Friday, February 10, 2012
Letters
I believe Jane Austen revealed many of the major plot points in Pride and Prejudice through letters to make her story as true-to-life as possible. It's easier to tell things to people without having to look them in the eye and judge you. This fact is confirmed today through the popularity of e-mail, texting, and social media. In the instance of Darcy's letter to Elizabeth, seeing her so soon after the rejected proposal would have been too hard to bear. Had Darcy confronted Elizabeth with this information about her sister, Mr. Wickham, etc. face-to-face, I doubt that the reader would find Mr. Darcy as desirable as many women do. Speaking the contents of the letter would be more terse and forced and also give Elizabeth time to interrupt, sparking Darcy's temper. The reader would not be able to see a steady flow of Darcy's kindness and attempt at redemption in reconciling with Elizabeth and the Bennets. The letters are simply a device of Austen's genius in creating life-like characters.
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I too found the letters from Jane Austen to shed light on Pride and Prejudice. It was interesting to discover that she did not simply choose to fill her novels' pages with topics that dealt with the social life of English aristocracy: the social realm of Pride and Prejudice is very much the personal realm of Jane Austen. In a way, this made me appreciate the work more than before. I am less focused on the notion that Austen wrote in a genre that I am not interested in, and more enthused that she was accurately representing the times that she lived in. These letters were great for historical context!
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your interpretation of why Darcy wrote the letter to Elizabeth and what would have happened if he had told her face to face. Writing offered Darcy the chance to think through what he was going to say and perhaps write a few drafts or scratch out some lines. Sometimes it's so much easier to be yourself through writing, when you know that you can take your time, phrase everything to your satisfaction, and say everything that you want to say without interruption.
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