The first article is the 1979 essay “Pride and Prejudice: The Limits of Society” by James Sherry.
I can immediately see why I saved this one! Sherry spends the first few pages directly responding to the inescapable framing of P&P as essentially about society/tradition (represented by Darcy) vs individualism/energy (represented by Elizabeth) and the novel as a gradual reconciliation or integration of these apparent binaries. Sherry refers to some of the most influential of these (the first to come to mind for me was Alistair Duckworth’s The Improvement of the Estate and he quotes that directly), but it is such an incredibly common reading that it would have taken him pages to actually discuss them all, so he skims past pretty quickly.
In any case, Sherry is basically going “props to you all but ... no” for a couple of reasons. The first is that the whole dichotomy is contrary to Austen’s actual treatment of society, because she links society to sociability. If we’re going to go with the reconciliation of opposites narrative, then Elizabeth, who values sociability to the point of serious error and who repeatedly overlooks the particulars of people’s personalities and circumstances, should represent society, and Darcy, an intensely private person who defends his lack of sociability based on his specific personality traits and “the world” not really getting him, should represent individualism.
I actually wrote an entire seminar paper about this in my MA program, but to sum up, my opinion is that this framework doesn’t work either, because Darcy and Elizabeth are not actually opposites and they in fact share many values connected to both social and individualistic perspectives. However, I do think that pro-social Elizabeth vs individualistic Darcy does work better than the reverse and that Sherry is right to point that out.
Sherry also points out that reducing the characters to abstracts is not really the kind of novel that P&P is, anyway. I agree!
He also discusses how the structure of the first half of the novel seems to suggest (certainly to Elizabeth) that people can be understood through association, so you’ve kind of got Darcy/Bingley’s sisters/Lady Catherine/Mr Collins all reflecting on each other vs the nice pro-social group of Elizabeth/Wickham/Bingley/Fitzwilliam. These associations are not completely unfounded but do prove to be grossly inadequate.
(He doesn’t talk about it, but I think it’s interesting that the person Elizabeth loves most for much of the book, Jane, doesn’t really fit into either group. Jane is both very socially pleasant and proper, and very private and individualistic, and persistently sticks up for Darcy.)
He discusses how “propriety” is more complex in the usage of the time than the stuffy sense of the socially proper and basically has both social and individualistic elements. True!
He specifically addresses critical complaints about the novel going on so long after the Pemberley scenes, arguing that this is based on a fundamental misreading of Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s character arcs—their arcs are not complete at Pemberley! I was just talking about this, lol, though with different conclusions. He thinks it’s important for Darcy to engage with the social world with all its possibilities of ridicule and laughter and ordinary life rather than holding himself aloof, and that his involvement in the Lydia situation potentially opens him up to scorn and is undoubtedly distasteful to him, but he does it anyway.
This is certainly possible, though I think there are complications that go unaddressed. Also, I think that blaming Darcy for Wickham and Lydia’s behavior ignores that both Darcy and Elizabeth blame themselves too much by contrast to Wickham’s and Lydia’s total absence of shame, and that sensible Mrs Gardiner is like, you know, maybe the people who actually did the thing are the most responsible??? But while that particular conclusion is overly sweeping for me, I don’t think it’s wholly without merit or an invalid interpretation of the text.
The ultimate conclusion is that, while Darcy had some fair points and was misunderstood by Elizabeth’s original (also overly sweeping!) framework, his arc shows that P&P is ultimately favoring the pro-social over the individualistic perspective.
I personally think the novel is more balanced than that, that it doesn’t really buy into this dichotomous framework anyway (for the reasons stated above), and that any reading of the overall novel that comes to conclusions about what it’s saying based primarily on Darcy’s arc needs to at least address the fact that Darcy is not the protagonist of P&P and his arc is secondary to Elizabeth’s. Sherry doesn’t really discuss what’s going on with Elizabeth in the last third of the novel at all.
Obviously, I really like Darcy, I’m really interested in his character, he’s easily the most compelling and sympathetic male character in Austen for me, and I do think that, with the possible exception of Wentworth, he’s probably the most important of Austen’s men to the fundamental core of the novel that he appears in. All of Austen’s heroines end up married to a man, but that relationship is not always the real focus of the book—NA is as much concerned with novels and tropes and the Gothic as any particular character, S&S is much more interested in Elinor and Marianne’s relationship than either of their romances (I don’t think Marianne and Brandon even exchange any dialogue in the book), the focus of MP is more diffused across the cast at Mansfield Park, Emma is really focused on Emma herself, and Persuasion does have P&P’s attention to a central love story but it’s also got melancholy and messiness and such where P&P is very crisp and balanced. P&P is also the only Austen novel that gives really substantial, on-the-page arcs to both the heroine and the hero. So I do understand why some people are more inclined to treat Darcy’s arc as the key to what Austen is saying in P&P than they would be with, say, Mr Knightley. But still, meh.
So: I’m iffy on the conclusion and the over-emphasis on Darcy in terms of a general reading of P&P, but I do think he makes a lot of good points that were much needed at the time and could use more consideration even now.
DVD review: “The Man from Snowy River – Series 1 - 4” (1994-1996)
DVD review: “The Man from Snowy River – Series 1 – 4” (1994-1996)
“The Man from Snowy River – Series 1 – 4” (1994-1996)
Television/Drama
Sixty-five Episodes
Based on Banjo Paterson’s poem “The Man from Snowy River”
Featuring: Andrew Clarke, Wendy Hughes, Brett Climo, Hugh Jackman, Guy Pearce, Joelene Crnogorac, Sheryl Munks, Kristie Raymond, Josh Lucas, Amanda Douge and James Sherry
Jessica Harrison: “If I’d wanted your help, mate, I would’ve asked for…
“It’s just, like, this anonymous, cute, like, girl inside, who could be anyone; and yet it’s called ‘Yoko Ono,’ and there’s no reference to anything involving the real Yoko Ono inside; but it’s just because this person is called Yoko Ono, it gives this sort of interest."
- Blaise Larmee
“Putting a familiar name like Babe Ruth near verses connected marginally with him [...] requires a new kind of metaphor…. lines are not portraits, but elucidate by framing the person instead of describing him.
James Sherry officially releases his Nirvana interviews to the internet. Stream them here.
I love days like today. Days like today give me so much clarity, so much determination, so much hope. And nothing can stop me.
I need to give a bit of a back story. I am a music journalist by trade. I spent 10 years working on the two leading rock and metal mags in the UK. People think it's a glamourous job. It has its moments, I'm not going to deny that. I can count bands I've been a fan of for years among my friends, I've met people who 20 years ago were merely posters on my wall. As far as my 'laminated list' goes, well, I only have a top three (I'm not greedy!). One I have his phone number, two I have been to his house and three I have been within restraining order distance...
But what you don't see is the fucking hard work that goes into it. The endless battles with PRs and managers to get access to bands and who's going to pay for what, constantly trying to outperform your competition, and, in the age of Twitter and Facebook which in effect gives fans immediate and direct access to bands - a struggle to make readers give a shit about your magazine. It's a thankless job.
About two and a half years ago, I was made redundant. I was made redundant by an editor who had significantly less experience than me, who needlessly created situations where I was made to put my job before my sick mum who was going through chemo, and who in my last appraisal had told me I needed to be doing more of everyone else's jobs for them because they couldn't cope!
I was OK for a while. It was actually a relief not to be working for him any more. But then, to cut a long story short, life happened. Or rather death. Mum lost her battle with cancer nearly a year ago now. Due to this and a lot of other things I don't want to go into, I had sunk into a deep pit of depression. My life had changed unrecognisably in the space of two years. Everything I'd had and loved was gone and I had no reason to get out of bed any more.
I'm doing a lot better now. I get out of bed most days and I try to stay positive. But it's hard for us creatives when we don't have an outlet for our 'art'. Half the battle with my depression is that I'm not doing not only what I'm trained to do, but what I was born to do. Spotting talent in my area of expertise is something I have a knack for. The writers who I gave their first commissions are the ones who are still doing it, and the bands I got reviewed and featured first are still going, some even grace front covers now. It just comes naturally to me.
But those days that get me down get me really down. The music industry has changed so much since I first started, particularly in the way people discover and consume music. Is there any real need for magazines and music journalism? There really isn't an outlet for what I want to do. Metal Hammer is too niche, Classic Rock is too old, Uncut is too straight, Kerrang! is too teeny bopper... I guess Q is an option but it would be just for the sake of earning money and that doesn't interest me. My best work comes when I have a passion for what I'm writing about. The best magazine is Rock Sound, who I have been writing for, but it's not enough. So I think 'what's the point?'
This morning I read this article. I can't say I was massive fan of Nirvana, but I got caught up in the Seattle scene as I was, and still am a fan of Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. Being 14, 15, 16 at the time it was a formative time in my life not least in figuring out what career path I wanted to pursue. With my flair for the written word and my constant need to consume music I suppose it was inevitable. After a lot of hard work it almost happened by accident. But that's another story.
I worked with the article's author, James Sherry, on Kerrang! up until 2007, but I don't think I ever told him how much of an influence he had on me. I even remember the lightbulb moment: I had read a feature in Metal Hammer where he had gone on the road with Corrosion Of Conformity and got onstage and played guitar with them. I thought 'that's what I want to do! I want his job!'
And reading back over his experience now, it's had the same effect again. That buzz of happening across a band like nothing you've ever heard before. Finding a band that changes your life and telling their story because it might have that same effect on someone else. Working with likeminded people, bands and journalists, who have that same burning desire, that NEED.
It's fired me up. This is what will keep the depression away. I NEED to do it because I can't NOT do it.
