Pride and Prejudice and the Ideal Woman

Tonight I saw the new Pride and Prejudice (hereafter P&P) with my mother and sister.  I have a number of thoughts and questions about it that I'd like to explore.  I'm going to interact more with the content of P&P rather than the form or cinematography of it.  As a proviso, I must caution that I have neither read the book nor seen any other P&P movies, and hence am not very widely informed on the subject. 

First of all, I'll say that the movie was well done.  I appreciated the first take at the beginning, which was a long take throughout the house and yard and gave a good sense of the context where the majority of the film took place.  Too often films dehumanize by quick choppy takes and so I appreciated the first take's creativity (albeit slightly unnatural) to peak curiosity and evoke empathy (although I also see the problem of these shots as they tend to abstract from the humanness to romanticize -- which too easily catches us by surprise and doesn't easily strike us as dehumanizing). 

I am curious why exactly people (incidentally, mostly girls) seem to adore P&P so much.  I don't intend to pigeonhole them, but I do intend to understand what it is about P&P that draws them into it.  My mother mentioned that what she liked about it was that it was a good ending.  That was interesting to me, because so much more of the movie struck me than the supposed happy ending.  I was left empathizing with the women of that society more, who were more limited in their capacity to scrutinize or discern the character of the men within their  society than we are today.  It seems as though they were left with either hearsay, the family's reputation, or their all too limited impressions.  And the men only come around when they're searching for a wife, and too often use the ball/dance as a primary means for scrutinizing over whom they shall choose.  The superficiality pervades and exacerbates the difficulty for thoughtful discernment in this process.  If I were a woman with such little social power, I suppose I would be rather depressed about sinking a husband as my primary means for social success.  So, all this to say, as a man I would not easily find myself empathizing through these uniquely engendered social difficulties, and perhaps I do not come to empathize very easily or naturally, but I am at least aware of the frustration and longing for the right kind of man over against the wrong kind of man.  Yet, on the other hand, a reflective concern is that the situation is more complicated that P&P shows.  A thoroughgoing frustration of mine was how Elizabeth's pride and prejudice locked her into believing she was right and puffed her up.  This is anything but virtuous, but never have I heard anyone outraged over it.  Yes, this is a methodological concern, and it has to do with how she lives, but honestly, her stubbornness makes her so much more of a liability than would charity, empathy, and a suspicion of her ability to put the pieces together.  So, I was not excited at the end, but rather frustrated with her naive rules presupposing epistemological certainty, which finally forced her to eat her words.  In real life, no man will be able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt his perfect and immaculate character to establish that he is the good guy.  So, in this way it is too idealistic and neglects a realistic anthropology of sin.  None of us are either good guys or bad guys, although I think it is fair that discipline and will power are rather helpful means for understanding this, they are simply not the only answer.  Again, it is more complicated.

The reason I do not find pride and prejudice to be virtues is because they do not reflect God's image of holiness which we as Christians are called to in our human relationships.  If we have been marked by the gospel, we should be changed by the grace to no longer live like the rest of the world, but through our new hearts, we are inclined to love self-sacrificially, think about blessing the other, starve our selfishness, and regard others as better than ourselves.  We are to give them what they do not deserve, because we have received what we do not deserve (from Christ).  P&P does not embody these "kingdom ethics."  In fact, it seems that for us to hunger and thirst to be like Elizabeth or to even merely be complacent with the way she as a character lived, would be God-dishonoring.  I do not think that we should be unnaturally harsh on the movie, but I can not hold it as an ideal for the kind of woman whom I discern to be Godly.  I kept hoping for a "third" way.  There are plenty of acceptable alternative ideals which I can dream of, but all of which take the mortification of sin and some sort of humility as personal virtues and habits or disciplines worthy of cultivating for Christians living in our broken world.  It is too easy to unreflectively trust the goodness of the human heart.  Although living God's way, by allowing and pushing our theology to inform our lifestyle and ethics, although it is a harder way, it is a better way (because nothing can better explain our present condition than the Christian metanarritive).  Another problem I had with Elizabeth was how isolated she was, that she idealized a loner mentality/lifestyle.  Granted, maybe nobody would have understood her perfectly, and yes community is rare (and if not built on the solid rock of Christian faith and conviction, it is unreliable), but she was only a giver to others and never a receiver of good things from them.  This indicates to me that her pride kept her from humbling herself to receive good things and care from others in her community.  That seems so much more healthy and natural, rather than pulling away into solitude, where she seemed to find her "inner strength."  Again, this is simply unrealistic.  Nobody derives strength from themself except God.  It is not a virtue, rather it is a vice.  Pulling away into oneself is more of a cause for concern and misunderstanding rather than the unnatural consequences of eventual flourishing depicted in this film.  I hope to not idealize too much communication, but it certainly seems to be basic to relationship.

Okay, well, I may add more later, but this is what I have for now.  Sorry that the prose is so blistered with nuance to the point that it might be hard to follow.  I haven't written to make this catchy, but that it would be communicative.  I might add some concluding thoughts and closure when I don't have to fight falling asleep.  Peace!