"Vanity And Pride Are Different Things, Though The Words Are Often Used Synonymously. A Person May Be Proud Without Being Vain. Pride Relates More To Our Opinion Of Ourselves; Vanity To What We Would Have Others Think Of Us"

I cannot explain exactly why, but I read Pride and Prejudice in less than a week. It wasn't as though I was all googly-eyed, lovey-dovey about the main relationship in the novel, between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. And I'm not going to go out and join a Jane Austen fan girl club or anything (which, from my understanding, there are many of).

But somehow, even though I've seen the movie and knew what happened, I couldn't put it down. I think it was mostly because I was completely drawn in by the language. And while the book is >200 years old, and the some of the language was certainly a bit different than today, it was still so easy to read the saucy sarcasm and biting words of Elizabeth. She is quite a character (literally and figuratively), and pretty surprising to find such an outspoken female character who bucked the trend of marrying to further one's standing and to satisfy one's family (ignoring the fact that, even though she didn't care for these things, in the end, she manages to capture the motherload of eligible bachelors to fulfill both of those ends). But she doesn't hesitate almost from the moment of meeting Mr. Darcy to tell him exactly what she thinks of him, often in a manner of extreme wit. Which again, I can't imagine women were often allowed to do in the early 1800s.

And the other thing that I very much appreciated about the novel was that it was easy to wrap my head around the themes presented. That, while not necessarily handed to the reader, it was easy to see the differing levels of pride and prejudice in Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, primarily, and how they shift through the course of the novel. How Elizabeth very willingly admits to allowing her prejudice of Mr. Darcy cloud her opinion of him and Mr. Darcy even admits to allowing his social status to affect his opinions of Elizabeth and the rest of the Bennet family (more on that hot mess in a moment). And even pride and prejudice in many of the other minor characters to varying degrees certainly defined them in many ways (Mr. Collins, Charlotte Lucas, Lady Catherine, etc). It made everything in the novel so much more accessible to really understand the characters and how their initial perceptions of others and of themselves impacted all of their further actions when the prose often circled back to the concepts of pride and prejudice.

But let me just take a moment to say that I may have found one of the most villainous, loathsome characters that I have ever encountered: Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth (and her sisters') mother. Ugh, I just couldn't stand anything that came out of the woman's mouth. While her 100% preoccupation was marrying off her daughters under the pretense of wanting good futures for them, it was really all about her own selfishness and vanity. She just wanted to parade her daughters about the county and brag about their matches. It had absolutely nothing to do with her actually caring about her daughters' happiness as much as it did about herself looking good on paper and being more impressive on a social scale. And the terrible, embarrassing things that she said to humiliate her daughters just made me want to punch her (and I kept found myself hoping that Elizabeth could be that ballsy of a character to just clock her mom in the jaw, but alas, she was still a well-bred, classy lady. Dammit). I can only hope that in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies that Mrs. Bennet was the first to be eaten alive, because bitch got on my nerves!

I'm actually a bit sad that I have no other Jane Austen books on any of my lists. Because I did find her writing to be quite charming and witty, and I would really have liked to see how Emma, Sense and Sensibility, or Mansfield Park are in regards to the type of writing encountered in Pride and Prejudice. Not to say that anything is preventing me from picking them up and reading, but I still have a long way to go with all of the other books on my docket!

So up next is Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. I read The Robber Bride as part of a literature class during my undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, and I remember discussing the book in a lecture class of about 100 or so people. And the first person to speak and share his feelings about the novel was a guy who immediately said that he didn't like the book because it was "chick lit". And even at the time, this made me angry, and probably was the impetus for even starting these lists and pulling a list of the best works of literature of the 20th century by women writers (of which I am happy to see Margaret Atwood included on). I remember being so pleased when reading The Robber Bride because it addressed infidelity from a women's point of view in a way that I had never read before and it felt different and fresh and honest in a complete different way and being annoyed that just because it was female characters and issues told from a female's point of view that it was so readily dismissed as "chick lit". It still chaps my ass even now thinking about it 18 years or so later (jesus lord, I just dated myself). So I am very excited to get moving on Cat's Eye. Given the way I have been voraciously making my way through books lately, maybe I'll have this bad boy finished before Halloween.

Happy almost-end-of-October! 232 books left to read!