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Hi I'm John Green, this is Crash Course Literature and it is a truth universally acknowledged
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that a video series about world literature must be in want of a Jane Austen episode.
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So here it is.
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Today, we'll be discussing Pride and Prejudice, Austen's Regency-era novel of life, liberty
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and bonnets.
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The book was first published in 1813, it's a social satire about a family with five daughters
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and quite a lot of economic anxiety.
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And the novel's characters and themes have remained relevant for centuries now--which
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is why there are SO.
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MANY. adaptations of it, from the Keira Knightly movie to an Emmy winning web series co-created
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by my brother.
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Today, we'll talk about the social and historical context in which the book was written
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, the style that Jane Austen helped invent, and
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the dilemmas the major characters face.
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And in the next episode, we'll look more closely at the politics of the book and its
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attitudes toward money, class and gender.
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But for now: It's bonnets all the way down.
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INTRO So we don't know that much about Jane Austen's
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life because after her death her sister burned most of her letters.
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Just a friendly note, by the way, to any future literary executors out there, maybe don't
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burn so much stuff?
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Even if you're told to.
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Wait, unless your MY literary executor.
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Then burn everything.
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But, here's what we do know: Jane Austen was born in 1775 to an Anglican clergyman
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and his wife; Jane was the second youngest of eight children.
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And her father farmed and took in students to makes ends meet.
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Jane was mostly taught at home and sometimes she wasn't taught at all, although she and
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her sister did go to a year or two of boarding school.
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When she was eleven, Jane started writing plays and novels, mostly social satires and
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parodies of “novels of sensibility,” a literary genre in which women like, cry and
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sigh and faint a lot.
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Many of these early works were in the style of the epistolary novel, which is a story
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composed of letters, and we see echoes of that form in Pride and Prejudice.
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We also see some echoes of Pride and Prejudice in Austen's life.
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She never married, but she did receive at least one proposal that she accepted for a
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few hours.
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And after her father's death in 1805, her financial position and the positions of her
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mother and her sister became increasingly insecure.
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By 1816, four of her books had been published.
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And she was working on a new novel, called Sanditon, when she died in 1817, at the age
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of just 41.
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Two more of her works, Persuasion and Northanger
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Abbey, were published after her death.
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They're all good--but to me at least Pride and Prejudice is the most perfect of them--there's
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a precision to it.
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Like Gatsby or Sula, Pride and Prejudice is a novel in which every single word feels genuinely
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essential.
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So what happens in Pride and Prejudice?
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well, let's go to the Thoughtbubble: Mr. and Mrs. Bennet live in rural England
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with their five daughters: pretty Jane, lively Elizabeth, horrible Mary, airhead Kitty, and
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boy obsessed Lydia.
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When Mr. Bennet dies the estate will go to a male cousin, so the daughters have to find
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rich husbands.
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Or else.
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Or else live in poverty or become governesses, and if you've read Jane Eyre, you know how
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great that gig is.
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Mr. Bingley, an eligible bachelor, arrives on the scene, and he and Jane fall in love.
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Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley's best friend, definitely don't.
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In fact, Elizabeth sorts of hate him.
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Elizabeth gets a proposal of marriage from Mr. Collins, the cousin who's going to inherit
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the estate.
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And marrying him would save her sisters from poverty, but Mr. Collins is awful and Elizabeth
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declines.
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So her best friend, Charlotte, ends up snagging him.
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Meanwhile, Elizabeth starts to fall for Wickham, a soldier in the militia.
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He hates Mr. Darcy, too.
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Suddenly Mr. Bingley moves away and Jane is heartbroken.
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Elizabeth goes to visit Charlotte and is introduced to Lady Catherine, Mr. Darcy's ultra-snob
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aunt.
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She sees Mr. Darcy there and he also proposes marriage but in a very insulting way.
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She insults him right back.
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But some months later, Elizabeth is on a trip with her aunt and uncle.
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They visit Mr. Darcy's lavish estate and Elizabeth softens toward him.
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Then she gets word that Lydia has run off with Wickham.
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Mr. Darcy saves Lydia's reputation by brokering
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a marriage.
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Then it's happy endings all around: Lydia gets married; Jane and Mr. Bingley get
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married, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy get married, Kitty learns to be a little bit less of an
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airhead and Mary is presumably still horrible.
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Thanks, Thought Bubble.
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So let's talk life and letters in Regency England.
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By the way, Regency England refers to a period from about 1800-1820 when King George III
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became mentally ill and unfit to rule.
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In England, this was a time of political uncertainty and a lot of economic volatility.
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There was a rising middle class, a burgeoning consumer culture, and a move from an agrarian
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economy to an industrial one.
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And that meant less overall poverty, but it also meant a lot of social instability.
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And It was also a time when people in England were beginning to talk about the rights of
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women.
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Like, Mary Wollstonecraft published “Vindication of the Rights of Women” seven years after
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Austen was born, though it's important to remember that at this place and time women
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didn't really have many rights--they couldn't vote, and in Pride and Prejudice, the whole
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plot begins because all of Bennet's five children are daughters,
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This means that legally, Bennet's estate has to go to a male cousin.
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But there was a growing belief that hey, maybe women should have rights.
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Abroad, the American Revolution and the French Revolution had recently unsettled established
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social and political orders.
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Everywhere there were increasing discussions about rights and responsibilities, liberties
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and duties.
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You can even hear this in the famous first sentence of Pride and Prejudice: “It is
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a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be
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in want of a wife.”
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It has an echo of the American Declaration of Independence: “We find these truths to
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be self-evident…”
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But the comic deflation in the second half of the sentence is pure Austen.
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Some people are initially put off by Pride and Prejudice because they view it as a sort
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of literaryfied romance novel.
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And, it is a book primarily interested in human relationships, especially romantic ones--but
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I'd challenge the idea that such novels can't be great.
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Nobody ever argues that picaresque novels,
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or bildungsromans, are merely genre novels--even though they are also genres.
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But the word “romance” is too often and too quickly dismissed.
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By the way, Austen has this completely unearned reputation for being genteel and conservative.
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The reality is that her work is very funny and mean and super smart about human behavior.
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You can hear that in the letters that survive,
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like when she writes to her sister, “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it
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saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
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But also while this book involves lower-case r romance, it is very aggressively not capital-r
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Romantic, in the Byron Wordsworth Shelley sense that feelings are so overwhelming that
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they supersede logic.
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I mean, Wordsworth can write a hillside for thirty-seven stanzas, but if you read Austen
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closely, you'll find that there's a striking absence of physical description.
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We don't know what the dresses look like.
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We don't know what the people look like.
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When there is a physical description, like the description of Mr. Darcy's estate or
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Elizabeth's petticoat, it means that something really important is happening.
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And even then these descriptions are very brief.
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If we're being honest, there isn't even all that much in here about bonnets.
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In fact, Austen is suspicious of overwhelming emotion.
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Remember how I mentioned the novel of sensibility and Austen's early satires?
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She's skeptical of feeling too much, of getting so carried away by emotion that it
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prevents you from thinking clearly.
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This is exemplified by Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy's relationship.
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They don't fall in love at first sight.
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Actually, it's the opposite.
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At a ball, she overhears him telling his friend that her sister is the only hot girl in the
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room and that Elizabeth is merely “tolerable.”
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Given that Elizabeth and Darcy are end up together, this is a novel that's suspicious
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of romantic love, especially romantic love based on instant physical attraction
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and when characters do get carried away by their emotions, they're either fooling themselves,
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like Mr. Collins, or doing something really wrong, like Lydia.
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Pride and Prejudice does have a wish-fulfilling ending.
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but it's still a sly, and ironic and clear-eyed exploration
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of the individual vs. the collective, happiness vs. security
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It's about love, but rather than presuming
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that love is only a feeling, Pride and Prejudice explores how thinking and feeling and need
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and responsibility intersect to form the experience that we call love.
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One might even say that it's a novel about romantic
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love that deconstructs our idea about romantic love.
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Austen joked that the scope of her works was narrow, equating her writing with a two-inch
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piece of ivory “on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after
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much labour.”
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She also critiqued of Pride and Prejudice, writing to a friend, “The work is rather
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too light & bright & sparkling; it wants shade.”
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and yeah, OK, the novel is fun.
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But reading should be fun sometimes.
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I mean, we already read To the Lighthouse.
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And in terms of the prose-style itself, Austen was actually pioneering a new style here called
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free indirect discourse.
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It means that even though the narration is in the third person, the narrative voice takes
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on the thoughts and feelings of characters.
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Like after unexpectedly meeting Darcy at
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his estate, the third-person narration captures Elizabeth's embarrassment:
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“Her coming there was the most unfortunate, the most ill-judged thing in the world!
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How strange must it appear to him!
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In what a disgraceful light might it not strike so vain a man!
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It might seem as if she had purposely thrown herself in his way again!”
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This narrative approach reflects emotion without stating it--showing instead of telling, as
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the saying goes--and makes us feel not as if we can sympathize with Elizabeth, but instead
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as if we ARE Elizabeth,
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and to me is one of the most profound and important things a novel can do: Great books
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offer you a way out of yourself, and into other peoples' lives.
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Next time we'll look more closely at some of the themes, but for now, let's briefly
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explore the dilemma facing Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters.
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Because her parents have been bad with money, she knows she has to marry well or face poverty.
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So when Mr. Collins proposes, that's a fantastic solution.
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Except for one thing: She doesn't respect him.
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Mr. Collins is pompous and foolish and the very things that make Elizabeth terrific
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her lively mind and her fresh wit—make him nervous.
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She tells him, “ You could not make me happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman
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in the world who would make you so.”
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But the idea that happiness should be privileged over security is pretty radical.
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Elizabeth is deciding that her personal individual
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happiness should outweigh the economic problems of her family.
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She is taking a huge risk when she rejects him.
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As Mr. Collins tells her, she's poor so
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she probably won't get another proposal.
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He might not have made her happy, but he would have made her and her unmarried sisters financially
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secure.
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And then, Elizabeth takes the same risk or a greater one when she rejects Mr. Darcy's
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insulting first proposal.
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She can't make herself marry a man she doesn't like.
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This was the same dilemma Austen herself faced and her rejection of a suitor made things
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hard for herself and for her family.
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But she did it anyway.
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Now, thanks to the fairy tale ending, Elizabeth doesn't experience, like, catastrophic consequences
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as a result of her privileging happiness.
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But as 19th century English readers would
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have been very well aware, she could have.
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And so, the novel helped them, and also helps us, explore when we should put our own needs
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first, and when the happiness and security of others is more important.
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Is doing what is best for you always the right
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thing to do?
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Or are there moments when you must sacrifice your happiness for the good of your family
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or your social order?
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or even yourself? next time we'll discuss whether the politics
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of the book are radical or conservative.
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And we'll answer a vexing question: Why does Lydia buy such an ugly bonnet?
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Thanks for watching.
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Hope it was tolerable.
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I'll see you next time.