“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!
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
“All I can say is that my new master had collected all the stinginess in the world and was hoarding it”.
As a child, Lazaro de Tormes sees his world destroyed twice, never seeming to think much of it: he is 8 when his father, a miller, is judged and sent to war for stealing grain. He dies in exile, and Lazaro’s mother finds employment in a nearby city; working in a notable’s house, she settles in a relation with a black stable groom and has a second child with him. Some time into the relationship, her lover is discovered to steal from his master for them: they are separated, bodily punished, and she is relegated to a life as a servant in an inn, where she tries to bring up both Lazaro and his mulatto half-brother; finally, a blind beggar offers to take Lazaro in his service, and so he is launched into a thieving life of his own.
Ostensibly presented as a short autobiography written by Lazaro to entertain a patron, the “Excellency” at the service of whom he ends up working a government job, the novel is widely regarded as a genre-founding work, that of the picaresque novel. “Picaro”, meaning “rogue” in Spanish, characterize a variety of “hero” rather rare in classic literature, one who is neither noble of spirits nor punished for his sins. At a time where fiction was seen as excusable only if edifying, this novel depicts a morally bankrupt society where virtue is not only laughed at: it is impossible.
In his adventures, Lazarillo first follows a blind beggar, who turns out to be a good master — not in the way he treats his apprentice, who gets barely enough to eat and plenty enough beatings, but in all the dirty tricks, cheats and thieving tips he witnesses, and in the ones he has to employ to pluck food out of his miserly “uncle’s” hands. After a particularly brutal beating, Lazarillo finally leaves this first master and finds employment with a priest, who though not as dishonest proves even more close-fisted. All the while misdirecting suspicions towards mice and a fantastical snake, Lazaro manages for a while to steal enough bread to survive, but finally gets thrown out of the house when he is discovered. From there he falls in the employ of a Squire, who despite managing to keep face, believes it the honorable thing to do to starve to death rather than work: this master Lazarillo will even have to provide for through begging, before being left behind as a liability. A few others masters follow — a friar of which not much is told except that he walked a lot, a seller of indulgences who finishes Lazaro’s education in “persuasive” selling, a tambourine painter, a chaplain for whom he sells water (the first job providing enough for him to eat to his contentment, and even to save enough money in four years for a set of decent clothes), a constable – a calling too dangerous for our hero’s taste.
Finally comes a function as a town crier, and through it the favor of his master and a moderate fortune in cornering the market for public sales announcements in his city. Further, Lazarillo is rewarded for his services by an arranged marriage to a girl who is apparently to the service of a third personage in more ways than one — a state of things her husband prudently refuses to know anything about, happy only to benefit from the favor of this man.
Overall, Lazarillo is a great read, with vigorous language and comedic situations making it funny at more turns than one. It is also a very direct denunciation of the society of its time, in which someone whose fortune is not made at birth will struggle against almost endless obstacles, and cannot perhaps succeed without artifice. The Church takes the brunt of the criticism, appearing selfish, stingy and exploitative through its various representatives, but the absurd high airs of the impoverished nobility, the credulity of commoners and the general dishonesty of the society does not fare any better. There is not much reflection on the situation of black people, who are briefly pitied with a cliche; women do slightly better. While secondary characters endowed with very little feelings of their own, they often appear in position of self-sacrifice (Lazarillo’s mother) or are slightly more giving than their male counterparts (the neighbors of the Squire). All in all a book which would probably be a minor classic if not for its novelty at the time, but a nice rapid read well worth the time for its entertaining value.