Context Is Key

Context is key. This works with sound bytes, quotes, embarrassing pictures, and, yes, literature. When we judge something, we ought to judge it by the standards and norms it lives by rather than our own. This idea of cultural relativism not only could make one a more fair judge of character, but enrich the meaning one derives from literature. Okay, now I just sound obnoxious. The point here is that we can ban Huck Finn for all the offensive language in the world and condemn Romeo and Juliet's underaged love affair all day long, but it means that we're missing the point, we aren't reading the story from the right perspective.

In Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice, an elopement throws the entire Bennet family into chaos. Lydia, one of the five Bennet daughters, elopes with Mr. Wickham, a militia officer, because they are in love. Though we know that Wickham is a sleezebag, the full impact of this foolish decision does not hit us if we are looking at it through modern eyes. To understand the behavior of the Bennets, we must take on an early-twentieth century perspective. Now, when we approach the situation from this new viewpoint, not only has Lydia thrown away her own life, but the lives of her sisters as well. Having scandalously run off with a man, Lydia has disgraced her entire family, virtually destroying any of her sisters' prospects for marriage. This ties back in with the main drive of the story, the Bennet sisters', or rather their mother's, hunt for husbands. If we look at these women, judging them by today's standards, they're just boy crazy gold diggers, desperately chasing after any wealthy man in the neighborhood. But it is not today's standards by which they should be judged. To understand the urgency and desperation of the whole scenario, we have to look at the consequences that could fall upon the girls if they cannot marry. Women, being unable to inherit property, had no security for their futures until they were married. This was especially true in a family of all daughters, where in the case of their father's death the whole estate would pass to a distant male relative. Had none of the Bennet daughters married and their father died, Mr. Collins would have had the opportunity to basically throw them out of their own home, a possibility we see played out in Sense and Sensibility.

This brings us back to everybody's favorite moron, Lydia Bennet, and her charmingly horrible husband. Had the young couple's scandalous behavior not been covered up and rectified, the whole family could have ended up in poverty. Perhaps with this perspective, the ridiculous Mrs. Bennet may not be so ridiculous after all. When originally published, Pride and Prejudice was read by women who would understand all of this immediately, because many women were experiencing something similar to it. Now, it takes context to make any sense whatsoever of it. Marriage is no longer by any means a necessity and it would be ridiculous to imagine it impossible to make a decent living as a single woman. When we look at people running away together in modern literature and media, it is romantic much more often than disastrous.