Pride & Prejudice

Mister Darcy. Call me, Neo. Mister Darcy, what makes you think that you are the one?

Being the one is just like being in love. No one can tell you you’re in love, you just know it. But you already know what I’m going to tell you.

I’m not the one…

Sorry, kiddo, but with such a pretentious first name like Fitzwilliam, how could it be anything else? What’s wrong with just William anyway? William is a perfectly respectable name. Why did you have to go and Fitz it all up? Well, my father was a William…

So, concludes this mini-Jane Austen recap, as I imagine the Wachowski brothers might reimagine. No happy ending. No Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy. A Shakespearian ending. A tragedy. At least no one died in Act V. There were only two acts.

As you might guess, we saw Pride & Prejudice last night at the Rep. A stage production that much more faithfully retells the story of the original Austen novel. As is typical of the Rep’s holiday productions, this play was a sumptuous affair. As I write this post and all the while she is busying herself with Saturday morning chores, as is her wont, Anne reads what I’ve wrote and is not pleased. “I would not have gone there, but it is your blog.”, she said. Everyone’s a critic. It seems that there is nothing I can do that doesn’t end up messing with her. Who moved my cheese? There is no cheese. There is no spoon.

I suppose that there is something scared in Jane Austen, to people of a particular persuasion. I sense this and respect their sensibilities. I suspect that most of these people are women. As a woman, Austen, pioneered herself as a novelist, in what was before only a man’s field. Parking forever her name in the annals of literature. It is only natural that I experience some pushback, as I toy with what is dear to others, but it is not as if I had gone out and kidnapped Brontë’s Jane Eyre, with only some vague promise of returning her by Thursday next.

PS — I know that I am a day early with the Hanukkah header, but scheduling demands dictate that it be so. Happy Hanukkah!