Lecture 18- Pride and Prejudice VII: Scholarly Approaches

[Music] [Music] hello Learners and welcome to the seventh in our discussion of Jane Austin's novel Pride and Prejudice in the previous lecture I briefly introduced a key moment in the novel and I gave a short analysis of that moment today I will reflect in Greater detail on the implications of that moment and how we can interpret the rest of the novel better by clearly understanding and um appreciating this moment uh This Moment the the moment that I'm referring to obviously is uh the choice that one character makes and uh the choice that another character fails to understand before I go into more detail and I briefly recall that moment uh for you all I want to make some general comments on the novel and why it continues to be as popular popular as it is now everyone knows that Pride and Prejudice is a greatly popular novel there are countless uh film and TV adaptations there are countless uh popular and genre adaptations there are multiple series of novels that have been published based on the characters and the settings of this novel uh what makes this novel so popular it is worth ref reflecting on that briefly now on the surface of things the novel has a very conventional uh romantic uh plot um it seems to be a novel that idealizes romantic love culminating in marriage however if one looks very closely at uh how the novel deres its power how the novel keeps readers engaged and and how the novel produces moments of great uh enjoyment appreciation and also education for its readers one will notice that it is not a novel uh about romantic love or marriage per se instead it is a novel about the difficulty of knowing that is to say it it is a novel that describes and dramatizes how difficult it is for us to be certain that what we perceive and what we understand is in fact the truth uh more importantly not only is it difficult to know whether what we perceive is the truth it is also difficult to know whether what we can certify as Truth uh in fact is good for us in other words it is difficult to transition from a theoretical logical or intellectual idea of Truth to a moral and ethical idea of Truth we may understand something to be true but does that have meaning for us in the course of our lives these are uh on the surface of things uh philosophical questions however the Beauty and the power of the novel is such that these philosophical and intellectual questions are made Humane they are captured in the choices and actions uh that human beings like us undertake so uh one last thing about the novel before moving on it is a novel not only about the difficulty of knowing but also about the dangers of acting in the face of what will inevitably be limited or imperfect knowledge now it is difficult and and dangerous but that uh is life therefore it is a novel about the precarious nature of life itself life needs to be lived we cannot afford to um delay certain decisions forever and yet we are required to take the these decisions we are required to make certain choices uh without perfect information that is to say in uh despite having imperfect knowledge uh life demands and life requires from us that we make choices as if the knowledge we had was perfect uh this is what the novel is really about even though on the surface of things it may appear to be about romantic love or marriage so what kind of choices and what kind of imperfect knowledge does the novel dramatize today I will explain a little bit about these choices and these intellectual Stakes of the novel by reflecting on a character whose name is Charlotte Lucas now very briefly I um mention that Charlotte Lucas makes a choice right she does something which Elizabeth Bennett who is the novel's protagonist fails to understand and expresses that is Elizabeth that is expresses a great deal of shock and uh almost despair at the decision that Charlotte takes um in in what follows I will reflect on uh how Jane Austin's biographical background that is her own life provided an important context from which shot Lucas's Choice uh was described I then reflect on the narrative implications of this choice that Charlotte Lucas makes and finally I will briefly reflect on some scholarly approaches to the novel that uh can be understood and practiced through a better understanding of this choice so let's understand briefly what is this choice that Charlotte Lucas makes now I read out a quote from the novel which introduced s John Lucas that is Charlotte's father uh the lucases are uh the neighbors of the bennets and so John Lucas is an interesting character uh we we get a small biography of this character the the narrator explains to us how this man Mr Lucas uh had gained some degree of financial stability through trade and business and later on decided to stop engaging in that activity uh and instead to take up the the title of a knight that is once he was awarded Knighthood to take up the title of Sir John Lucas and to give up working and to merely enjoy the respect and recognition that the title conferred upon him so this is who s John Lucas is uh this brief biographical information about this character let's us know that uh the lucases were financially well to do but they were not exactly swimming in cash um in other words they had enough to survive but uh the unwed uh single women in the Lucas family given the general lack of opportunity of women to inherit and own property their fate uh therefore was in a very precarious situation ation uh while Sir John Lucas himself do not have to worry about money or property or his well-being his daughter Charlotte uh had a lot to worry about that's because uh he had not in accumulated enough wealth and therefore she did not that is Charlotte did not stand to gain much by way of uh Capital she therefore depended on marrying into wealth and and U marrying someone who could uh inherit a property and therefore ensure her well-being uh in this context a character a character named Mr Collins appears on the scene Mr Collins is a clergyman who is set to inherit a large s of property in the neighborhood now uh this man uh is defined that is to say Mr Collins is defined by two key people pieces of information on one hand the fact that he will inherit property and on the other the fact that he is of a highly dislikable and disagreeable nature there are repeated mentions in fact it is not subtle at all uh readers who might have missed one hint are given repeated hints and uh so much so that there are not hints as loud announcements about how bad a person and how horrible a companion this man will likely make to anyone who is U who whom who might be unlucky enough to find in him a life partner uh at one point Elizabeth Bennett described describes Mr Collins as a quote conceited pompous narrow narrow-minded and a silly man so the narrator leaves no stone unturned in showing to us exactly how dislikable and disagreeable Mr Collins is uh however the the irony or the joke of the situation is that this man whom nobody likes uh has something which makes him a very powerful candidate in this uh kind of an economy or in this kind of a marriage Market uh because he stands to inherit uh a home and property uh he is still in a sense uh attractive and it is this knowledge that he stands to own property and this power that property gives him which fan which makes him fancy himself as attractive to the women and it is perhaps with this sense of power and this sense of uh agency self delusional though it may be uh Mr Collins proposes to Elizabeth now this is u a remarkable moment in the novel because uh Elizabeth exerts a great deal of uh individuality and perhaps the first and most strongest expression of rational objective thinking and uh makes a difficult Choice uh she decides to refuse Mr Colin's proposal of marriage right uh this is what happens the manner in which readers uh access this information is through a direct report the narrator describes to us exactly what happened in the scene as if the narrator were present and we accept the narrator's view uh until this point we have not had any occasion or Reason To Doubt the narrator's reporting of of events therefore we take the narrator's view as reality uh here is what the narator tells us as almost as soon as I entered the house he tells Lizzy I singled you out as the companion of my future life so uh this uh statement is very obviously untrue and uh mainly because it is an attempt to present as uh highly uh ennobling and edifying what is actually a very simple and um causal decision it it's a very practical decision U Mr Collins thinks that U Elizabeth will agree to his proposal simply because he has the the power that property confers upon him uh the the thing to note is that readers are described this information in a direct report right uh as soon as Elizabeth receives this proposal she's in a great dilemma and receives and uh faces a great deal of pressure to accept this proposal however despite this pressure Elizabeth manages to hold off and finally takes this decision to refuse this proposal uh immediately after that however we pieced together the sequence of events to understand that having been refused uh by Elizabeth Mr uh Collins has gone on and proposed to Charlotte uh in this case however uh Charlotte has accepted his proposal now the key difference between these two proposals one that is refused and the second which is accepted is that the second one uh is accessed by us that is readers indirectly uh we learn that someone has witnessed this and someone has report reported this as a story to someone else and Elizabeth hears someone tell her that Mr Collins has proposed to Charlotte and she has accepted uh this this offer uh and then uh following this receipt of this information Elizabeth reacts in a highly shocked manner she says engage to Mr Collins my dear Charlotte impossible right and and uh this word impossible is important to note because later on uh in the novel when when we reach the ending of the novel we we learn that Mr Dary has proposed to um Elizabeth and she accepts uh when Elizabeth reports this information to Jane she uses the same word impossible in the context of Dary and Elizabeth now when we reach that point we will have occasion to reflect more deeply on uh the meaning of possibility and how the novel creates the meaning of the of the word plot and narrative through this word impossible but for now I just want to flag that this word occurs twice and uh in both occasions the word is doing uh very different kinds of intellectual and emotional labor in this case right when Elizabeth mentions that Charlotte's uh marriage to Mr Collins must be impossible she's expressing a degree of shock uh Elizabeth is shocked and uses the word impossible because she thinks it would be a great punishment for Charlotte to spend the rest of her life with this man named Mr Collins for Elizabeth this would be a punishment because of how dislikable a person Mr Collins is but also because how there is a sense that that she has that Charlotte as an individual could have held out could have taken a chance and could have preserved for herself the possibility of Greater happiness right that uh this is a poor decision by Charlotte or and this is not a good choice that that Charlotte has made because she has the possibility of Greater happiness however immediately after Elizabeth expresses this shocked reaction Charlotte rationalizes her choice Charlotte explains to Elizabeth why this is in fact a very good choice for her and in Charlotte's explanation this is a good choice because Charlotte's situation in life is very different from that of Elizabeth and what is this difference in their respective situations according to Charlotte the difference is that Charlotte does not consider herself as beautiful or as intelligent as Elizabeth does and therefore and uh therefore has less to gain from taking the risk of romance right this is Charlotte's explanation and this is a view that Elizabeth does not accept now before we comment on the merits or demerits of using such logic let us try and understand some biographical context for Charlotte's choice or rather uh for Jane Austin's choice in creating a scenario in which Charlotte would be compelled to make a choice of this kind now George Austin that is Jane Austin's father was in in many ways a real life version of Mr Collins uh that is because he was also a clergyman who had the possibility early in his career of go doing either of two things that is uh going into trade beginning a business or going into church and reading and writing and Through The Graces of other contacts or through their social network of getting the award of a land right now it it so happened that George Austin was lucky enough to be rewarded for his studies and his labor and managed to to inherit some uh some land which was how the Austin had a much uh had a great degree of comfort in their material existence uh it it it so happened that George Austin was able to secure not one but two uh parishes and uh were resourceful was was resourceful enough to use that land to also raise livestock and and also to take on borders so in addition to the property and rent that they got as uh as a clergyman uh George was also able to supplement his income through rent and some some earnings from Livestock in this sense uh Mr Collins is a Latter Day George Austin uh it's important to note however that Mr Collins represents the worst possible version of what George Austin could be uh now why did uh Austin make this kind of a character out of the real life model that she had in her own father's figure uh biographers of Austin have uh uh Unearthed a great deal of detail for us today and and one thing that uh we not is that uh George Austin was very very unlike Mr Collins uh George Austin was uh educated uh Charming uh very goodlook and generally a very very agreeable person the dislikable aspect of Mr Collins seems to have emerged from this from a person named Harris big with now this person Harris big witha again Jane Austin's biographers tell us was uh someone who uh did to Jane Austin what Mr Collins uh does to Elizabeth in the fictional world of Pride and Prejudice that is to say Harris big with made a proposal of marriage to the young Jane and uh like Elizabeth refused Mr Collins's proposal uh Jane refused this Harris Pig with's proposal of marriage and from letters uh and Memoirs of uh members in in the Austin household we learn that Harris Pig witha also was much uh dislikable and uh and uh seems to have been an absolute nightmare for anyone if even imagining a prospective life of matrimony with him so we we find that there was uh that there were real life biographical contexts for for both these uh characters and and for the choice that Charlotte is ultimately forced to make now there are some very important narrative implications also for Charlotte's choice and uh the decision that the Charlotte makes that property and in fact guaranteed property was much better than the risk of of of Happiness uh especially if uh if the chance of of of happiness came with the risk of being penniless uh Charlotte and Mr Collins make one matrimonial pair uh later on in the novel we find that that Elizabeth and Mr Darcy make another matrimonial pair uh in this pair as well uh there is one thing that's common to Charlotte's decision to accept Mr Collins's proposal in in both of these pairs the the male uh partner has a great deal of property in fact uh a great deal of property compared to the the woman and at at one point Elizabeth uh reflects uh and and this this point occurs very late in her uh relationship with uh Mr Dari she reflects that to be the Mistress of pimbley might be something now the statement is made very late in the novel when uh after several months of of knowing each other Elizabeth's prejudice against Mr Dari that is her prejudice against the undeserving Pride that this man holds about himself has undergone some degree of change and is U almost on the point of being transformed into the the foundation of affection Right nonetheless the fact that Elizabeth is able to consider herself as being the Mistress of pembley and to look with the great deal of uh uh good feeling at the prospect of uh being the Mistress of a great deal of property right uh is in no small part owing to the change in her perception of what uh Charlotte Lucas has done too so even though even though Elizabeth's words for Charlotte are very different from the words she uses for Mr Dary uh in in both cases that is her her reaction to both of these characters has something of prejudice and she she feels pity for Charlotte but ultimately she feels a kind of prejudice towards the uh incompetence or the uh fundamental lack of prudence in this choice that Charlotte has paid and the fact that uh she has selfelf finds herself in a situation where she can consider becoming the Mistress of property and this Prospect is not a horrible thing to her signifies that Elizabeth was beginning to change and and accept that not everything that appears in the beginning is is as it will remain in the future uh another thing that uh Charlotte's Choice helps Elizabeth learn is that people sometimes make choices that are not the best reflection of their learning or of their judgment nonetheless people make uh choices based on the limited resources available to them in the circumstances in which they find themselves these choices are not always perfect but they are what defin the lives of people and they are what enables these human beings to continue to live their lives as best they can the lesson about the relationship between choice and human beings is that people make choices uh imperfect U incorrect uh choices which might Doom them to lives of unhappiness choices which might close the option for happiness for lasting happiness nonetheless these are the choices that people make in order to continue living their lives in the best way that they can live the important thing to note is that people make the choices that then enable them to live their lives choices do not Define the individuals and individuals are not locked or confined to the choices they once made and and this is proved in the way Elizabeth changes her perception of Mr Dari and Elizabeth changes her perception of Charlotte even after she learns that uh Charlotte has made this somewhat Unthinkable and impossible choice now uh in this context it is useful to introduce some scholarly approaches to Jane Austin's novels and uh in in fact I will introduce uh the work of a scholar who is who might be considered dated today but uh is in many ways influential to shaping the study of Jane Austin as an object of scholarship the name of the scholar is DW Harding and in 1940 Harding wrote a book on Jane Austin's regulated hatred uh according to Harding regulated hatred is a way to understand uh how Jane Austin was was caught between two opposing forces and how her fictional work uh is a creative uh response and uh a psychological means of coping with what seemed to be impossible and irreconcilable forces so what are these two opposing forces U on one hand uh Jan auson loved her family and friends she had a deep need of their affection and a genuine respect for the ordered decent civilization that they upheld on the other hand uh as a thinker as an objective rational and cleare eyed uh describer of Worlds right Jan Austin couldn't but help notice that some some aspects of her social Universe was highly problematic uh hypocritical uh not to speak unfair and unjust to a huge swaye of individuals that is to say in in Harding's words J Austin was also sensitive to the crudeness and compes of the people around her and she knew that her real existence depended on resisting many of the values they implied right so you can see how psychologically and and socially this is a somewhat irreconcilable situation and in this situation Jane Austin's novels uh present themselves as a wonderful coping mechanism uh coping mechan mechanism is a modern uh word it's a very modern phrase uh in the 1940s uh it did not exist but we can use that phrase to understand how Harding interpreted Austin's novels um in in Harding's words Jane Austin's novels gave her a way out of this dilemma this rather than the ambition of entertaining A posterity of Urbane gentlemen was her motive force in writing part of her aim was to find the means for unobtrusive spiritual survival without open conflict with the friendly people around her whose standards and simpler things she could accept and whose affection she greatly needed one can see uh in the light of this uh paragraph how Charlotte's choice and Elizabeth's inability to understand that choice at first uh and uh Elizabeth's eventual reconciliation and acceptance that this was uh a meaningful and a good choice for someone uh even though it may appear to be a punishment to Elizabeth right we can better understand how this description both Charlotte's choice and Elizabeth's inability to understand that choice Works in helping Jane Austin both describe the world in which she found herself accurately and to describe how some things were seriously wrong with that world so if we compare Elizabeth's acceptance of dary's Proposal with Charlotte's acceptance of Mr Collins's proposal we can see both Austin's deep uh love and regard for the world in which she lived whose um on Whose affection she depended as well as her her um in inevitable need to critique and U the the compulsion that she felt to point out that some things were wrong in this world Mr Darcy's proposal to Elizabeth of course there is very uh there's nothing to uh argue with that proposal it seems an easy enough choice and it seems a a perfect decision that Elizabeth would accept that proposal uh however if one were to understand the world of 18th century England and the choices that women in 18th century England were U Were forced to make solely on the basis of this event it would mean that our understanding was highly limited right therefore uh Charlotte's choice in in accepting the proposal from a man who was clearly very very dislikable but uh whose proposal gives her the only real possibility for sustained comfort and well-being is the necessary counterpart to Darcy's proposal to Elizabeth uh Elizabeth might say that uh that how can Charlotte accept this proposal and Elizabeth might look with some condescension at people who subordinate romance to financial and pragmatic calculations but in fact it is only through a combination of both these two proposals and that is to say it is through a combined view of Elizabeth's choice in accepting dar's proposal and Charlotte's much more difficult uh much harder to accept uh but equally and in some ways more important choice of accepting this proposal from Mr Collins uh that we can fully understand both Jane Austin's world and the power of the formal choices she composed in order to accurately describe that world [Music] a [Music]