Understanding 'Pride & Prejudice'..

It took me some 25 years to understand Jane Austen’s Victorian classic Pride & Prejudice.

Preface….

As a teenager, mostly fed with Tinkles, Nancy Drews, Sidney Sheldons and the likes, Pride & Prejudice, honestly, wasn’t one of the books I considered shifting to my little book shelf (made of shoe-cartons) from MaPa’s huge one. Nevertheless, Kamala Das’ Life Story, and this other novel called The Song of my Heart, did sit there (in my shelf) like misfits. My love for “Life Story” is that old. And the other novel qualified to be there just because it had pages (that I dog-eared) I was not supposed to read at that age.

Pride & Prejudice appeared again during early twenties, and this time, it was a part of my curriculum. Impromptu it disappeared from MaPa’s book-shelf and got shoved into mine (a metal shelf this time), amongst Kafkas and Coelhos, and other books of my curriculum. P & P was digested and excreted (read done away with) at the examination hall, without an ounce of affection. In fact, it was George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss’ Maggie (her identity crisis and later, self-discovery) and Tagore’s Home & the World’s Bimala (her feminism), that enamored me completely.

Pride & Prejudice – My take

I was really amused, when at 25, one fine day I looked back at life and found it so resembling the crux of that much-ignored, never dog-eared, Pride & Prejudice. The novel, as you know, centers on the theme of marriage in a Victorian society, illustrated finely through the parable of a family with four marriageable daughters and the urgency to get them married.
And whether Gurinder Chaddha’s Indian take, Bride & Prejudice, was released or not, I can vouch that an average Indian woman of my situation, i.e. one who has read the book, belongs to a middle class family, is of marriageable age and unengaged, and at home, will be able to relate to it in someway or the other, if not completely.

It was not without a pinch of salt (add pepper and chilies) that I gulped down MaPa’s ‘landing’ me to the Marriage Market. Well, a ‘market’ it has to be, because there the unmarried (men and women alike), get ‘commodified’ and their chances of getting a good mate (consumer) depends on certain definite and defined attributes. For men, it is profession and education, while for women, it is her face and character. This might sound too generalized and narrow, to say, very Victorian, but ironically that is how it is. Try peeking into the matrimonial advertisements and you will know what I mean.

Ma, like Mrs. Bennet, picked this famous one-liner: “Eir karoney eta bhal lora sabo soon dei” (Please search a good groom for my daughter), and gave it to relatives, acquaintances, you name it. I either grow red with anger or blue with embarrassment, but who cares! Was it not declaring to the whole world that her daughter has been incapable of finding herself a good match – I would often ponder!

Having brought up in an atmosphere that saw not a trace of patriarchic misgivings or gender bias, the recent developments at home were a ‘shock’ through and through. Every dictum had an underlying ‘this is what a lady is supposed to do’ and no action escaped scrutiny. I was even served a home-arrest of 6 months before I really got married, so that I could be groomed to be a ‘good wife’ (reminds me of the ‘accomplishments’ Lady Catherine defined that an ideal lady should possess). My outings were restricted. Maa’s advising to grow my hair long, left me slack-jawed, because ‘boys-cut’ was all I was allowed till I gathered the guts to revolt. Tresses, academic degrees, certificates and what not – all seemed ornamental accomplishments, that would decide my ‘value’ in the ‘Marriage Market’.

I could understand what made Lydia elope with that unworthy Wickham. The pressure boils down to a mental state that ‘escape’ is all you can think of, be it through marriage or elopement. How I hated being the Jane Bennet, at the receiving end, waiting to be ‘whisked away’, not ‘deciding’ but ‘accepting’ what others decide fit for her. The penultimate decision seemingly lies with the girl, but when ‘it’ is arranged between families and all factors (families, charkas etc.) seem compatible, the girl (sensitive and under ‘pressure’), has very little to ‘choose’, you see. Besides, the mind gets conditioned to the threaten - ‘aru bhal lora napaba’ (you will not get a better guy, if not this one) and like Charlotte Lucas you tend to ‘hold on’ to what seems ‘best’ your situation could afford.

Whether Marriages are made in Heaven, by Ma-Pa or by me, it hurts my self-respect to just ‘stay there’ waiting to be ‘selected’. Are living this ‘Victorian past’ and arranged marriages an assurance that you will live ‘happily ever after’? Is it right to groom daughters into believing they are ‘equal’, only to expect them to conform to ‘patriarchy’ in the end? For example, docile and unambitious women are preferred over ambitious and career-centric ones, and the parents do not raise a brow if that becomes a condition for marriage. Resembles Mr. Collins’ preferences, don’t they?

My situation, resembling a Jane Bennet best, with occasional impulses of a Lydia, depressions of a Charlotte, weird takes of a Mary (minus the snake dances, though), is an anti-thesis to everything my ‘accomplishments’ has made of me.

Transported to and caged in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth seems the only role ‘livable’ and the hope of finding a Darcy in good time, the only respite.

Dated..2nd December:

Darcy made it in good time.......wonder which novel it is going to be like next....till now Erich Seagal's Love Story is all I can think of..but I'll have to find another one soon..the heroine dies young, if you remember ;)