Reading Pride and Prejudice with an Adult Brain

(Note: I’m going to assume that you’ve read Pride and Prejudice. If you haven’t, go do it. I’ll wait.)

Our brains don’t stop developing when we turn eighteen. The rest of our bodies have mainly matured to adulthood by then, but our brains don’t reach adulthood until we are twenty five or so. I thought of that a lot when I first started rereading Pride and Prejudice. The last time I read it, I had an adolescent brain.

It has been twenty six years since I last read Pride and Prejudice, and I find myself constantly wondering as I read it again, “What could I possibly have gotten out of this last time I read this? I was such a child.” I’m sure I got a lot out of it, but it feels like I must have been deaf to a lot that Austen does in the novel. It’s the old puzzle of when we finally arrive and become our true selves. It feels like we are now our true selves, but in ten years, or twenty six, we will look back and think that we were babes in the woods, complete innocents who were incapable of deeply understanding complex issues and layered works of literature.

Political Act of an Introvert

Donald J. Trump has been President of the United States for a little over two weeks now, and I’m still struggling with how I should respond to that news. On Election Night, when it became clear what we had elected, I lost sleep trying to figure out an appropriate response. I thought of contributing money to different causes, like the Southern Poverty Law Center, or Planned Parenthood. I thought of supporting the free press by getting a subscription to the New York Times, or the Washington Post. I haven’t done either of those things yet, but the Trump presidency is still young. I’m keeping my powder dry.

I didn’t think at all about participating in any marches or protests, but that’s the first thing that I’ve actually committed to do. I’ll be marching on April 22^nd, which is also Earth Day, as part of the March for Science.