I love Jane Austen's work and I love podcasts, so naturally I follow several JA podcasts (please drop recs in the tags). I'm enjoying Live from Pemberley from Hot and Bothered, but a comment from literally the first episode of the series has been circulating in my brain since I listened to it several months ago: one of the hosts expressed surprise (and disappointment?) in the fact that when we first meet Lizzy, she is "employed in trimming a hat". This comment literally comes right after a conversation about how Austen tells us so much in the very short space of Chapter 1; without wasting any words, we know exactly who Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are (lightly toxic relationship), understand their family situation (need to marry well), meet the main driver of the first act (rich man in the neighbourhood), and understand a social dilemma (girls can't meet him if Mr. Bennet does not make the first overture). So what is Austen telling us when we meet Lizzy in the employment of trimming a hat?
We so often read a sort of modern girlboss feminism into Lizzy because she is smart and stands up for herself, but I think that's something that really gets embroidered on to the text. Lizzy trimming a bonnet is telling us several things about her:
She is frugal - new hats and bonnets are really expensive (my casual hobby is shopping for reproduction bonnets and this remains true), because the straw is braided by hand, the bonnet shape is assembled and blocked by hand, feathers have to be gathered from real (living or dead) birds, ribbons and flowers are hand-finished, the whole situation is fuck expensive. Lizzy is most likely putting new trim on a straw or wool bonnet she already owns to make it work better for this season's fashions, or a new dress, and possibly recycling trimmings from other hats. Contrast this with Lydia's spending all her pocket money on an ugly hat in Chapter 39, just so she can reduce it to parts, even though she acknowledges she'll also have to buy some extra satin too, to finish the project.
She cares about fashion - we don't get a lot of information on sartorial choices in Austen's work, and when characters are discussing fashion, it tends to be a framework for explaining something about their characters; Miss Steele's need to know how much Marianne's dresses cost (rude, crass); Mrs. Bennet's loving description of the lace on Mrs. Hurst's gown (shallow); Catherine Moreland's agonizing over what to wear to the Assembly (young, a bit flighty); Bingley wears a blue coat (has probably read The Sorrows of Young Werther, is fashionable). The fact that Lizzy is trimming a hat tells us she is fashionable, but paired with the fact that she will get a petticoat muddy in order to see her sister, and does not spend a lot of time worrying after fashion like Lydia tells us that she does not live and die on fashion.
She is creative - I've trimmed various hats and bonnets over my years of interest in historical fashion and honestly it's not easy. It's quite fiddly to get a nice ribbon edge, a ruched lining takes forever, and getting sprays of florals and feathers to be nicely shaped and all in a complementary palette is quite fussy. Getting a nice looking bonnet requires some thinking and planning. But it's also great fun! The Regency era is, in my opinion, a particularly good period for hats.
She is normal - I think Austen wants the reader to understand that Lizzy is a young woman with normal cares and concerns. She doesn't have cash for a new bonnet, she wants to look nice, she knows how to put an outfit together, she's not frivolous like her sisters, and she engages in the typical pursuits of someone who is not yet one and twenty who does not have a specific occupation.
A lot of modern readers are expecting Lizzy to be striding around the countryside unconcerned with "girly" things, or reading a clever book because we have come to think of her as proto-feminist in a way that suggests she might be a bra (corset) burner, but I think that comes from an outdated feminist lens that still wants to tell us that girly things are bad, or at least, a bit weak, and I don't see that in the text at all (I think some of this trickles over from the adaptations). Lizzy walks enthusiastically, she enjoys reading (but not to the exclusion of other employments), she dances very well and plays with mediocrity, she cares deeply about her friends and family, she has excellent manners, and dammit, she trims hats.
No, seriously, Lizzy. When did you first know you were in love with Mr. Darcy?
It came on so slowly I hardly know… but I believe I must date it from the time I first saw his wonderful grounds at Pemberley.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995) dir. Simon Langton | Episode 6
I think one of the reasons that I've always been deeply annoyed by the conception of Darcy as a brooding, humorless love interest (and inferior because of it) is because I actually really enjoy his sense of humor.
Maybe it's because I don't have much of a sense of humor, myself (so I also find this annoying because of the assumption that not liking most humor is some kind of moral failing). But when I do find things amusing, they're often dry and understated asides that I find really funny. I love, for instance:
“I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.”
Miss Bingley immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections. Mr Darcy replied, with great intrepidity,—
“Miss Elizabeth Bennet.”
+
“I am afraid, Mr Darcy,” observed Miss Bingley, in a half whisper, “that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.”
“Not at all,” he replied: “they were brightened by the exercise.”
I think my other favorite Darcy-Caroline interchange is even simpler, but I do find it entertaining:
“Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp, and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley’s.”
“Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again?”
I also always laugh at the book version of this scene:
“That is a failing, indeed!” cried Elizabeth. “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”
“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
“And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”
“And yours,” he replied, with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”
Here, I also enjoy the use of a quite serious contemporary philosophical point (and the fact that he references it in a conversation with a woman at all, tbh), but the sudden shift to banter is what makes the interchange to me.
None of these are like ... haha-funny jokes, but I wouldn't find those amusing, anyway, while these always make me giggle.
‘To Miss Elizabeth Bennet. Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, that it contain any repetition of those sentiments or renewal of those offers which were this evening so disgusting to you. But I must be allowed to defend myself against the charges laid at my door. In particular those relating to Mr Wickham, which if true, would indeed be grievous; but are wholly without foundation, and which I can only refute by laying before you his connection with my family.‘
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995) dir. Simon Langton | Episode 4
An unhappy alternative lies before you, Elizabeth. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995) dir. Simon Langton | Episode 2
girlies on this website like “hehe i have daddy issues i love old dilfs like henry cavil he’s so old 🙈” bitch he’s barely pushing 40??? come talk to me when you’re trying to get w these mfers
The day people understand that Jane Austen didn't wrote her books just for the romantic aspects but to actually share her thoughts and critical views about the society and people she known will be the day we'll not have such atrocious adaptations
Whenever I see this moment with Mr. Darcy (it’s when he’s at Wickham’s and Lydia’s wedding), I’m always reminded of that ‘Person of Interest’ assassination chain meme
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