Welcome to the Group Read!
First, my thanks to Hambet, who obliged me (and, at this writing, obliges me still) with a very early and very, very, very long nap while I tapped out my illiterate musings.
In case anyone needs it, a very brief plot summary of the first six chapters:
Chapter 1: Mrs Bennet tells Mr Bennet the exciting news: Netherfield Park, a nearby estate, has been rented by Mr Bingley, a young man with a more than comfortable income. Mrs Bennet is delighted by the possiblity that Mr Bingley might marry one of their five daughters, but is much vexed that Mr Bennet will not promise to visit Mr Bingley and begin the acquaintance.
We learn the names of three of the Bennet sisters: Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia.
Chapter 2: After much teasing, Mr Bennet finally reveals that he has visited Mr Bingley.
We meet the other two Bennet sisters: Mary and Kitty (Catherine).
Chapter 3: Mr Bennet may have met Mr Bingley, but he does not cough up much information to the ladies of his household and they must turn to their neighbors. We meet Sir William Lucas, who is delighted with Mr. Bingley. Mr Bingley himself comes to call at the Bennets, but does not get to meet the young ladies. He is invited to dine, but cannot accept the invitation. He does attend the ball at the Meryton assembly-rooms, and brings guests: his sisters, Mrs Hurst and Miss Bingley; his brother-in-law, Mr Hurst; and his friend, Mr. Darcy. Mr Bingley is lively and sociable, and a big hit at the ball. The neighborhood is ready to like Mr Darcy as well — he is handsome and very rich — but Mr Darcy quickly makes it plain that he is not interested in being liked. He only dances with Bingley’s sisters, and flatly declines even being introduced to any other lady. Elizabeth Bennet overhears Bingley urging Darcy to loosen up a little. Bingley offers to ask someone to introduce Elizabeth to Darcy, but Darcy coldly refuses. Elizabeth is offended, but not crushed.
Chapter 4: Jane and Elizabeth discuss the ball (and Bingley’s sisters.) The narrator gives us more information about the Bingley family, and shows us the Netherfield party’s opinions of the ball.
We learn that the Bennets reside at Longbourn.
Chapter 5: The Lucases call upon the Bennets, and there is more discussion of the ball.
We learn more about Sir William Lucas and meet his wife, Lady Lucas, and their eldest daughter Charlotte.
Chapter 6: The Bennet sisters become better acquainted with Bingley’s sisters. It is two weeks since the ball, and Jane and Bingley are growing fond of each other. Charlotte thinks that Jane should drop her guard a little and be more encouraging to Bingley.
We learn that Mr Darcy is growing interested in Elizabeth. He starts paying more attention to her. At the Lucas home, Elizabeth notices his attention and responds by teasing him a little. Charlotte invites Elizabeth to play at the pianoforte, Mary is next to play, and soon there is dancing. Sir William Lucas, that genial fellow, suggests that Darcy dance with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth declines. Darcy is not hurt; his interest only increases. He mentions his interest to Miss Bingley, who immediately starts teasing him about the happy life he will have with Mrs Bennet as a mother-in-law. Darcy ignores her as she prates on. We are given a strong hint that Miss Bingley might wish to herself capture Darcy’s heart.
Some more notes:
In Chapter 1, Mrs Bennet is described as a woman of “mean understanding.” “Mean” here is in the sense of “small”, and “understanding” in the we understand the word “intelligence”: Mrs Bennet is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. To me, “mean” here also seems to emphasize the pettiness of Mrs Bennet’s interests.
Introductions — In general, you didn’t just walk up and start talking to someone, particulary people of the opposite sex (Hi, my name’s Darcy, you’re pretty tolerable, I suppose; wanna dance?) — you were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. (I haven’t found a good link yet that explains the etiquette of calling on those newly arrived and beginning an acquaintance, as Mr Bennet and the other gentlemen do when Mr Bingley arrives.)
“Manners” — please and thank you are just the beginning; “manners” refers not only to the fundamentals of etiquette but to the general way one conducts himself around others.
Dancing and music: The dances of the time were country-dances. The couples would face each other in two long lines, women on one side facing their partners on the other. At the first dance of the evening, the lady of honor or the highest-ranking lady would “open” the ball — she and her partner would be at the top of the line. Depending on the dance, each set of partners would take turns going through the steps of the dance. You could spend a lot of time waiting for your turn if there were a lot of couples.
Dances are important parts of social life. First of all, they were just fun, and they weren’t restricted to formal balls. There was no satellite TV or Internet for people to cocoon themselves away with; you got together with other families and, if you were so inclined, might push back the furniture and dance.
Dances were also a way for people to meet and get to know each other, particularly unmarried people, as you could talk to your partner while waiting for your turn. Elinor brings up in the question box that it is bad form to dance more than two dances at a time with the same partner.
If you are asked to dance and you really, really don’t want to dance with that person, it is not polite to say, “No, not with you.” You must give the impression that you just don’t care to dance at that moment.
Music — Ladies often studied music, learning to sing or play the harp or the pianoforte. (Jane Austen herself played the pianoforte, and the tour guides at Mount Vernon tell us that Nelly Custis practiced away at her pianoforte for two to three hours every day.) The ability to play (and play well) was one of the marks of an educated gentlewoman. For some results-oriented young ladies, it was nothing more than a means of attracting the attention of gentlemen. But musical accomplishment was also a way to show one’s good taste (in the choice of piece and in the skill of performance) and to provide entertainment for your family and friends, whether in a solo performance or in providing music for dancing. Let’s save discussion of other “accomplishments” for next week.
Formality — Generally, you didn’t use people’s Christian names unless you were intimately acquainted, and then only in private. We see Mrs Bennet address her husband as Mr Bennet, and as yet we don’t know the first names of anyone in the Netherfield party.
When there are unmarried sisters in the family, the eldest unmarried sister is generally known as Miss (for example, Jane Bennet is Miss Bennet) while her sisters are known as Miss with their Christian names (Miss Elizabeth Bennet, Miss Mary Bennet, Miss Catherine Bennet, and Miss Lydia Bennet.) Charlotte Lucas, the eldest of the Lucas daughters, is Miss Lucas. It is a mark of their friendship that Charlotte and Elizabeth address each other by their Christian names. Mrs Bennet also addresses Charlotte by her first name, and that strikes me as an example of the intimacy between the two families.
On gentility: A genteel family is one of good social standing in which the father of the family (and his dependents) do not have to work for a living. (Certain professions are considered acceptable; we’ll get into that in future weeks.) Such a family will usually own a large house in the country; they might farm part of the land themselves or rent the land and collect rents from tenant farmers. They will also be receiving income from investments.
Some markers of wealth include the size of a family’s house and estate, and such things as the size (and numbers) of carriages.
Being “in trade” is not considered a genteel profession, so when William Lucas is knighted and wants to climb to the next rung of the social ladder, he quits his business. The Bingley sisters’ snobbery is especially distasteful when seen in light of the fact that their own father was in trade.
Genteel families are not necessarily noble families. The gentry were people of consequence in their small communities, and might (IIRC) hold local responsibilities such as being the justice of the peace. So far we have only seen one gentleman with a title — Sir William Lucas — and, again, IIRC, the knighthood is not a hereditary title and is not considered “noble;” it is small potatoes compared to the ranks of the peerage (barons, earls, dukes….)
Some random thoughts:
I catch something new everytime I read P&P, and this time around I’m struck by the omnipresence of “the grapevine”, of popular opinion, from the very first line — the grapevine is practically a character in the book.
There is not a wasted sentence in the book. For example, in Chapter 1, Mr and Mrs Bennets’ conversation tells us a great deal about them. We see Mr Bennet’s wit and teasing — at his wife’s expense — and Mrs Bennet’s persistent inability to catch the joke. (They’ve been married a while — she doesn’t get it yet?) Mr Bennet has quite a few good lines in the first two chapters.
We also see some clues as to their attitudes to their daughters. Mr Bennet suggests throwing in a good word for Elizabeth (“my little Lizzy”) as a candidate for Mr Bingley, but Mrs Bennet accuses him of favoritism, and describes Jane as prettier and Lydia as better humored. (She doesn’t mention the other two.)
We see a bit more of the family in Chapter 2: more teasing from Mr Bennet, who strings his family along for a while before he reveals that yes, indeed, he called on Mr Bingley. We are introduced to the other two Bennet daughters. When Mrs Bennet needs someone to scold to distract herself, she turns to Kitty, and when she speculates whom Mr Bingley will dance with, she passes over the eldest four and goes straight to Lydia. We also meet Mary, who “reads great books, and makes extracts,” but can’t come up with any answer, plain or witty, when her father calls on her.
Chapter 3: The grapevine is buzzing about Mr Bingley and his friends from London — and the information gets closer and closer to somewhat accurate. At the Meryton ball, Bingley and his sisters make an effort to meet their new neighbors. Mr Darcy has come to a social occasion but makes no effort to socialize. He only dances with the two ladies he already knows, and refuses to be even introduced to any other lady, even though there are more ladies than gentlemen. He tells Bingley that he doesn’t like dancing unless he already knows his partner, but we see that he’s not interested in attempting to overcome his own preferences and exert himself a bit to be polite to other people. There is a bit of a country mouse-city mouse tension here — Darcy is a very rich landowner and presumably spends much time in the polished, fashionable society of London. He’s put off by the homelier manners of Meryton. But what would he expect? One wonders why he even came to a ball if he so disliked dancing, and was not going to socialize. I suppose he came along out of respect for Bingley, his host.
At least when he refuses to dance with Elizabeth, he doesn’t insult her to her face. But Mrs Bennet wishes Mr Bennet had been along to give Mr Darcy “one of his set-downs.” (I just caught that one this time around.)
Chapter 4: We see that Jane and Elizabeth are confidantes as well as sisters, and as they talk over the ball we learn more about them. They are both intelligent, but Jane is more serene and more willing to try to think well of others. Elizabeth is a little sharper, and quicker to censure. For example, they both agree that Bingley’s sisters are not the best-mannered ladies, but Jane thinks they’re not as bad “once you get to know them;” Lizzy isn’t so sure.
The narrator tells us a bit about the Bingley sisters and their snobbery, their superficiality, their social climbing. Bingley himself is an amiable fellow, but we see that perhaps he is easily convinced, a little quick to make decisions — he made the decision to rent Netherfield in half-an-hour — we know he saw the principal rooms, did he even look at the rest of the house? We are also told that he values Darcy’s opinion highly — Bingley is not stupid, but Darcy is even smarter.
It’s interesting how even Darcy, who seems to have no dissatisfaction with his own haughty manners, is drawn to Bingley.
Chapter 5: We meet Sir WIlliam Lucas, who thinks quite well of himself now that he is a knight. More discussion of Mr Darcy’s slighting Elizabeth — Charlotte, Elizabeth’s friend, wishes Mr Darcy had danced with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth promises that she will never dance with him. Charlotte, meanwhile, has intelligence that Bingley seems to have enjoyed meeting Jane. She also voices her opinion that rich, handsome Mr Darcy perhaps has a right to be proud.
Charlotte is full of information on the evening, and wishes her friend had gotten a dance with Mr Darcy, but there’s not much said about Charlotte’s activities. She doesn’t wish a dance with Darcy for herself. We are also given Charlotte’s age: twenty-seven. Most women were considered eligible for marriage in their late teens and early twenties. So this tells us a bit about Charlotte: does she desire marriage? Has she given up?
It seems nobody’s trying to marry Charlotte for her money. I’ve read commentary elsewhere that suggests that Sir William Lucas was improvident when he quit his business so soon, as he had not built up a large enough fortune to secure a gentleman’s life for his family and to enable his daughters to marry well — that it would have been better for him to wait, as Bingley’s father did, and pass on a larger fortune for his son to enter the ranks of the gentry.
Chapter 6: The Bingley sisters continue to socialize with the Bennet sisters, though Elizabeth still dislikes them. Polite, reserved Jane keeps her preference to herself. Practical Charlotte thinks this is a bad idea, that Jane should be more encouraging to Bingley until she has “secured him”; Elizabeth thinks that’s only necessary when your object is just “to get a rich husband, or any husband.” Charlotte thinks there’s been plenty of time for Jane to get to know Bingley, and comments, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a manner of chance…it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.” Elizabeth disagrees. Is Charlotte being mercenary, or giving a warning?
Money is vitally important, and not just for reasons of greed. There was no health insurance, life insurance, old-age insurance, Social Security, or anything else — you were dependent on your own efforts and on the help of your family. A woman’s settlement (the money she brought into a marriage) could be an important part of maintaining the family’s standard of living and in how much money could go to establishing the children in life.
Connections — who you’re related to — are also vitally important. Part of this is practical, and some of it is snobbery. Better to choose a marriage partner who is well established and related to other genteel people than one who’s a relative newcomer. So Charlotte is kind of up the creek: naturally she would want to marry within her own new social class, but she does has neither a long-established name nor a good marriage settlement to offer.
I also notice that it’s Charlotte who, once Darcy’s attention is caught, opens the pianoforte and invites Elizabeth to play first.
And, although Darcy was so rude, it speaks well of him that when Elizabeth turns him down, it only sparks his interest….and that Miss Bingley’s mockery does not interest him in the least.
So: share your thoughts. Ask your questions. And, for those who have read the book before, let’s save accomplishments and entails for next week, and confine comments to the events of the first six chapters — no spoilers!
I am feeling like a neanderthal, but I do not have much to add, or am not sure what I am supposed to add. I will silently observe for now.:)
whatever strikes your fancy, even if it’s just your favorite funny line.
I’ll write [my thoughts] over at my site and then copy ‘n paste here. Here are thoughts on Chapters 1-6:
My thoughts are not nearly as literate as Peony’s. My main thought is that fiction has certainly evolved a great deal since Miss Austen’s day. In those days, apparently the rule was to “tell, don’t show.” We’re told how Elizabeth was “far from suspecting” that Darcy’s interest in her was warming. For that matter, we’re told instead of shown that Darcy “began to wish to know more of her” (Chapter 6). The dialogue is often witty when kept short and on-point; too often, though, it deteriorates into speechifying. How many sisters do you know who break into odes to their elder sister’s virtues (Chapter 4)?
It’s also difficult to keep track of the characters. I had to go back and read several times to figure out when someone entered a scene and exactly who was speaking. For all that people of Miss Austen’s age did not address each other by their Christian names, Elizabeth Bennet is called by at least three (Elizabeth, Lizzy, Eliza) in six opening chapters. I was in awe of Peony’s ability to sort out who was doing what when. (But then she’s read the book before.)
For all my complaints, I am finding the book interesting. I like the short chapters and am surprised that the language is easier to understand than I had hoped. And it’s amusing to realize that Jane Austen is the great-great-great grandma of romance novel titles. A common convention in modern romances is to title them after the hero and heroine, assigning to the hero and heroine some attribute or symbol (e.g., The Flame and the Flower, The Wolf and the Dove). From the discussion of Darcy’s pride in Chapter 5, I am laying odds that Elizabeth is Prejudice.
Hey, I didn’t know you were reading Pride and Prejudice –
My college DD and I started reading this too!
I’ll have to be certain to stop by more often!
First, I had forgotten how much I liked Mr. Bennet, and how harried he must feel living in that den of women! 😉
Perhaps it is because it mirrors, to a tiny degree, something that happened in my own life, I loved the part in chapter 6 when Mr. Darcy comes to find that he doesn’t think Miss Bennet QUITE so unpromising as he initially thought:
But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, then he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying.
And I cannot imagine trying to marry off 5 daughters! Especially given that 3 of them seem extremely silly at this point. (I know there’s some turn around later, but I’m trying to read with a fresh mind here!)
I wonder about Michelle’s comment about the speechifying. We ARE very used to a show, don’t tell view today–because of the omnipresence and saturation of a visual media. Might it have been different then, when people were used to reading more–or even hearing books read aloud more? There was a lot more memorization of poetry AND prose by young women in their social class–perhaps that would have led to a speech pattern far different than what we are used to.
Interesting to wonder–how much of the “dialogue” was true to Jane Austen’s time, and how much is a difference in the way novels are written.
I find this less grating, however, than those more modern novels I read where it seems obvious that the author has written almost with the movie screen in mind–almost too visually oriented. I ran across an example of this last week, but I cannot now remember where it was….
I hope it’ll come to me….
Mr. Bennett was one of my favorite characters when I read this book as a 16-year-old, and I still can’t help but be attracted to his wit.
On the other hand, he really doesn’t do a very good job protecting his daughters. He enjoys provoking his wife and implicitly suggests that her priorities in life are wrong, or somehow vulgar.
Yet however foolish and laughable Mrs. Bennett is in many ways…aren’t her goals basically correct? She wants to see her daughters well-settled, with stable, reliable husbands.
Mr. Bennett is more content to throw out witticisms from the sidelines than to enter the fray. He notices that several of his daughters are silly and rather vulgar, but he doesn’t seem to have the energy or desire to pull himself together to try to change that situation.
re: Michelle’s points, I agree that Austen does a bit more “telling” in this book than do contemporary novelists, and perhaps even more than in her own later novels.
But I’m not sure that sometimes “telling” isn’t a bad thing, that it’s not sometimes a better choice than “showing,” especially when you just need to pass on a needed fact or two to the reader, and you’re still setting up your book. (We’re only on chapter 6 and there are 61 chapters in the book — I assure you, we are just getting started!)
For example, in Chapter 6, the narrator just tells us that Darcy is growing interested in Elizabeth. I don’t think this is a bad thing. After all, what’s to show? At this point, this is a small fact; “showing” him staring off into space at Netherfield when all he’s really doing at this point is thinking about Meryton and “becoming interested” might come down to nothing but padding.
Miss Austen is introducing dramatic irony here: We know that Darcy is growing interested in Elizabeth, but Elizabeth herself does not, so this allows us to judge Darcy’s actions, and the perceptions and actions of Elizabeth and the other characters, against the small fact that we know to be true: the fact that Darcy is growing interested in Elizabeth. It allows us to get more involved in the story — we can enjoy seeing things from Elizabeth’s point of view, but at the same time we know more than she does.
As for the “speechifying”, I think Terry is correct. I’m sure it was more accepted then for characters in novels to speak a little more formally that people did in “real life.”
By the standards of the time, are Elizabeth and Jane really speaking all that formally? People’s everyday speech then — especially the speech of the educated — might have been much more complex . As Terry notes, they were accustomed to reading aloud, hearing books read aloud, and memorizing poetry and prose — those models would have been a part of their everyday mental furniture.
Will post more later today or tomorrow — the carpet guy is here!
what role do u think the narrator had in P&P and what satire was used? I can only think of a couple.