Multiple Reading Personalities

J’ai refermé ce livre avec un sentiment de perplexité qui ne m’a pas quitté depuis… Les âmes fortes se présente comme une discussion entre trois femmes, lors d’une veillée funèbre. On croit un instant que nous allons assister à un grand déballage sur la vie du mort et de sa femme, mais pas du tout : nous partagerons tout au plus deux ou trois rumeurs, évoquées de façon assez floue pour nous rappeler que nous ne sommes pas, nous lecteurs, dans l’intimité de village de ces trois femmes. Cette intimité monstrueuse, cette vigilance organique des petits villages de la France campagnarde sera un personnage à part entière du roman, ou plutôt constituera son terroir. La narration y reviendra assez vite, mais non sans un second détour préalable, un rapide rappel de l’avarice paysanne : deux des trois femmes ont en effet assez récemment perdu leurs parents, et étalent naïvement la cupidité et l’égoïsme sans joie qui les a dressées contre leurs sœurs, les manœuvres sordides auprès des parents mourants ou du notaire pour empocher une grosse part d’héritage.

Le décor est posé : nous sommes dans ce que Balzac a si souvent raconté, la mesquinerie, l’âpreté au gain des petites gens, les villages où tout se sait. Ce n’est jamais une toile de fond plaisante, et mon expérience de lecture est certainement teintée par le fait que je viens moi-même d’un village vieillissant de l’Ile-de-France qui, pour n’être plus habité par de tous petits exploitants agricoles, n’en a pas moins gardé une culture locale encore fortement influencée par l’ascension petite bourgeoise des XIXe et XXe, par la montre (pas celle au poignet, hein…) et la pesée soigneuse des statuts sociaux. Sur cet arrière-plan un peu glauque, une femme se détache : Thérèse, notre âme forte, qui pressée par ses deux consœurs, va raconter son histoire, d’abord avec une hypocrisie bienséante, puis, aiguillonnée par l’une des deux autres, une commère qui a le goût du scandale, avec une froide franchise qu’on est tenté de prendre pour la “vraie” version de son histoire. L’histoire de Thérèse est exposée en trois grands mouvements : le premier, raconté par elle, la décrit comme une jeune fille ordinaire, qui s’enfuit avec son amoureux pour aller l’épouser ; le second, où la commère prend la main, vire (on y vient) au roman balzacien, où le mari de Thérèse, métamorphosé en aigrefin, profite de la jeune fille et de la bonté d’une famille bourgeoise pour se faire une petite fortune ; le troisième et dernier mouvement, raconté par Thérèse et la commère, se présente comme une révélation : un monstre plus grand que nature se tapissait dans toute cette vilenie ordinaire, en tirait les ficelles, et trompait avec volupté la vigilance ragotarde de toute la communauté.

Il a de petits détails qui m’ont gênée au cours de la lecture ; par exemple, mon “deuxième mouvement”, raconté par la commère, fournit de très nombreux détails que l’opinion générale, si bien renseignée soit elle, ne pourrait connaître (notamment des pensées, des gestes intimes, etc.) ; on ne peut pas décemment leur donner comme excuse l’invention populaire (non que nous ne remplissions pas tous les blancs lorsque nous racontons une histoire, mais un peu plus d’incohérence, de sensationnalisme ou d’hésitation serait nécessaire pour crédibiliser l’hypothèse). La commère a donc des accès d’omniscience, ce qui est franchement embêtant dans une histoire qui démonte les mécanismes de l’opinion villageoise et les extrêmes qui sont nécessaires pour la tromper. Finalement, je crois que ce livre aurait mieux fonctionné pour moi sans l’inutile complication du récit à deux mains, si Giono soit n’avait pas répondu à la question “qui raconte” (narrateur invisible), soit s’il s’était concentré sur un seul narrateur (Thérèse était tout de même la mieux placée…), soit enfin s’il avait laissé la fin de son récit moins structurée, moins affirmative, et redonné à la narration le jeu qui lui manque pour s’accommoder de multiples points de vue. Reste également la question de la motivation du récit (on la comprend chez la commère, mais Thérèse partage soudain des secrets vieux de plusieurs décennies sans que l’on comprenne bien pourquoi).

Il reste néanmoins la très belle écriture de Giono, qui pour être ici moins poétique et bruissante qu’à son ordinaire (ce n’est après tout pas lui qui parle) n’en est pas moins maîtrisée, ni moins pure et sensible sans sombrer dans la sensiblerie. C’est justement parce que s’enfoncer dans le récit est un tel plaisir que les interruptions narratives m’ont ennuyée ; en revanche, elles nous offrent le plaisir de la langue parlée, avec ses mots tout entiers surgis du passé comme le “trimard”, sa saveur crue (“avec un cul du tonnerre de Dieu, neuf dixièmes en crin, comme de juste, mais l’autre dixième incontestablement ce qu’il y avait de plus valable“) et ses subtilités que seul permet un usage un peu relâché (“elle avait perdu les sens” pour une déclaration d’amour, est-ce que ce pluriel/ cette conglutination d’expressions ne sont pas tout simplement géniaux ?). Tiens, peut-être que j’aurais dû tout simplement lire le livre entièrement à voix haute…

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.

“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.

“Maintenant vos volontés seront scrupuleusement satisfaites, mais au dépens de votre vie. Le cercle de vos jours, figuré par cette peau, se resserrera suivant la force et le nombre de vos souhaits, depuis le plus léger jusqu’au plus exorbitant.”

“Henceforward, your wishes will be accurately fulfilled, but at the expense of your life. The compass of your days, visible in that skin, will contract according to the strength and number of your desires, from the least to the most extravagant.” (all translations lifted from project Gutenberg’s online edition).

It must be the Eugénie effect — no sooner had I finished putting together my reading list for the RIP IV Challenge that I began reading La peau de chagrin, hungry for more Balzac. I know I read it as a child, but could not remember anything except the story’s basic premises and how much I love the French title (unfortunately translated either by The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass’s Skin in English – “Chagrin” has a double meaning in French, one shagreen – a rough, exotic type of leather that emphasizes the skin’s natural grain - the other grief, the French word chagrin being derived from shagreen via the sensation of the material’s roughness). Very poetic, and not giving away the true nature of the skin.

This famous skin comes to Raphaël de Valentin in a scene evocative of other literary pacts with the devil. His heart broken by the courtesan Feodora, his meager fortune dissipated in desesperate debauchery, the young man is on his way to throwing himself in the Seine when he stops in a curiosity shop to wait for the cover of the night. There, he is offered the talisman by an old man who sternly warns him against accepting it, explaining that for every wishes it grants, it will shrink, and so will Raphaël’s life.

The young man jokingly wishes for a feast and for wealth; however, he does not believe in the skin, and still intends to commit suicide. Leaving the shop, he runs into a few friends who have been looking for him all over Paris: Raphaël has been chosen to head a new magazine, and the launch party is about to start. The festivities are wild, and at their close, Raphaël miraculously finds out that he has inherited a fortune. His two wishes are granted. The skin has shrunk. Doubt is no longer possible.

From this moment, Raphaël’s motivations change drastically: he no longer wishes to obtain the love of his cruel mistress, he no longer tries to prove his genius, and most of all – he passionately wants to live. Is it because live is so much worthier when one is rich, is it the newly-perceived reality of death, is it a change wrought by the skin? The story does not explain, content with showing a rich Raphaël now living a life sheltered of any desire in a semi-retreat from the world. Love however will reach out to him again in the form of Pauline, the angelic girl Raphaël could not bring himself to love when they were both poor. Now also become fabulously rich, Pauline captures Raphaël’s heart. The two lovers are happy for a while, but passion soon means the end for Raphaël, who dies in the arms of his love.

While I choose this story for the fantastic element, the supernatural is not what will stay with me. There’s indeed a central mystical element, and it stubbornly resists scientific explanation: the skin is at some point brought by Raphaël to famous scientists, but they fail to understand anything about it. Later, the doctors who examine Raphaël also fail him – but their failure is a more familiar one (they come across as learned charlatans Molière would be proud of). Balzac even leaves the dubitative reader a way to deny the supernatural entirely: Raphaël falls asleep just before the skin is given to him, making it a possibility that everything that follows is a dream. Much as in a dream, echoes of his former life are woven through the rest of the narrative: a small example is that of a fanciful prediction made by Pauline’s mother, which is realized to T; a more significant one is that the whole question at stake in Raphaël’s life with the magic skin is that of the will – precisely the subject on which he had written his philosophy masterpiece. That would furthermore explain his otherwise mysterious change of life goals after obtaining the skin.

Also substracting from the skin’s interest is its unimpressive appearance and lack of “special effects”. Balzac is an author with incredible descriptive abilities, and he revels in them: his light touch with the skin has to be deliberate. It comes across a pure narrative device, the touch of a writer still learning his craft.

What does come across with incredible force is the fascination of the material world: the accumulation of exotic objects in the shop, the banquet scene, the tiny details of Raphaël’s life as a rich men are just fascinating. They can at times get overwhelming, but the sensuality of things through Balzac’s eyes has incredible power. It also stands in stark contrast to this Hemingway-esque observation at the beginning of the book: “Où trouverez-vous, dans l’océan des littératures, un livre surnageant qui puisse lutter de génie avec ces lignes: Hier, à quatre heures, une jeune femme s’est jetée dans la Seine du haut du Pont-des-Arts.” (Where will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare with this paragraph: “Yesterday, at four o’clock, a young woman threw herself into the Seine from the Pont des Arts.”) Brevity is not what Balzac made his name with – and from me, that is not a complaint!

(and since we’re on the subject of the fantastic: for the francophones out there, Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance on France Culture has a recent podcast on anguish in Maupassant. The guest speaker seems to overventilate with excitement at several points in the show, but aside from this minor complaint, it is well worth listening to.)

“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!