Pride and Prejudice
A
View of Social Evolution of the Period
by Mother’s Service Society
Literature is the cream of life created in
the imagination of a poet or a writer whose personality has outgrown the social
limits and extended itself into the domain of impersonal consciousness. The
individual we are is the social expression of the human being whose real
existence transcends the social consciousness. Great poets and writers create
in their imagination that Real Man and make him play a limited social role
where he often peeps out of his social personality into his universal
individuality. It is this extra dimension of those characters that is
fascinating to us and renders them immortal characters. We see that the immortality of a character is his innate universality.
Jane
Austen’s genius captured the flavour of the French Revolution wafting across
the shores of
Pride
and Prejudice can be seen as a story of several marriages where the
abominable pride of Darcy becomes the uncontrollable passion of his heart.
Romance is the adventure of the heart for the unattainable. This approach views the story as the
aristocracy descending to the commoner in its passion to preserve the society
by preserving itself. It is this social power of passionate
self-preservation that passes through Darcy to
Viewing the story as a field of social
forces interacting to create a higher reconciliation, each character must be
seen as a force expressing through human personality. Aristocracy coming down
to assimilate the commoner is the same as Mr. Bennet with a developed mind seeking
in marriage the virile specimen of physical bodily energy of Mrs. Bennet
because of the external appearance of good looks. Viewed thus, every event and
every character take on a new dimension and what is revealed is no mere story,
but the drama in social transition.
The greatest tragedy for a family is
elopement. Socially a family dies, and often it must leave its place of
residence. All actions, all essential actions of the story begin with
Thus, the
great misfortune initiates all the three marriages and, in fact, becomes a
disguised good fortune. Jane Austen’s aim is not to destroy the aristocracy,
but to preserve it in an altered form. Nor was the English aristocracy
destroyed.
The central event in the story is Darcy’s
love for
The evolutionary force that compels society
to evolve is not moral. It is a force that acts to
achieve its own goal, nor does it endeavour to conform to the social codes. It acts as other impersonal forces do, such
as gravitation or electricity. The action of such a force cannot be
evaluated by social or moral norms. If at times it produces socially desirable
results, it is because that force works through human personalities who are
social and moral. Seen in this context,
After the birth of the
The same phenomenon takes place in the
England of Jane Austen’s time, which she unconsciously captured in this story.
The major features are given below, almost like a summary of a longer review
written earlier:
¯ Darcy
represents the vanishing aristocracy.
¯ His coming
to Meryton is an act of the aristocracy moving to seek a reconciliation with
the commoners and the working class.
¯ As it is a
self-imposed descent of consciousness, his natural urge of conservative
instincts resists reaching down to the lower working class, but stops short of
his goal at the level of gentleman farmer, which is really the lower order of
aristocracy.
¯ The reconciliation is really played
by the urban bourgeoisie, as they are the middle social stratum. Bingley
represents that social section.
¯ Revolution
as well as evolution does not follow either the rules of society or of
morality. They follow the rules of life.
¯ The rules of life are subtle,
subliminal and subconscious.
¯ When Darcy’s sister and aunt are seen
as members of the vanishing aristocracy susceptible to the waves of the
invisible forces of evolution, they will very well fit into the scheme.
¯ Seen in
this perspective, the marriage of Mr. Bennet with Mrs. Bennet is revealing in
the sense that it is a powerful parallel to the future changes of the society.
¯ The
physical part of the society – the workers – destroying through revolution the
aristocracy is paralleled by a physical brainless woman invading the life of a
sophisticated Mr. Bennet to destroy his peace of mind.
¯ The first two daughters represent the
father’s intelligence in an ascending grade. The last three daughters represent
the mother in an equally ascending grade.
¯ Elizabeth,
being the next generation, reveals the bright intelligence of this changing
social force, which is the mental brilliance or the spiritual light of Mr.
Bennet’s education. Darcy is attracted
not by her beauty, but by her accomplishments, particularly her fine eyes that
show the light of revolution.
¯ The fact that the book is popular
until today shows that society has come to value the force that the book
expressed at the time of writing, in that it is time for the emergence of the Spiritual Individual, as the world has
treated the 20th century as the century of the common man.
¯
¯ Her life, in the story, was the life
of the Spirit immersed in ignorance emerging into knowledge.
¯ Her capacity not to be offended or
not giving in to offence, and her quickly reviving playfulness are traits of a
free mind or better still, of the free Spirit.
¯ Mrs.
Bennet is all energy, energy of the body, ready to swing into action at a
moment’s notice. Her getting three daughters married is a social advancement.
In the language of social evolution, it is the achievement of the body in the
vital plane of the society.
¯ Lady
Catherine’s confrontation with
¯ Wickham is
the charming false external of the receding social segment successfully enticing
everyone for a while before being fully exposed by events.
¯ Darcy, in
seeking
¯ Mr.
Collins, in the sub-plot, is the first generation of education, resulting in
stupid effusions, coming into property, having ambitions of the emerging
individual as his wife on the strength of his wealth and the pretence of his
Oxford education. The exhibitionism of
his personality is as revealing as the dinner table was at the Kremlin in 1917
when it was surrounded by workers picking their teeth with forks.
The rules of life expressing in the
non-physical subtle, subconscious, and subliminal planes are:
§
Life exists in layers of physical, vital, mental, spiritual
planes.
§
Each of these planes is
surrounded by its own character, which is invisible to the eye, but equally
well defined. It is sometimes called the subtle plane, as the pain of a
festering sore is felt an inch away from the surface.
§
Action
takes place when the equilibrium of life forces is disturbed or goes into a disequilibrium of differentials.
§
Actions do take place in outer life in response to our
thoughts, feelings or acts. They may be
known in our language as ‘Life Response’.
§
The mind is more powerful than
the vital (life) and vital is more powerful than the body.
§
In terms of accomplishment, an accomplishment in the body is
more difficult than in the vital. By the same rule, accomplishment in the
spiritual plane is more difficult than in the plane of mind.
§
All acts are first created in the
subtle plane before they are precipitated in the gross, physical plane, as acts
first originate as thoughts.
§
No act is isolated.
Acts have a past history just as they have a future.
§
No act ever occurs without a reason or purpose for the one
in whose life it occurs.
§
Silent
functioning accomplishes more and more effectively.
§
Expectation cancels. Intense expectation of strong people
makes it happen.
§
Planning of a work
with forethought in an area where one has inner and outer equipment achieves
more and better.
§
‘Planning’ is the best way to spoil, forestall, or cancel
any work that is shaping well, by one who is not equipped for it.
§
What happens, especially things
that are beyond our reach, happens by itself, not by working for it or
expecting it.
§
Any help given outside of duty
is sure to bring harm through the recipient of that help, or a person of his
character and circumstances.
§
Infatuation finds itself endowed with a higher reason while
being utterly unreasonable and ridiculous.
§
The sense of responsibility or
such higher ideals in practice activate the subtle plane to warn in time when
others plan to harm one.
§
No act
ever happens without a prior indication.
§
In a positive personal
atmosphere, negative initiatives end as positive acts.
§
Goodness without strength does not achieve. Goodness with
strength never fails to achieve.
§
Good will
is luck.
§
No word or act will fail to have its consequence however
feeble it is.
§
Life is a whole with all its parts well knit.
§
Literature is equally a whole, but it can be more true to life
than the physical life we see. The greater a work of literature is, the greater is its truth of life.
§
Nascent power
whether it is knowledge or prestige, is far more powerful in action.
§
The opposite events contain a
truth, often a greater truth than we see.
§
It is not true things could
have been avoided had there been more or right information. Still, it would have happened. Things could
be avoided if the attitude had changed.
§
The heart opens once and only
once. Once it has opened to a person, it cannot really express or feel angry
with him again.
§
Good will, even when it is out of stupidity, brings luck.
§
Each rule of life stated here
can have various applications and can be divided into sub-rules.
§
For every rule that is true,
the opposite one too is true.
§
To complete the list of rules
is possible with several more added. In the original, longer review such rules are
stated as part of the writing. Therefore, this list is left as it is.
In this
summary, the events of the story can be stated as illustrations of such rules.
If not all, some can be attempted. As the central idea is to view the story as
an expression of social evolution, no emphasis is laid on explaining the
validity of these rules.
Revolutions are violent and bloody. No
justice is expected in such periods. If there is any justice, it is the justice
a war permits. As evolution is a variant of revolution, the normal punishment –
reward of life is out of place here. Revolution is an activity of the oppressed
against the oppressors. Apparently those who rise in revolt will often receive
rewards that they could not expect in life. If there is any justice there, it
is revolutionary justice. Thus we see
the preservative element in the story preserves the life of dissipating
Wickham. He is not only preserved intact, but
Some examples from the events of the story
that express the central theme or a rule of life:
Revolution is the minority rebelling against
the majority violently, as it is an act of physicality. Evolution is the
winning of minds of the majority and dispensing with the bloodshed. Such a
change calls for the genuine change of heart in the beneficiary which we
witness in
Revolution of the individual becomes the
evolution of the collective. The primitive man learned by doing through a
process of trial and error. The civilised individual learns through education
the experience of past societies.
§
The first is a movement from
the physical to the mental.
§
The second is a descent of the
mind on the body.
What
From
Darcy’s proposal and letter to her visit to Pemberley, there was a steady
progress in her mind that reaches her emotions of shame. It was finally clinched
by the fine prospect of the view of the lake seen through the window of
Pemberley. We do note that Darcy had everything material to give.
It is a rule of life that the recipient of
any gift, especially an unsolicited benefit, resents it and as a result desires
to be insolent to the benefactor. Based on this truism, a joke was popular in
the 20th century in
Life seeks fulfilment by becoming conscious.
Life is a field of contradictions. Truth in life emerges by overcoming
contradictions. Hence the irresistible attraction of the
adventure. Adventure seeks its own higher fulfilment in the opposition
of contradictions and overcoming them. All
growth is knowledge overcoming ignorance. Man is conceived by the woman as a blend of
the male and female forces. Man’s greatest fulfilment is to find his
reconciliation in the woman. That is the highest adventure Nature has set forth
before him. All other adventures are of lesser importance.
Before marriage, it is romance. All romantic
episodes are beset with barriers of social stratification. Whether they are
social or psychological, they are barriers. The boy or the girl has to overcome
differences in class, caste or feud or prejudice. To attain to the other sex
breaking the barriers is romance. After marriage, the outer social barriers
change into inner psychological impediments. The famous dictum, “Girls abuse
men and they like it, don’t ask why” is an epitome of this process in human
wisdom.
The truth
of leadership lies in the love of submission of the many. The greatness of
leadership lovingly lies in its passionate loyalty to the following. Loyalty is
the submission of the low to the high and equally the high to the low.
In
the universal scheme of evolving Nature, this emotion is refined, elevated and
finally sublimated in the pure courage willingly submitting itself to the
object of its love.
Romance is its social version and therefore has a
flavour and fragrance that excels all others. Every member of the population is
exhilarated on hearing of an episode of romance and feels the distant
fulfilment in it. It is for this reason it never escapes public attention.
Bingley’s interest in Jane carries this aura, not Darcy’s, because in Darcy
romance is a subordinate feature. What is prominent in him is the social urge.
Society does not take notice of it, as it is unconscious of these forces. If
society is fully conscious of any vibration, it is that of romance. Romance is
a vibration where the urge of the physical becomes the fragrance of the Spirit.
The evolving Spirit is a flame rising to the pure heavens from the murky earth.
There is no other force or vibration that carries that intensity or purity. Its
perfume is the perfume of Purity itself. Heaven knows it to be Love and earth
recognises it in romance.
Social evolution taken
from the social stratum of aristocracy to the level of personal psychology
permits us to study individuals in the same context. We can present a
very short summary of one or two characters like Mr. Collins or Mrs. Bennet. In
both of them we see several phenomena:
Nascent
possession, whether it is knowledge or status, has a powerful urge and has no
capacity to wait for the appropriate forms of cultural expressions to be
created. Hence the tragi-comedy.
Darcy’s proposal vies with these people
for a distinction of a similar description.
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