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.

If that’s the case, consider this response to Pride and Prejudice just another partially complete response. I won’t have a definitive response, even my own personal definitive response, until I read it for the last time, and I probably haven’t read it for the last time.

Here are a few specific things I noticed this time through. As always, I wish I’d made notes on my reaction to the book back in 1991, but I didn’t. I remember really enjoying Elizabeth Darcy’s father, Mr. Bennett. That was before I was married, and before I had children of my own. This time, I didn’t enjoy him as much. I started out really enjoying his character, but his c’est la vie attitude toward his daughters is indefensible. He genuinely cares about his Lizzy, and doesn’t even bother hiding the fact that she is his favorite. But his attitude toward his other daughters is uncaring and not parental at all. He abandons their education, or lack of it, to his wife, and somehow his two oldest daughters turn out fine despite the complete lack of guidance or education. The other three do not, through there is hope for Kitty at the end of the book, thanks to the influence of Elizabeth and Jane.

Another thing I noticed is that the characters are either admirable and complex, or completely one–dimensional. I’m sure this observation is not original to me. Really, there are only two fully developed characters in this novel, and you could argue that in fact Lizzy is the only rounded character. Every other character (with the possible exception of Mr. Darcy) is really just a caricature.

Next week, I will present my current definitive reaction to the book. That is, until I read it again.