Lesson for SV electeds? How Jane Austen's heroines transcended otherizing the targets of their bias
Dr. Thomas Hendricks suggests that the emotional journey of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is like someone getting over the unhealthy biases (the "prejudice" in the title) often seen in Silicon Valley political circles.
Elizabeth Bennett, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, determines that Darcy is unsuitable because of his stuffy, high-born manner, his unflattering remarks about the young women of the community, his suspicions of her older sister’s marriage motives, and his general contempt for her family. Her reservations are entirely reasonable. And yet the course of the novel features Bennett’s development of a more complete understanding of the fellow. In the process, she reviews her own framework of interpretation – perhaps it is the case that her family is somewhat scattered and ill-advised in its judgments. She learns, by increments, that there is more to Darcy than his cold manner suggests. In the end, her views – of Darcy, of herself, of her family, and indeed of many of the book’s characters – have moderated. Some originally distant relationships move to acceptance and intimacy. Others become less familiar.
It is easy to condemn people for what little we know about them, especially if their actions have harmed us or our friends and families. In such ways, and not without justification, we build conceptions of persons, a sense of who they are and how we must approach them.
Difference-making – acknowledgement that the world is divided into selves and others, in-groups and out-groups, is one thing. Pluralism respects, even thrives on such distinctions; though it also raises the prospect that the people so differentiated will remain aloof from one another. It is another, and much more significant, matter to impute inferiority to otherness - to decide that those devalued others present threats to our own placement in the world.
That linkage – of prejudice to self-estimation – is the other side of Austen’s novel. Darcy is prideful. He has good reason; his is a family of “substance.” As such, they must not allow their position to be compromised by inferior connections. The Bennett family appears to be of that latter sort – modest wealth that is slipping away, a rattle-trap mother, a dithering father, a collection of unmarried daughters including one who “goes off” with a uniformed philanderer. Bad enough that Darcy himself should be exposed to such types; worse, that his friend Bingley should be captured by this family’s predatory eldest daughter.
Like Darcy, many of us feel we have something to lose by associating with inferior types. They have nothing to offer us, or so we think. They take greedily what society forces us to give them.
There is, it must be noted, a certain pleasure that comes from degrading others. Most of us enjoy the failures of an arch-rival sports team. We find it impossible to root for Red Sox and Yankees both. We enjoy killing bad guys, frequently presented as faceless hordes, in videogames. We anticipate the death of the major villain at the action-movie, his minions - in an ascending order of importance - having already died. Who mourns the zombie? All these are “characters” or “types.” We have no wish to know them further.
But real life, let us be clear, is different. Castigation is consequential, both for the persons despised and for we who despise them. Disdain - in extremes, hatred - is loneliness.
Austen’s novel is infused with that theme. Darcy himself seems a bit cheerless. Prideful people find themselves trapped behind their self-imposed barriers, like the country-set described in the story or worse, an English-style club at some declining colonial outpost. Within, there is the obligatory festivity of card-games, liquored drinks, phonograph music, and halfhearted flirtation. Much attention is given to food and costuming. A formal gala, something special this time, is being planned. There is talk of going outside at some point, perhaps an expedition to the county with a picnic as its jewel.
In such a world, people marry distant relatives. Property is consolidated. Outsiders, except retainers sworn to secrecy, are kept at bay. And each congratulates the other for supporting group standards.
Like most readers, I tend to identify each of Austen’s main characters with a predominating flaw, chosen from the book’s title. This is wrong, of course. Fitzhugh Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett are both proud people who regard the other suspiciously. Both are clear, at least initially, that self-estimation – for persons and for families – is maintained by keeping dangerous others at a distance. Prejudice is the weaponry that accomplishes this.
Austen, ever-wise, instructs us that people must be open to the prospect of acknowledging one another as individuals. “Quality” is something to be identified with personal ability, character, and commitment - and not with inherited social station. Change, however pleasant or unpleasant, is part of social living. There will be ages of emotional and moral enthusiasm, like the Napoleonic era that was the book’s backdrop. But these historical energies must not block us from applying our most considered, patient judgments to the situations before us.
Despite its happy ending and persistent exploration of love, Pride and Prejudice is no romance. It is about the challenges of human discernment in a changing, newly mobile era, of seeing people as they are. One should not expect that a commitment of that sort – combining receptivity to otherness with careful scrutiny – will lead directly to amiable, supportive relationships. Some people will reveal themselves to be our enemies, some our friends. Most will stay in the latitudes between these extremes.
It was the gift of the nineteenth century to expand the circle of compassion beyond the relative narrow circumstances that Austen herself considered. Our ideas of community must broaden equivalently. We understand today that all kinds of people “matter.” Our confrontations with pride and prejudice must keep apace.
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