Laughter as Pain Killer

If Pride and Prejudice happened at a small American university…..Lizzy Bennet would be the super smart, bordering on nerdy girl trying to get into graduate programs. Darcy would be the quiet guy who dresses suspiciously tidy, sits in the back of class and always has headphones on when doing homework in the courtyard. But really, he is watching everything happening and secretly plotting to take over the universe.

Jane works as an RA/dorm mother and always has a cheerful word for everyone. A psychology major, her professors adore her. Bingley could also be an RA who is super involved in campus life and friends with everyone from the Dean to the gardener. Pedantic Mary is the only girl in her medieval philosophy classes, and Kitty and Lydia are freshmen. Need I say more?

Wickham is the super senior on his fourth or fifth transfer. He rolls out of bed for class and forgets to show up to his finals. Mr. Bennet is an adjunct professor who enjoys watching his students behave ridiculously more than he does lecturing to them. Lady Catherine is a booster who descends on the college regularly to survey her tax-deductible gifts at work and reminisce about her school days two million years ago.

I can’t really picture Mrs. Bennet on a college campus. Unless, she’s the flighty mother dropping her child off on move-in day and scoping out the lay of the land. Charlotte Lucas represents the student with three different jobs, working her way through school. Mr. Collins is the friendless friendly guy who talks to everyone and instructs them about anything they appear to need assistance with, such as their homework, jobs, relationships or how to play the guitar. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley might be upper classmen who still haven’t figured out that they are no longer enrolled in high school.

Perhaps that is a rather scathing picture of people and personalities based on brutal stereotypes. But what I’ve been learning about Jane Austen lately is that her texts tend to be rather biting representations of people and society. Typically, this is the nature of social commentaries. Often, when you think about satire it seems a hurtful sort of humor.

Some philosophize that laughter acts as a mask for pain. The endorphins released by laughter help to dull painful feelings. The invariable laughter/pain connection can be observed when someone attempts to tickle you to death. Tickling causes some discomfort which, in turn, typically causes us to react with hysteria.

So the satirical vein of Austen’s work causes us to laugh at the exaggerated and sometimes painful representation of the people which it presents. We chuckle while simultaneously thanking our mothers for not acting like Mrs. Bennet. And we squirm and chortle with discomfort as we watch Mr. Collins act completely inappropriately, raising discomfort in social situations to a new level.

As readers, we find ourselves in the same frame of perspective as Elizabeth, Mr. Bennet and the text itself: critical observers of everyone else’s folly. But eventually, like Lizzy, we discover our own disillusionment or, like Mr. Bennet, our very grave oversight. Or we find ourselves caught in personal pride with Mr. Darcy. Or perhaps we glimpse our mutual awkwardness with characters like Mary or Mr. Collins. In such cases as these, perhaps it is best to realize the pain of our own folly through laughter. 

What Elizabeth Would Not and I Would

It has been a Monday in many senses of the word. So I would like to take a moment to catalog all of the things which an Elizabeth Bennet of Regency England would not have had to do on her Monday.

Elizabeth would not have been sitting in lecture at eight o’clock in the morning. She would not have spent the day behind a desk typing and intermittently teaching people how to use man-eating copy machines or tracking down tricky library books which forever attempt to escape their call numbers. 

The second Miss Bennet would not have attended a resume writing workshop this afternoon and would not have stared into the perplexity of people hiring other people.

Nor would Lizzy have been handed a map of local businesses to visit tomorrow because her spring internship requires talking to strangers in a publicity campaign.

Miss Eliza Bennet would not have spent this evening analyzing Blake and Wordsworth’s London poems because Blake and Wordsworth would not have been born (let alone their poetry about the Industrial Revolution have been invented because this too would not have occurred yet).

Elizabeth would also not be typing on a laptop (because I’m pretty sure she never learned to type) about what she would not have done when all she really hoped was to fall asleep.

I sometimes wonder if Regency women ever felt truly bone-tired. Honestly, how exhausting can it be to walk into town and then spend the rest of the day sitting in a sitting room? What is a sitting room anyway? I’m pretty sure they don’t build those in houses nowadays.

This probably sounded like the snarky tirade of an ungrateful senior, and it kind of was. But sometimes, despite the fact that you have the greatest most fairy-tale-like life, you can still have a really long lugubrious Monday.

At any rate, the third week of school has descended, and I’m wondering if it is possible to feel farthest away when you’re actually the closest you’ve ever been. I hadn’t imagined until this semester how emotions like “Yah! I’m ecstatic! and “Help! It feels like I’m drowning over here,” could possible live together in the same twenty-year-old girl. But, mysteriously, they can. (I could be the poster child for coexist right now.)

Pride and Prejudice Turns Two!

My life is currently comprised of the contents in this three ring binder.

About four months ago (when I spontaneously started this blog and decided to post on Mondays because the first day of the work week is always a good idea), I had no idea that the bicentennial of Pride and Prejudice’s publication was about to occur on January 28, 2013—which happens to be today.

A few weeks into the project, I had discovered that this celebration of 200 years since the novel’s first appearance was about to take place. And just last week, I read that the exact date would fall on a Monday which is coincidentally blog-posting day. Jesus has such perfect timing and concern for even the littlest things.

The beginnings of my senior project began to come together this week. I have a binder brimming with highlighted articles, a pile of critical anthologies littering my desk, inter-library loans surprising me every day, and, as of this week, ten whole pages of my paper written. And along with other courses like sociology and philosophy, I’m learning how to say “no” sometimes and how to wait.

I’m also beginning a new internship this week which is my current excuse for a rather short post. So Happy Birthday, P&P!

Week #1 of Spring 13

School began again this week. My last first week of the semester before graduation this spring. Homework already piled around me after the very first class.

Typically, I am the exact opposite of a procrastinator. So for me, the first few weeks of school prove more traumatic than midterms or finals. I see the work pile up and gulp at how much needs doing.

During these times of relative stress, I tend to react in existential crisis. Overwhelming situations often cause me to reel back and question the meaning of my very existence. Why am I doing this? How did I get here? What do I really want?

The problem with these questions is that they focus on me, myself and I, and such a self-focus probably only magnifies the problem.

Friday, I flew (not literally on an airplane, just walked very fast) from an internship interview to a senior project meeting with my professor. From across the desk piled in papers, my professor cocked his head at me and asked if everything was alright. Startled by the question, I rushed past it into my thesis ideas and questions about the paper.

But the truth was—and still is—that things don’t seem quite right.

Compiling research for my Pride and Prejudice project, I’ve been pouring through linguistic studies, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytical critiques, feminist analyses, Austen biographies and histories of Great Britain. Something that keeps recurring is the exercise of choice.

For Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and the other women of the time period, marriage provided the most significant choice available. Beyond the selection of a partner, marriage represented an economic and social class decision. Critics highlight marriage and courtship as the one significant choice granted to single women of the time. Of course even this can be argued because economic, family and other social pressures influenced women, not to mention that their decisions were dependent on  men asking them first. But in Pride and Prejudice, at least, we do see young women choosing: Lydia chooses to elope, Charlotte chooses Mr. Collins, Jane chooses Bingley, and Elizabeth eventually decides on Darcy.

A part of this power of choice manifests itself in the ability not to choose. The grammatical negation not appears often in the text. Elizabeth most frequently practices this form of negation when dismissing unwelcome marriage proposals. Lizzy reveals emotional intelligence, knowing when to say no as well as when to say yes.

Choices are hard. Would you like a large or small? Peach or raspberry? Paper or plastic? Sometimes I feel paralyzed by the infinity of choices. And as school winds up once more, careers loom in the near future, relationships grow, and life dynamics shift, I’m not sure when to say yes, when to say no or when to just hang on. Maybe the constant changes and decisions are just a part of this season of life. But I suspect that they are just a part of life.

So after crying about the who’s and why’s, what’s and how’s, if’s and when’s last night, I woke up this morning to Ephesians chapter 2 and the comfort that I don’t need to know everything right now. Verses 8-10 read, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Everything worth worrying about has already been done. And it is ridiculous to act as though any of my decisions can destroy what God has planned. God values choice, but he does not abandon us to make decisions alone.

So while some truly daunting decisions lie close ahead, all I need to choose today is to finish typing this blog, do more homework and keep breathing. 

Regency Hygiene: The Twiggy Toothbrush

One of my mother’s concerns foremost for her college-aged children is the area of personal hygiene. On the sticky note of priorities, showering and brushing your hair are tasks most easily postponed until this paper is finished or that midterm is over. During the winter months especially, hoodies and beanies make a portable place to hibernate.

Perhaps my mom’s worry proves justified as busy semesters seem less than conducive to healthy hygiene habits. But when my morning routine is compared with ideas of regency era cleanliness, I think Mom will feel somewhat relieved. Therefore, I submit the regency toothbrush as exhibit number one.

In Jane Austen’s day, ladies and gentlemen first selected a suitable stick. That’s right, a stick. Made of wood. From a tree. 

These twigs were usually from the Birch tree, a deciduous hardwood from the genus Betula.Perhaps Darcy had a grove of toothbrush trees in the yard at Pemberley.

Next, one would chew on an end of the stick until a fibrous pulp was created closely resembling the bristles of a modern toothbrush. No wonder people smiled with their lips in old portraits. They would hate for us to see the splinters in their teeth.

The modified twig was then combined with a chalky toothpowder. Not until 1824 did a dentist combine this powder with soap to invent toothpaste. 

This knowledge motivates me to enjoy all the wondrous conveniences of modern hygiene. When I pull myself out of bed before class, I can walk straight to the sink instead of darting outside to collect tree limbs. So worry less, Mom—at least I’m not using sticks.

Downton and Prejudice

According to USA Today, nearly 8 million people watched the return of PBS’s Downton Abbey yesterday evening. The miniseries which could fill a daytime soap opera has captured a wide modern audience with the gripping early twentieth century drama. Whether it’s in the 1900s with Downton Abbey or the 1800s with Pride and Prejudice, great British houses, families (with lots of sisters but usually no sons) and courtships continue to hold an incredible fascination for modern audiences.

Perhaps it is nostalgia about simpler, more romantic times. But we are hardly drawn to phenomena such as Downton or P&P because of their simplicity. Much of the attraction seems to lie in the complicated relationships, predicaments and characters.

I watched a film called Midnight in Paris this weekend that dealt with fantasy and romanticization of previous ages. The “pedantic” character Paul (a self-proclaimed expert on practically everything from wine to Monet’s water lilies) diagnoses nostalgia as a type of denial. He explains, “denial of the painful present…the name for this denial is golden age thinking—the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in. It’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.”

That does sound rather harsh. But I think the perpetual trend of the period drama feeds a type of escapism. We ignore the lack of plumbing and refrigeration to embrace the romance of a time which is not our own. Hopefully, imagination is not always denial because it sure is fun to be absorbed for a few hours by the complexities of regency England or the sweeping changes of the post WWI era.

As millions continue to watch, another “British Invasion” of sorts will persist.

I want to run away with you.....

Scratch that; running stinks. I want to walk away with you.

Walking may often be taken for granted by the capable pedestrians who exercise their ability every day. However, walking (i.e. strolling, sauntering, power-walking, drifting) is an important pillar of society, especially in the Austen economy of Pride and Prejudice.

                Walking forms an excuse for socializing with officers and aunts in town. For visiting ill sisters at neighbor’s estates. For proposing a second time. You begin to see the import of this very human pastime.

                The BBC’s 1996 version of P&P opens with Elizabeth trotting down a lane and walking home. Unlike our walking today, pedestrianism for characters such as Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters presented an exercise of freedom. It proved an opportunity to quit the domestic sphere of the sitting room.

                So tomorrow—or rather later this morning as we hailed the New Year just one and a half hours ago—some dear friends and family and I will exert our freedom to walk by adventuring on our traditional New Year’s Day hike. And though our annual institution may not have originated in Jane Austen’s honor, I shall rejoice that today we can walk without petticoats and floor-length skirts.

Guest edited by E. Smith.