Who is in Want of Whom....

Been teaching Pride & Prejudice for better part of a decade now, and each year I find a new nuance or subtlety that is lost on the current generation. But this year, they have missed the humor all together! When I try to explain to them that Jane Austen 200 years ago was the Tina Fey of her day, they come close to understanding the humor. When I show how it was a comedy of manners, much like Ms. Fey's Mean Girls, it rings a little more loudly in their consciousness. However, the women of Pride and Prejudice are not catty or conniving. In fact, a great deal of the appeal to me in this Austen novel is the dearth of catty details; those few exceptions are brought on by the single elderly woman, not one of the protagonist's peers.

The book, even as a romantic comedy was so ahead of its time. Having Lizzy speak her mind, challenge a suitor, reject a proposal and have the unconditional love of her father for acting that was, and remains, a solid feminist role model to introduce to young men and women alike. The joking, teasing banter between the Bennet parents is also wonderful and a sign of a happiness in their marriage that goes beyond mutual chance. They are aware of each other's strength and weaknesses and accepting of both.

It's hard to teach entailment to this generation; post-modern, post-feminist, modern primitive, post-marriage and taking classes with pregnant classmates. I have a PowerPoint I put together of the monarchy which shows the chain of succession via the entailment process. I've had to change it this term, as a new law took effect in Britain, an amendment to the Crown Act, which makes it possible for a daughter not to be skipped over as a possible primogenitor. Basically, a hundred years after entailment made it's way into the English Dictionary and just under 100 of women receiving the right to vote, gender is being removed as a royal roadblock. With the "baby-watch" for William and Kate's 2nd child upon us, the students could wrap their heads around this new, and historic, development.

What is interesting to me, is that for the first time some of the young men in my classes are anticipating that Darcy is being reserved, not arrogant. That he may have "been burned" in the past and has put up walls as a result. Again, not much sympathy to the humor, until it becomes borderline slapstick nearer the end. I think modern American teenage boys are feeling less like they hold the purse-strings or power in any romantic relationship and more like they have to be the supplicant and amiable beau. Today's men are more like Jane and women are more like Lizzie...

Yet many of us are still longing for a Darcy. Not to rescue us, but to mirror us. To be challenged and to challenge us. To spar wits and share the life of the mind while walking in dewy fields at sunrise.

I'm tired, no surprise, but as I teach this to yet another generation, it strikes me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Good Night, Lizzys and Darcys everywhere, G'night!