Red Pill in Fiction, Classics Edition: Pride and Prejudice

That man is a scoundrel and a miscreant! His manners are appalling! I would never entertain a marriage proposal from him!

Since little or no new information on the political situation appeared over the Thanksgiving break and we’re not likely to get any until Monday, here’s some lighter material.

In the Red Pill in Fiction posts on Alpha Trio and Suddenly Royal I wrote that female authors often fantasize that they (via their author-insert character) will get the alpha by being “feisty,” and that this seems to be a form of snowflaking. On Suddenly Royal I wrote,

Many women have this fantasy that they’ll attract an alpha male by being “feisty” and “stubborn.” (While all the other girls fail to snag him because they’re too compliant.) I’m not sure what the psychology is here. My current best guess is that it’s snowflaking. I.e., “I’m going to stand out from the crowd by doing the opposite of what all the other girls do with alphas. I’m unique! No other girl is like me! No other girl ever thought of being ‘feisty’ before!”

This is stated explicitly in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, in the last few pages (Ch 18 of Vol. III). When Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy get engaged, she says,

“Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?”

“For the liveliness of your mind, I did.”

“You may as well call it impertinence at once… The fact is, you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I aroused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them… You thoroughly despised the persons who so assidiously courted you.”

Here it is explicitly, from the horse’s mouth. As I type these notes up it occurs to me that female projection is another reason for this trope of female-authored fiction. That last sentence, “You thoroughly despised the persons who so assidiously courted you,” is the female reaction to any man who seems to really desire her. So: snowflaking plus projection.

There’s other red pill stuff in this novel too. E.g. the main male character, Darcy, comes across as a completely rude asshole at first but then falls for the heroine and they fall in love and get married. At a ball, a mutual acquaintance offers Darcy to introduce him to Elizabeth. Elizabeth is sitting right there. Here’s Darcy’s nuclear neg which is the first thing he says to her… or rather, about her:

“Which do you mean?” and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”

LOL, what an asshole. They end up engaged. Pride and Prejudice was written by a woman in 1813 and is arguably the most famous and popular work of chick-lit in the English language. (The only other contender is Gone With the Wind.) Tell me, go ahead, tell me, that Game is just a bunch of nonsense that some male PUA nutters made up in the 1990s.

More: Later, when they have a little spat he tells her, “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?” LOL. Your family sux! Now get on your knees and get on my cock, bitch!

In the end– surprise!– the asshole falls for the heroine. And, bonus, he turns out to have a heart of gold: Darcy pays off a man who was threatening to run off with Elizabeth’s sister without marrying her, thus ruining her reputation. He does this solely because he’s so in loooooove with Elizabeth. So you see, he’s an asshole… Who Really Has A Heart Of Gold Underneath It All.

Oh yeah, thoughts on the novel as a novel: You know, it’s actually not that bad. (I know, I was surprised too!) What happens is, because it’s a classic of chick lit loaded with shopworn tropes like the jerk who really has a heart of gold, etc. you think it’s going to be one huge wedge of cheese dropped on your head like Dorothy’s house landing on the Wicked Witch of the East. Actually, there’s a good deal of humor, which the admirers of this novel really should play up more if they want to effectively proselytize on its behalf. For example, consider the well-known opening sentence:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

I always read this as a straight line, as if Jane Austen actually believed it. Ha, no. The passage, and indeed the rest of the novel, proceeds in a way that makes it clear that she’s joking:

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

And then we swing right into this bit of dialogue:

“My dear Mr. Bennet,” said his lady to him one day, “have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?”
Mr. Bennet replied that he had not.
“But it is,” returned she; “for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.”
Mr. Bennet made no answer.
“Do you not want to know who has taken it?” cried his wife impatiently.
“You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.”
This was invitation enough.
“Why, my dear, you must know…”

In other words, social satire with understated English humor.

Due to its droll comedy-of-manners humor and its generally well-written dialogue, I am afraid this novel is not even a serious contender for the coveted Ten Chunks of Cheese prize. I can award it several chunks due to its “bad boy who eventually falls for the heroine… and turns out to be rich” blurt, directly from the Universal Female Id. We’ll call it six chunks of cheese. Sorry, Jane Austen, but the state of the art in female porn romance cheese has really advanced since 1813. Your competition is much tougher now. Good effort, though.

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Index page for my Red Pill in Fiction posts:
https://neurotoxinweb.wordpress.com/red-pill-in-fiction/