A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz Read Free Book Online Page B

from Dartmouth, had cleared out for nicer digs—and I read from the time I got up until the time I went to sleep. I read while I was brushing my teeth, I read while I was eating my ramen noodles, I even read while I was walking down the street (which takes a fair amount of coordination, I discovered). And one of those days, about halfway through the summer, I very suddenly, and very unexpectedly, fell in love.
    The object of my infatuation, of course, was Elizabeth Bennet. Why should I have been able to resist the heroine of Pride and Prejudice any better than anyone else? She was the most charming character I had ever met. Brilliant, witty, full of fun and laughter—the kind of person who makes you feel more alive just by being around. When her older sister, Jane, was gushing that a certain new acquaintance was “just what a young man ought to be,” “sensible, good-humoured, lively,” Elizabeth dryly replied, “He is also handsome, which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can.” Yet Elizabeth was also strong and openhearted and brave, the devoted friend who’d protect you like a lioness. When Jane got sick while visiting some wellborn friends at a nearby estate, Elizabeth thought nothing of tramping three miles through the mud to take care of her—and didn’t give a damn if her sister’s friends thought it made her look déclassé to do so.
    Like me, Elizabeth had a difficult family to deal with. Jane was a dream—sweet, kind, patient, the perfect confidante. But their three little sisters were impossible. Mary, the middle girl, was a pedantic bore who got all her ideas from books (“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously . . .”). Kitty and Lydia, the youngest two, were empty-headed flirts. Their father was a clever man—I sat up a little straighter every time he opened his mouth, and his relationship with Elizabeth was fun and playful—but he spent most of his energy sparring with their ridiculous mother, an overwrought bundle of foolishness. The two of them were like a long-running comedy act, and all the worse because they knew it. “You take delight in vexing me,” Mrs. Bennet complained. “You have no compassion on my poor nerves.” “You mistake me, my dear,” her husband shot back. “I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these last twenty years at least.”
    I also loved the fact that Elizabeth had as little interest in getting married as I did (and with parents like hers, who could blame her?). “If I were determined to get a rich husband,” she remarked at one point, “or any husband . . .” Of course, that didn’t stop her mother from having her own ideas. As the curtain opened, Mrs. Bennet, whose every waking thought was devoted to getting her daughters married, was nagging her husband to introduce himself to Charles Bingley, a wealthy young man who had just moved in to the neighborhood, before the other mothers could get their hands on him.
    Soon the sisters had met both him and his even wealthier friend, Mr. Darcy. The two couldn’t have been more different. Bingley was as cheerful and eager as a beagle. “Upon my honour,” he told his friend at the first ball, “I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening.” But Darcy was as haughty as a Siamese cat, practically licking himself clean whenever someone touched him the wrong way. He even had the gall to snub Elizabeth before he had so much as met her. “She is tolerable,” Darcy protested when his friend suggested that he ask her to dance, “but not handsome enough to tempt me ”—a statement I took as a personal affront. What kind of idiot would not find Elizabeth Bennet every bit as adorable as I did? The heroine agreed. While her sister and Bingley fell quickly in love (he was the “just what a young man ought to be” whom Jane was gushing about), she wrote