The reporters are off to the side fuming.
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.
Wow, that headline was misleading.
I thought they meant Steve.
Or Marcy
I thought you were referring to Mr Darcy from Married with Children LOL. Probably the best wingman playboy except for Larry in Three’s Company.
Trump is truly a Superhero of our times.
He has the most astonishing work ethic, a brain the size of Texas and a love for his country which goes deep to his very soul. And he fights, boy does he fight, on behalf of the ordinary man in a way no president has dome since Washington.
300years form now, Americans will still drop to their knees and thank God for giving us Trump. The saviour of the Republic
Bravo!
An excellent and cautionary tale!
Great, enjoyable post! TY!
“... all TOO willing to believe the worst...” darn it, I always miss something.
The reporters are off to the side fuming.
Excellent perspective on the left. Unfortunately, the left is not totally driven by their pride. Most of the left follow their leaders in the hate and distain President Trump. The leaders of the left are following a different agenda of socialism/communism and do not care about Pride or Prejudice.
Trump has become the embarrassment and comeuppance that the left has long deserved.
Go Trump! MAGA!
DESTROY THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!
Series killer Teddy McGinley.
I usually dislike vanities. This is an exception. Very well done.
The reporters are sitting home alone, cast off and forgotten like the arrogant know-it-all and scold, Lady Catherine de Burgh.
And as it turns out Marcy D’arcy played for the other team.
Very well done!
Great post! Hoping it was Ms. Austen’s Mr. Darcy is why I clicked. I’m so glad I did as you are a breath of sense and sensibility. :)
bookmark
Yeah, I live and work “Behind the Blue Wall” inside of the liberal bubble, and if things continue on the present course, it’s going to be really interesting for me to watch how long it takes for the unhinged to start to wrap their heads around the fact that Donald Trump is not only not Hitler, he’s also not a bumbling idiot, but is actually a highly intelligent, effective leader hell-bent on making the world a better place for everyone. It’s going to be “cognitive dissonance” on a grand scale. So far, very little sign that any of it though.
You must be a novelist or an English Lit teacher.
Nice wordplay!
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