I strenuously avoided Pride and Prejudice for the first 28 years of my life. As a young(er) man, I had whole shelves of books devoted to the “burly-ex-military-stud-gets-into-trouble-and-needs-to-shoot-his-way-out” genre. Any book without at least one large-scale gun-battle was a book wasted. Tom Clancy was the height of literary prowess. Eventually, however, we must all grow up. We set aside the fragile masculinity that revels in simplistic, quasi-fascist military fantasies, and instead read something with more intricate personal relationships than extra-judicial murders.
While short on patriotic violence, Pride and Prejudice nevertheless possesses many other fine qualities that recommend it. The language, though anachronistic (to us: obviously it was chronistic to Ms. Austen), is accessible. Jane Austen’s protagonists live, quarrel, and love in a rich, full world, inhabited by complex individuals. Mr. Darcy’s change of heart is the novel’s most famous example of moral ambiguity, but every character in the book is worthy of both praise and condemnation. Ms. Austen’s character depictions—both laudatory and critical—therefore exhibit a subtlety and restraint that appear quaint in our current, politically charged atmosphere.
Let us take, for example, the coverage of President Donald J. Trump: a man who likely thinks Pride and Prejudice is the title of Michael Wolff’s defamatory tome. No critique of our dear president is complete without apocalyptic prognostications that lost their power to shock long ago. Political “analysts” routinely turn to historical allegory for inspiration, but here, too, creativity is scarce. In their admirable haste to understand this enigmatic president of ours, a generation of pundits has exhaustively compared him to a certain charismatic Teutonic dictator, as if nothing occurred in global history prior to 1933. Many commentators appear to have run out of words. If you watch carefully, you’ll observe this yourself because they occasionally say things like “I have run out of words.” All this self-important posturing does for the American mind what the Twinkie does for the American diabetic.
We must, therefore, seek beyond televised political discourse (generously termed) for some novel insight into the character and motivations of our beleaguered commander-in-chief. Our tendency today is to reinterpret history through our contemporary lens (think Hamilton, Band of Brothers, Renaissance Fairs, Toga Parties). Sadly, I do not think we can afford to wait 60 years for a techno-opera to illuminate the reign of the 45th president. And yet, we need a fresh take, a new perspective. Who better to grasp the full measure of Donald Trump than a woman who died 129 years before he was capable of grabbing anything? Let us trust Jane Austen’s acuity for character to help us plumb our nation’s CEO. Surely we can find a fitting foil for President Trump among the Bennet women.
As our president is loath to be anywhere but the center of a story, we begin with the central figure of the novel, Elizabeth Bennet. If we examine her defining characteristics, quick-witted intelligence comes in foremost. Alas, in one stroke, Miss Bennet has already eliminated herself from contention. We shall suppress our disappointment and carry on with more suitable members of her family.
Perhaps one of Elizabeth’s sisters can adequately manifest President Trump’s particular je ne sais quoi. The eldest, Jane, is good-natured, mild-mannered, and kind, making her quite as inadmissable as Elizabeth. We may enjoy more success, however, with Lizzie’s younger sister, Mary Bennet, who “wished to say something sensible, but knew not how.” Mary is “the only plain one in the family…impatient for display.” In addition, she “ha[s] neither genius nor taste” but does possess “a pedantic air and conceited manner.” These, we find, strike much nearer the mark. Let us leave “plain” well enough alone. Jokes made at Mr. Trump’s appearance are lazy and anyway beside the point. “Impatient for display,” however, suits him as his actual suits never can. “Genius” and “taste” have never been ascribed to Mr. Trump by anyone with a modicum of either, and I believe he would take “conceited manner” as a compliment. We are unlikely to unearth odes to Mr. Trump’s pedantry, but it is hardly Mary’s fault that our president assimilates knowledge with all the aptitude of an inattentive rhododendron.
Mary, however, is only a pale imitation of President Trump in comparison to the Bennet matriarch. Mrs. Bennet is “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.” A more concise summation of our Commander-in-Chief you are unlikely to find. If you were to stumble upon that description alone in a forest, divorced from all context, you might well wonder who had stolen James Comey’s private memos, and why he had called President Trump a woman. Furthermore, Mr. Trump has taken Mrs. Bennet’s assertion that “those who do not complain are never pitied” and enshrined it as personal philosophy. Sadly, it is their differences that most concern us. Whereas Mrs. Bennet’s “ignorance and folly contributed to [her husband’s] amusement,” the nation’s own amusement has long since withered on the vine, strangled by weeds of stunned incredulity.
See? Without breaking a sweat, we’ve managed to learn far more about President Trump in a few short minutes than in as many days of 24-hour news coverage. Imagine how much time we could all save if we periodically examine all public figures through the lens of classic literature. Hillary Clinton, for instance, makes for a striking Ahab, in relentless pursuit of her White (very white) Whale. Tragically, she misjudges her old, canny opponent. Wounded, but not yet dead, he turns and charges, vanquishing her, and wrecking the whole ship in a spasmodic fit, leaving us all adrift. President Trump’s rotating cabinet is incomprehensible as a functional government entity. Juxtaposed with The Lord of the Flies, however, we find a duplicitous group of feral boys, both savage and inept, vying mightily for roles they can neither understand nor perform. And who could forget The Wizard of Oz? A thrilling tale, in which Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell—a heartless tin-man, a cowardly lion, and a hapless turtle—seek out the answers to their problems from a lying charlatan and wind up relying on a smoky-eyed midwestern woman to save them. The less said about the Russian Classics the better.