they will end up together and help Bingley and Jane reunite.

The interwoven love stories at the heart of the book are illuminated by a number of secondary plots, such as the loveless marriage of Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas to a boorish clergyman, the reckless elopement of Lydia and Wickham or the depiction of the frozen life of Lady Catherine, Darcy’s aunt eaten alive by birth pride. These snippets inform the heroines’ choices and provide a counterpoint to their mostly good decisions. They point directly to Austen’s vision of the necessity to balance heart and head in matters of sentiments; Austen’s almost cruel wit keeps the whole from feeling preachy. The only character that really left me feeling uneasy was Mary, afflicted with intellectual pretensions but little true intelligence or sensitivity. In the grand tradition of Moliere’s femmes savantes, her efforts at self-improvements only seemed to make her a worse person. No political correction here, no belief that self-improvement is accessible to all but to the already gifted: as Austen puts it, there is “in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil — a natural defect which not even the best education can overcome”, a cynicism I don’t quite know what to make of.

A theme I will keep an eye on in my future Austen readings!