Considering that the above-captioned
sentence is one of the most memorable among Jane Austen's many memorable
sentences, it surprised me today to see three things about that sentence I had not
previously been aware of, and perhaps the same is true of you as well.
First, this very short sentence
turns out to be one of Jane Austen's most frequently (unintentionally) misquoted sentences. If you've seen all
four of the major P&P film adaptations, you may be surprised to learn, as I
only did today, that it is only in one of the four that Mr. Darcy actually speaks
that sentence exactly as written by JA---and it's not Colin Firth in the 1995
P&P!
Even though Firth’s performance of
that scene is far and away the best and most powerful of the four, in terms of
capturing the essence of Darcy's emotional struggles, and, for that matter, in
terms of Jennifer Ehle's nailing Elizabeth's response, Colin Firth actually
says, "In vain I have struggled". And so also do Laurence Olivier and
Matthew MacFadyen invert JA's original poetic word order.
It is only David Rintoul who speaks
the words in the original correct order--although Rintoul, in contrast to
Firth, utterly fails to convey the swelling and bursting out of emotion
that Darcy's words indicate he clearly experiences. And I also found that there
have been some sloppy 20th editions of P&P (including the Project Gutenberg
version I’ve long used as a convenient tool for word searching in the entire text
of the novel) which have mistakenly inverted the word order as well----whether
consciously done or not, it is impossible to tell for sure.
Second, and more substantively, it
only occurred to me today, as I was writing the above section of this post, that
Jane Austen, that inveterate punster, managed to hide a fantastically clever
pun in plain sight in that sentence for over 2 centuries. As my Subject Line
indicates, given the extensive attention given to Darcy's vanity in P&P, in
particular, in this famous exchange of barbs between Darcy and Lizzy ....
"Perhaps that is not possible
for anyone. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses
which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule."
"Such as VANITY and pride."
"Yes, VANITY is a weakness
indeed. But pride—where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be
always under good regulation."
Elizabeth turned away to hide a
smile.
....it is a devastatingly revealing
Freudian slip for Darcy to use the phrase "In vain" when "In VANITY"
is what his unconscious mind is confessing in the same breath!.I.e., from the immediately
following narration summarizing Darcy’s statements in support of his outburst,
we learn, as Elizabeth does, that Darcy's struggles have very much been the
product of his own vanity, in that he assumes that Elizabeth will just say
yes to his proposal. So this wonderfully apt but totally unintentional
pun on his part, provokes an ironic smile from the reader, as we read that “he was not more eloquent on the
subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority--of its being
a degradation—of the family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination,
were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was
wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit…. As he said this, she
could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke
of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such
a circumstance could only exasperate farther…”
As
Ecclesiastes 1 tells us: “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of
vanities; all is vanity.”
And
Elizabeth, with her quickness on her feet, immediately takes advantage of Darcy’s
unintentional revelation of his arrogant vanity, when she rejects him, and then
adds, “The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment
of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this
explanation."
In
other words, she takes his unintentional revelation of his own vain certainty
that she would accept him, and twists it to her own rhetorical advantage, by in
effect saying, “You’re so vain in your feelings of superiority toward lowly me,
that you can’t possibly be upset by a lowly nobody like me saying no.”
And
we can also look at Darcy’s unintentional pun as being the exact opposite of Lizzy’s
favorite game, which Darcy accurately pointed out earlier, of intentionally
saying things she doesn’t actually believe. In this case, Darcy unintentionally
says something that reveals what he really does
believe (i.e., that he is a superior person), but did not mean to reveal
because it is clear to Elizabeth this his pride, at this stage of the game, is
definitely NOT under good regulation when he first proposes- quite the
contrary, he is blinded by vanity at that very moment!
And
third, and last, relative to that famous sentence, I first became aware of the
word inversion discussed in the first section of this post, above, when I came
across an interesting short article in Persuasions from several years ago,
entitled “ ‘In Vain Have I Struggled’: Pride
and Prejudice, Chapter 34” by John K
Hale, in Persuasions Vol. 21, in which Hale, a Milton as well as an Austen
scholar, and with a sharp ear for poetry, asked a very very good question:
”Why does Mr. Darcy say, “‘In vain
have I struggled” and not rather “In vain I have struggled” or for
that matter “I have struggled in
vain”? What is the effect,
and perhaps design, of the inversion of the verb? And is the departure from the
usual word-order of speech made more natural or less so by the equally unusual
opening of the sentence with the adverb?”
Hale proceeded to make some
pertinent observations about poetic rhythm and syntax, mostly tending to
showing how the departure from ordinary word order perfectly reflects the
tumult inside Darcy. And then Hale arrived at his punch line, and it is a very
good one, too:
“The abruptness of syntax, the
swirling rhythm it creates, the tiny shock it gives the reader as well as
Elizabeth Bennet—these, though the scale and the economy are different, are the counterpart of the
wrenching violence of the opening utterance of Milton’s Satan, “If thou beest
he; but oh how fallen!how changed. . . .” [in Book One of Paradise Lost].
That is a brilliant catch on Hale’s
part, and I endorse it wholeheartedly. Satan speaks those words in the aftermath
of God having used his overwhelming power to cast the proud Satan and his devil
legions out of heaven and down into the Stygian, dark flaming depths of Hell.
After spending a Biblical week dazed and confused, Satan gets his act together
and begins to rally the troops, by addressing first the loyal and steadfast
Beelzebub with those words which Hale heard echoed by Darcy.
It’s very interesting to think of
Darcy immediately after Elizabeth rejects his first proposal as being
comparably situated to Satan immediately after being cast out of Heaven, and
being shocked into realizing that he doesn’t just get his way anymore, something
he blithely assumed prior thereto. Certainly we can imagine that Satan’s early
years in heaven, when he was still God’s favorite angel, were sorta like Darcy’s
own account of his own early years:
“I have been a selfish being all my life, in
practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but
I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to
follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an
only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my
father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed,
encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none
beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to
wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.
Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty…”
It’s a typical sharp Austenian irony
to think of the late Mr. Darcy as God, (‘my father, particularly, all that was
benevolent and amiable”)!
Now….many of you will at this moment
interject that there is a giant difference between Darcy and Satan, in that
Darcy subsequently reacts to being cast out of “heaven” by Eliaabeth, by
reforming his character, saving the day with Wickham and Lydia, correcting his
meddling between Bingley and Jane, and then winning Elizabeth’s heart by
showing her his reformation.
Whereas, of course, Milton’s Satan
never reforms, quite the opposite . He instead resolves on getting revenge
against God in a devilishly devious way---not by attacking heaven directly, but
by causing trouble in paradise, by tempting and seducing God’s favorites, Adam
and Eve, into sin.
But then, if you believe, as I do,
that P&P has a shadow story in which Darcy never actually reforms, but only
pretends to, in order to tempt and seduce Elizabeth into marrying him, then
Hale’s brilliant poetic catch is unexpectedly validated in the most
extraordinary way-I.e., it does appear to me that Jane Austen, by the poetic
word order of Darcy’s impassioned first proposal, means to make her learned
readers think of Milton’s Satan, and thereby to give another hint that the
reader ought to be highly suspicious of Darcy’s apparent reformation!
ADDED LATER ON 3/6/15:
In my previous post, I argued that Darcy's "In vain have I struggled" was a Freudian slip on his part, revealing an unconscious self-awareness of the role of his own vanity in his struggles over whether to propose to Elizabeth. I also picked up on Hale's suggestion that Darcy's poetic syntax may have been inspired by a similar syntax in the first speech by Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.
Well, toss the following into the above mix, I think you'll find it blends in quite nicely. In Book 3 of Paradise Lost, in the scene where Satan begins stalking his "prey", a process which will shortly bring him to the Garden of Eden, we read a very similar punning by Milton on "vain" in its two senses of "to no avail" and "narcissistic". I'd say that this only adds to my earlier assertion that Jane Austen meant to present Darcy as a kind of Satan in his devious stalking of Elizabeth in the second half of P&P:
So on this windie Sea of Land, the Fiend
Walk'd up and down alone bent on his prey,
Alone, for other Creature in this place
Living or liveless to be found was none,
None yet, but store hereafter from the earth
Up hither like Aereal vapours flew
Of all things transitorie and VAIN, when Sin
With VANITY had filld the works of men:
Both all things VAIN, and all who IN VAIN things
Built thir fond hopes of Glorie or lasting fame,
Or happiness in this or th' other life;
All who have thir reward on Earth, the fruits
Of painful Superstition and blind Zeal,
Naught seeking but the praise of men, here find
Fit retribution, emptie as thir deeds;
All th' unaccomplisht works of Natures hand,
Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt,
Dissolvd on earth, fleet hither, and IN VAIN,
Till final dissolution, wander here,
Not in the neighbouring Moon, as some have dreamd;
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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