{"id":"01KJRRE0M2PKFWMP8YTV9VX45R","cid":"bafkreihefykdpeinxg5agpe5eqapsmyxuy7onjcxmymvauqacqghgyugr4","type":"text_chunk","properties":{"char_end":29388,"char_start":21387,"chunk_index":3,"chunk_total":108,"estimated_tokens":2001,"label":"poor Mrs. Bennet’s anguish over the entail._\r \r _T","source_file_key":"pride-and-prejudice","text":"poor Mrs. Bennet’s anguish over the entail._\r\n\r\n_The Bingleys and the Gardiners and the Lucases, Miss Darcy and Miss de\r\nBourgh, Jane, Wickham, and the rest, must pass without special comment,\r\nfurther than the remark that Charlotte Lucas (her egregious papa, though\r\ndelightful, is just a little on the thither side of the line between\r\ncomedy and farce) is a wonderfully clever study in drab of one kind, and\r\nthat Wickham (though something of Miss Austen’s hesitation of touch in\r\ndealing with young men appears) is a not much less notable sketch in\r\ndrab of another. Only genius could have made Charlotte what she is, yet\r\nnot disagreeable; Wickham what he is, without investing him either with\r\na cheap Don Juanish attractiveness or a disgusting rascality. But the\r\nhero and the heroine are not tints to be dismissed._\r\n\r\n_Darcy has always seemed to me by far the best and most interesting of\r\nMiss Austen’s heroes; the only possible competitor being Henry Tilney,\r\nwhose part is so slight and simple that it hardly enters into\r\ncomparison. It has sometimes, I believe, been urged that his pride is\r\nunnatural at first in its expression and later in its yielding, while\r\nhis falling in love at all is not extremely probable. Here again I\r\ncannot go with the objectors. Darcy’s own account of the way in which\r\nhis pride had been pampered, is perfectly rational and sufficient; and\r\nnothing could be, psychologically speaking, a_ causa verior _for its\r\nsudden restoration to healthy conditions than the shock of Elizabeth’s\r\nscornful refusal acting on a nature_ ex hypothesi _generous. Nothing in\r\neven our author is finer and more delicately touched than the change of\r\nhis demeanour at the sudden meeting in the grounds of Pemberley. Had he\r\nbeen a bad prig or a bad coxcomb, he might have been still smarting\r\nunder his rejection, or suspicious that the girl had come\r\nhusband-hunting. His being neither is exactly consistent with the\r\nprobable feelings of a man spoilt in the common sense, but not really\r\ninjured in disposition, and thoroughly in love. As for his being in\r\nlove, Elizabeth has given as just an exposition of the causes of that\r\nphenomenon as Darcy has of the conditions of his unregenerate state,\r\nonly she has of course not counted in what was due to her own personal\r\ncharm._\r\n\r\n_The secret of that charm many men and not a few women, from Miss Austen\r\nherself downwards, have felt, and like most charms it is a thing rather\r\nto be felt than to be explained. Elizabeth of course belongs to the_\r\nallegro _or_ allegra _division of the army of Venus. Miss Austen was\r\nalways provokingly chary of description in regard to her beauties; and\r\nexcept the fine eyes, and a hint or two that she had at any rate\r\nsometimes a bright complexion, and was not very tall, we hear nothing\r\nabout her looks. But her chief difference from other heroines of the\r\nlively type seems to lie first in her being distinctly clever--almost\r\nstrong-minded, in the better sense of that objectionable word--and\r\nsecondly in her being entirely destitute of ill-nature for all her\r\npropensity to tease and the sharpness of her tongue. Elizabeth can give\r\nat least as good as she gets when she is attacked; but she never\r\n“scratches,” and she never attacks first. Some of the merest\r\nobsoletenesses of phrase and manner give one or two of her early\r\nspeeches a slight pertness, but that is nothing, and when she comes to\r\nserious business, as in the great proposal scene with Darcy (which is,\r\nas it should be, the climax of the interest of the book), and in the\r\nfinal ladies’ battle with Lady Catherine, she is unexceptionable. Then\r\ntoo she is a perfectly natural girl. She does not disguise from herself\r\nor anybody that she resents Darcy’s first ill-mannered personality with\r\nas personal a feeling. (By the way, the reproach that the ill-manners of\r\nthis speech are overdone is certainly unjust; for things of the same\r\nkind, expressed no doubt less stiltedly but more coarsely, might have\r\nbeen heard in more than one ball-room during this very year from persons\r\nwho ought to have been no worse bred than Darcy.) And she lets the\r\ninjury done to Jane and the contempt shown to the rest of her family\r\naggravate this resentment in the healthiest way in the world._\r\n\r\n_Still, all this does not explain her charm, which, taking beauty as a\r\ncommon form of all heroines, may perhaps consist in the addition to her\r\nplayfulness, her wit, her affectionate and natural disposition, of a\r\ncertain fearlessness very uncommon in heroines of her type and age.\r\nNearly all of them would have been in speechless awe of the magnificent\r\nDarcy; nearly all of them would have palpitated and fluttered at the\r\nidea of proposals, even naughty ones, from the fascinating Wickham.\r\nElizabeth, with nothing offensive, nothing_ viraginous, _nothing of the\r\n“New Woman” about her, has by nature what the best modern (not “new”)\r\nwomen have by education and experience, a perfect freedom from the idea\r\nthat all men may bully her if they choose, and that most will away with\r\nher if they can. Though not in the least “impudent and mannish grown,”\r\nshe has no mere sensibility, no nasty niceness about her. The form of\r\npassion common and likely to seem natural in Miss Austen’s day was so\r\ninvariably connected with the display of one or the other, or both of\r\nthese qualities, that she has not made Elizabeth outwardly passionate.\r\nBut I, at least, have not the slightest doubt that she would have\r\nmarried Darcy just as willingly without Pemberley as with it, and\r\nanybody who can read between lines will not find the lovers’\r\nconversations in the final chapters so frigid as they might have looked\r\nto the Della Cruscans of their own day, and perhaps do look to the Della\r\nCruscans of this._\r\n\r\n_And, after all, what is the good of seeking for the reason of\r\ncharm?--it is there. There were better sense in the sad mechanic\r\nexercise of determining the reason of its absence where it is not. In\r\nthe novels of the last hundred years there are vast numbers of young\r\nladies with whom it might be a pleasure to fall in love; there are at\r\nleast five with whom, as it seems to me, no man of taste and spirit can\r\nhelp doing so. Their names are, in chronological order, Elizabeth\r\nBennet, Diana Vernon, Argemone Lavington, Beatrix Esmond, and Barbara\r\nGrant. I should have been most in love with Beatrix and Argemone; I\r\nshould, I think, for mere occasional companionship, have preferred Diana\r\nand Barbara. But to live with and to marry, I do not know that any one\r\nof the four can come into competition with Elizabeth._\r\n\r\n_GEORGE SAINTSBURY._\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[Illustration: List of Illustrations.]\r\n\r\n\r\n                                                                    PAGE\r\n\r\nFrontispiece                                                          iv\r\n\r\nTitle-page                                                             v\r\n\r\nDedication                                                           vii\r\n\r\nHeading to Preface                                                    ix\r\n\r\nHeading to List of Illustrations                                     xxv\r\n\r\nHeading to Chapter I.                                                  1\r\n\r\n“He came down to see the place”                                        2\r\n\r\nMr. and Mrs. Bennet                                                    5\r\n\r\n“I hope Mr. Bingley will like it”                                      6\r\n\r\n“I’m the tallest”                                                      9\r\n\r\n“He rode a black horse”                                               10\r\n\r\n“When the party entered”                                              12\r\n\r\n“She is tolerable”                                                    15\r\n\r\nHeading to Chapter IV.                                                18\r\n\r\nHeading to Chapter V.                                                 22\r\n\r\n“Without once opening his lips”                                       24\r\n\r\nTailpiece to Chapter V.      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