Posted on 06/12/2018 11:12:18 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
In one of the most well-known classics of British Literature, Pride and Prejudice, the author Jane Austen offers a morality tale. She describes the slow realization of the heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, that her much-vaunted intelligence failed to give her an accurate reading of the man who eventually emerges as the hero of the tale. Mr. Darcy, the wealthy landowner who arrives new to town with his likable friend Mr. Bingley, is at first regarded with some appreciation. He’s a rich man, considered handsome, and:
“… he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening; till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity…. and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance…”
The people of the town fawned over him at first, because he was rich. But when offended, they decided he was not so handsome after all, and nothing he could do could then budge their unshakable opinions that they (with their incredible cleverness) had discovered his faulty character.
Elizabeth’s mother, furious that Mr. Darcy declines to dance with her daughter, describes him as “a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him. He walked here and he walked there, fancying himself so very great!” Oh, the ego of a man who did not profess himself instantly charmed by every young lady presented to him. Darcy’s failure to flatter the chattering class marked him as an absolute monster.
Later in the novel, when a smooth talking young man of uncertain origin, Mr. Wickham, appears, Darcy becomes the victim of a landslide of rumors and half-truths perpetrated by the articulate and winning Wickham. Elizabeth, though she is a clever young lady, is immediately taken in by Wickham. Graceful and open, flattering and friendly, he appeals to people. When he tells Elizabeth that Darcy cheated him of his inheritance, she accepts it without question. “If it be not so, let Mr. Darcy contradict it,” she tells her sister. “Besides, there was truth in his looks.” His looks, hm? Alright.
Intelligent people tend to rely quite heavily on their own ability to sense honesty. It seems to travel with a willingness to be validated and admired. Indeed, they set themselves up to be correct. Anticipating the upcoming ball at Bingley’s house, “Elizabeth thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr. Wickham, and of seeing a confirmation in everything in Mr. Darcy’s looks and behavior.” I’m sure the phrase confirmation bias need not be belabored here.
But in the end – spoilers ahead – all is turned upside down. Mr. Wickham is revealed to be a gambling no-account and seducer of young women, and Mr. Darcy turns out to be a man willing to work behind the scenes to save and protect whom he can. Elizabeth is gradually forced to realize that she was wrong about Mr. Darcy. His pride and arrogance (much of which was merely a cover for a rather awkward social persona) provoked her to be prejudiced against him, and her initial dislike rendered her all to willing to believe the worst: that he was not just stand-offish, but cruel, selfish, and dishonorable. Her chastising realization is forshadowed in an earlier quote, when her friend Charlotte encourages her to give Darcy a chance, for he may not be so bad, Elizabeth replies “That would be the greatest misfortune of all -- to find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate!” But this is to be her fate.
When the truth comes out, Elizabeth is taken with a torrent of self-mortificaiton. “"How despicably I have acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."
This moment is what makes Elizabeth a heroine worthy of admiring. She realized she was wrong and accepted it. It was painful, to know that one’s own cleverness was so neatly subverted by one’s ego and vanity. But she faced it, learned from it, and grew.
Now comes the Donald Trump part… but is it really necessary? Is it necessary to point out that the liberal half of the world, who had courted him in the 90s, soon saw him as proud and conceited, because he did not flatter them by adhering to their ideology? That they then rushed to believe the worst? That he is emerging as a hero protecting the average American citizen, even those seduced by the smooth talking Wickhams of the world (either Obama or Trudeau could play him in the next version filmed)? And now, with this historic meeting with Kim Jong Un, he has negotiated a disarmament that the world has, up till now, claimed that it desired?
Will the liberal half of our culture have an Elizabeth Bennet moment? Or will they, like her bitter and ridiculous mother, take every victory he hands them and still complain mutteringly, “I hate the very sight of him.” Unable to admit that she had misjudged him, Mrs. Bennett keeps up an embarrassing front of self-righteousness, defending Wickham to the very end, despite the … spoilers I won’t mention here. Better to embrace the charming viper than to bow the knee to the white knight, if that would mean admitting a wrong.
The entire novel, point by point, could be a parable, and a warning, to the world about allowing their prejudice to cause them to stumble into an error that their vanity about their own intelligence could trap them in forever. Donald Trump is our Mr. Darcy. How humiliating … for some.
Nicely done! *Polite Applause* :)
The Darcy story continues here:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/death-comes-to-pemberley/
Free Republic excellence bump
I really feel like Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, and Trump are the three people who have done the most to drag us back from the brink of extinction (as a free republic.) I’m so grateful.
Libertarian Rush Limbaugh torpedoed Perot and carried the water for Bush and the globalists for decades pushing(propagandizing) "free Trade". He's no hero.
No, I must say, I never remember the existence of THAT Mr. Darcy.
Yes!! CNN is Lady Catherine de Burgh, and Morning Joe is Caroline Bingley! LOL
That’s my favorite version!
LOL... with a little Persuasion, maybe the liberals will come to their senses!
Perot helped Bush lose, but Bush was a RINO anyway.
Perot helped give us Clinton, but the USA was horrified at the ‘co-president’ hilLIARy and the health care takeover they planned (which was Obamacare draft 1) that they elected the first GOP Congress in 40 years.
That gave us Newt Gingrich who BALANCED THE BUDGET~!!!
Clinton was so taken aback by the loss of the house and senate that he was half a lame-duck. If they had run someone with ore appeal that Bob Dole- like a doornknob maybe- he would have lost re-election.
Then Bush II came into office, and squandered the deficit fixes (with the help of Bin Laden) and let Nancy Pelosi take control of the house. She did nothing but bash Bush 24/7 and set the tone for today’s 24/7 GOP bashing.
Thank GOD Trump came along. That plus hilLiARy’s gruesome hideous screaming ex-wife harpy demeanor saved us.
I’ve seen Death Comes to Pemberley!! I really enjoyed it. I like that actress, though she was a bit haggard to be our Elizabeth (mostly too thin) but I did like it!
Rush is not perfect, but when he first started talk radio, he was pretty much a voice alone in the wilderness, and the liberals had a stranglehold on all media. He began something, in my opinion. Pity about Perot, though. I did like Ross.
Yeah, me too... I’m in L.A. ... very blue.
I really notice when I talk to liberals on twitter or reddit... they just... cannot.... STAND... to be wrong. Oh, God, better to double down, triple down, quadriple down, go up in flames... anything rather than be wrong.
Had him pegged as Mr. William Collins !
bkmk
Oh no! I’d be shuddered to death!
>>And as it turns out Marcy D’arcy played for the other team.<<
Which ended her career.
Kinda sad as she was just this side of hot.
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