I owe the sentiment to Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) of The West Wing who is talking about a potential nominee for the Supreme Court, Evelyn Baker Lang (Glenn Close). [1] He means that he likes everything about her as a potential Chief Justice and besides that, he admires her as a person and feels a strong personal attachment to her. It has nothing to do with the shoes, really, but such a concrete referent and such an unexpected one carries the meaning “even her shoes,” which is what Josh actually means. “I love everything about her.”
I want to borrow Josh’s expression because I am having similar feelings for Elizabeth Bennett, of Pride and Prejudice.
At this point, you (readers) are going to group yourselves into three categories. In Group A are people who don’t know the story that well but are interested in the challenge Elizabeth overcomes. For you, I have appended the whole of Chapter XIII at the end. In Group B are people who are fully familiar with Pride and Prejudice and will simply refer in their own minds to the steps I describe. In Group C are people for whom this this whole exercise is preposterous and who have better things to do. Those are all honorable positions, it seems to me.
For the benefit of Groups A and B, I am going to take the long, slow, difficult process by which the marvelous Miss Bennett catches herself at her worst and who, through painstaking effort and despite mounting embarrassment, finds a way through. I am going to follow her process step by step.
For any of you who are fans of Jonathan Haidt’s master metaphor—the rider and the 
elephant—will notice that this is an instance to the contrary. [2] In Haidt’s metaphor, the role of the elephant—our mostly unknown desires and prejudices—is to go wherever it wants to go and the role of the rider—which we refer to by words like “my true self”—is to provide a reason why the elephant did whatever it just did. And very often, that is just how it happens.
But in this account, it doesn’t happen. In this account, the rider gives the elephant a sharp rap on the knuckles and moves the elephant back into the path the rider has chosen.
Here are the principal steps of Elizabeth Bennett’s odyssey.
Step 1: Flustered
We know that Elizabeth is an accomplished and discerning reader. This is not an instance of her best work.
With a strong prejudice against every thing he might say, she began his account of what had happened at Netherfield. She read, with an eagerness which hardly left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her eyes.
The begins with a strong prejudice against anything Mr. Darcy might say. That’s not a good thing in someone who can say, “I, who prided myself on her discernment.”
She is also not reading carefully as she begins. Note that she is “incapable of attending” 
to the sentence she is reading because of her impatience to know what the next sentence will say. This is Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth. Of the many Elizabeths the movies have offered us, Ehle is my favorite.
This does not leave her in a good place.
“…her feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her.
In the light of those feelings, it seems to me remarkable that she goes right back to reading the letter again, but she does.
Step 2: Commanding
In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence.
She tries walking as an alternative to reading and I appreciate that because that is what I would do, myself. But as you see, it doesn’t work and she takes the extraordinary step of “commanding herself…to examine the meaning of every sentence.”
There is a stretch of the story as it is told by Wickham and by Darcy that is the same if both accounts. But then there is a substantial divergence and Elizabeth is forced to admit that if one of the accounts is right, the other is wrong. She years for the right account to be Wickham’s because she took to Wickham instantly and for the wrong account to be Darcy’s because she rejected him from the first. This is Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy. It is not his best work–he has since received an Academy Award–but he does play opposite Jennifer Ehle.
But as badly as she wanted Darcy to be in the wrong, his detailed account of Wickham’s misdeeds causes Elizabeth to hesitate. Remember that at the beginning, she was rushing heedlessly through the document; then she read with a decided bias in favor of Wickham because she liked Wickham and disliked Darcy. But in spite of all that, she laid Darcy’s and Wickham’s accounts side by side to to the extent she was able. [3]
This closer reading enables her to see the narrative differently. She doesn’t adopt the new reading, but she sees for the first time that all the facts she has could be accounted for just as well in Darcy’s account as in Wickham’s.
Step 3: Crisis
But then there is one small piece which she can confirm independently on the basis of a conversation she has had with Colonel Fitzwilliam. And then Darcy’s invitation to appeal to Fitzwilliam for the confirmation of the story as a whole. This is hard for Elizabeth both because she trusts Fitzwilliam and also because she knows Darcy would not appeal to him unless he knew that his account would be confirmed.
And now that she is able to put some of Wickham’s assertions in doubt, she moves on to reconsider the whole setting where Wickham first introduced himself and his story. He is one handsome dude, you will have to admit.
She was now [italics in the original] struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his conduct.
Note the three advances Elizabeth makes at this point. Upon reconsideration—that’s what now, in italics, is for—she sees the impropriety of Wickham’s forwardness when, at the time, she was swept away by how very unlike Darcy Wickham was. And from her new vantage point, she can see clearly that Wickham talks the talk, but he does not walk the walk. And finally, she wonders how these blatant discrepancies had escaped her before. Those are three very solid achievements.
Step 4: Blaming herself
And finally, reaching the end of this arc of repentance [4] she draws some hard-won conclusions about herself.
Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.
And then, being Elizabeth, she extends her criticism of herself into a virtual flagellation.
“How despicably have I 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 distrust.—How humiliating is this discover)-!—Yet, how just a humiliation!
And concludes, “Till this moment, I never knew myself.”
So…I haven’t fallen in love with Elizabeth—even her shoes, as Josh Lyman says— because she eventually realizes that she was mistaken about Darcy and Wickham. I have fallen for a woman who has the courage to follow this trajectory—fighting her own preferences all the way—and arrive at the conclusion that she has been culpably wrong from the very beginning until this moment.
The hardest part, I think, was the first moment when she discovered a discrepancy between Wickham’s account and Darcy’s. The most common reaction in that situation is just to deny the discrepancy and move on. But this dilemma hits Elizabeth where she is strongest; this is the most valued part of her that is at risk:—“I, who have prided myself on my discernment!” she exclaims.
And at that crucial point, she relies on herself again and her great abilities in this regard prove to her that she has erred grievously. And that is a good thing because when Darcy once more proposes marriage, she is able to accept with integrity.
[1] The whole line is, “I love her. I love her mind. I love her shoes.”
[2] See Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, which is a superb book despite Elizabeth’s knocking his argument into a cocked hat in this particular instance.
[3] Austen characterizes that particular moment in a way that is both incisive and humorous. Elizabeth “weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be impartiality.”
[4] I wouldn’t have to call it “repentance,” surely. It is such a religious word. But I want to help redeem the word if I can. The Greek is metanoia, which, in its most literal rendering means, “to change your mind.” The -noia root is found in English words like noetic.
Appendix: Chapter XIII of Pride and Prejudice
If Elizabeth, when Mr. Darcy gave her the letter, did not expect it to contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no expectation at all of its contents. But such as they were, it may well be supposed how eagerly she went through them, and what a contrariety of emotion they excited. Her feelings as she read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did she first understand that he believed any apology to be in his power; and stedfastly was she persuaded that he could have no explanation to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a strong prejudice against every thing he might say, she began his account of what had happened at Netherfield. She read, with an eagerness which hardly left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her eyes. His belief of her sister’s insensibility, she instantly resolved to be false, and his account of the real, the worst objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and insolence.
But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Wickham, when she read with somewhat clearer attention, a relation of events, which, if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself, her feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, “This must be false! This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!”— and when she had gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing any thing of the last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not regard it, that she would never look in it again.
In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence. The account of his connection with the Pcmberley family, was exactly what he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own words. So far each recital confirmed the other: but when she came to the will, the difference was great. What Wickham had said of the living was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did not err. But when she read, and re-read with the closest attention, the particulars immediately following of Wickham’s resigning all pretensions to the living, of his receiving in lieu, so considerable a sum as three thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be impartiality—deliberated on the probability of each statement— but with little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read on. But every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent, as to render Mr. Darcy’s conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.
The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay to Mr. Wickham’s charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of him before his entrance into the-shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man, who. on meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former wav of life, nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real character, had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of enquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner, had established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors, under which she would endeavour to class, whatMr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice of many years continuance. But no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. After pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more continued to read. But, alas! the story which followed of his designs on Miss Darcy, received some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel Fitzwilliam and herself only the morning before; and at last she was referred for the truth of even – particular to Colonel Fitzwilliam himself—from whom she had previously received the information of his near concern in all his cousin’s affairs, and whose character she had no reason to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying to him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the application, and at length wholly banished by the conviction that Mr. Darcy would never have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his cousin’s corroboration.
She perfectly remembered every thing that had passed in conversation between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mr. Philips’s. Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory’. She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr. Darcy—that Mr. Darcy might leave the country, but that he should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball the very next week. She remembered also, that till the Netherfield family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but herself; but that after their removal, it had been everywhere discussed; that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Darcy’s character, though he had assured her that respect for the father, would always prevent his exposing the son.
How differently did every thing now appear in which he was concerned! His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at any thing. His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most incautiously shewn. Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Darcy, she could not but allow that Mr. Binglev, when questioned by Jane, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance, an acquaintance which latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his wavs, seen any thing that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust—any thing that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits. That among his own connections he was esteemed and valued—that even Wickham had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of some amiable feeling. That had his actions been what Wickham represented them, so gross a violation of every thing right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Bingley, was incomprehensible.
She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.—Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.
“How despicably have I 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 distrust.—How humiliating is this discover)-!—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.”
If the language differences are obvious, the rhetorical differences are not. At least not to me. There is an opposition in the KJV between nothingness and somethingness. In the JB, the tension is between disorganization and organization. If you imagine the authors of these two translations as having opponents who needed to be refuted, the opponents of the KJV translators would be saying that there was something before God created anything. The opponents of the JB would be saying that there was organization before God created an order.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” it is obvious that “all men” and “one people” refer to the same thing. He means that “all peoples are created equal.” That is the sentiment his argument requires and is, in the context, the only plausible meaning.
And that same logic applies to Lincoln. There is no value at all for Lincoln in asserting the right of the North Americans to assume among “the powers of the earth” any status at all. The question Lincoln is addressing is not the equality of peoples but the equality of persons—some of them black and some of them white—so he borrows a phrase from Jefferson and twists it until it screams. The screams were covered by the sound of the cannons.
down on what the scriptures may be used for. These uses are absolutely central to Timothy’s duties as a pastor. Performing these tasks is as much a part of Paul’s argument as the equality of all peoples is a part of Jefferson’s.
So with this piece, I am advertising to everyone who reads this blog that Nitsuh Abebe is a writer worth paying attention to and I am reminding myself never to miss another Sunday offering of “First Words.”
other, which he does not deal with, is a little more complicated. I’ll pick two elements out of the mix. The first is the continued stagnation of buying power. Beginning around 1972, the economic prospects for nearly everyone in the middle of the income distribution stopped rising and started shrinking. This was followed in due time by the sense middle class Americans have, and that was duly recorded in the opinion surveys, that they expect that their children will face even worse economic times than they themselves have faced. The old idea that things are getting better, seems to have gone away.
Abebe highlights two techniques in the column. The first is “playing the devil’s advocate,” which, in peacetime conditions, could be presenting contrary information the main line of the argument. [3] Under current conditions of wartime clarity and moral fervor, you might suspect “bad guys”—you know, racists and sexists and ageists—of presenting their own views under the cover of “playing the devil’s advocate.”
I have been watching how things are done at Happy Hour and adapting myself to what I think of as “local practice,” even though there is a modest range of different approaches to the experience that are taken by different residents. I’ve been doing that for a year and a half now. The illustration is “a happy hour,” not “our happy hour.”
would be to take a turnip with me down to Happy Hour and eat it along with the potato chips. And beer, of course. It’s so hard to find a merlot that goes well with turnips and potato chips. “Well,” I said, “If you are wondering about the turnip, you have definitely moved across the border from “how do I become a part of this group” to “what other things can I do and still be a part of the group.” I have moved from the stage Davies used to call “being a part” and over to the stage he called “being apart.” He liked to play with words as much as I do. That is one of the major reasons I chose the University of Oregon for my doctoral work.
Quinlan (William Hurt) flatly denies all of the events that have made up the movie up to this point, including a very real romance between him and Dorothy Winters (Andie McDowell). Here he is denying it all to his buddy Huey Driscoll (Robert Pastorelli) who experienced it along with him.
to really care about Dorothy, for instance, and “opening Quinlan’s heart” is why Michael came to earth this one last time. But, it turns out, that all that was contingent on Michael’s actual presence. We learn that because when Michael dies, Quinlan snaps back to his old cold self almost instantly.
The next scene requires just a little context. My all time favorite of Jesus’ resurrection appearances is his walk to Emmaus with two of his followers. They spend a long day on the road with him and have no idea who he is until at the evening meal, he broke the bread and handed it to them. Suddenly, they knew what must have been true all day.
Please note that she makes her case twice in this brief paragraph. The first is quite general: “The danger of any education…” It defines “a broader liberalism” as the promotion of economic equity. It contrasts the values implicit in “big money” [2] and “progressive values.”
political critique they don’t have the guts to make. Ms. Belafonte’s charge is that they have progressive values, but they can’t risk offending wealthy donors, so instead they go over the actions of the faculty with a fine tooth comb to see if anything has been done or said that could be prosecuted on grounds of moral rectitude.
is that it directs my attention to the wrong place. Let’s take Matthew’s interest in Jesus as a player in the cosmic drama, for example.
Or we could say about Matthew, “There he goes again.” There is no way, we might say, that Matthew is going to preach about the death of Jesus without a host of cosmic phenomena. [4] There is no value at all in asking why Matthew is interested in the cosmic dimension of the Christ. We might ask where he gets the accounts he passes along. He wasn’t there. This isn’t an eyewitness account. Where does he get it?
each thinks most needs to be said. The second problem is more difficult. If I am preaching and the tools I have in my tool kit are my collection of Jesus stories and the needs of the congregation are not clearly addressed by any Jesus stories I have…then what I really need is a new Jesus story. The picture is President M. Craig Barnes of Princeton Theological Seminary, who is probably the best preacher it has ever been my pleasure to hear.
Reading the gospels as narratives, I focus on the art of the narrator. I pay a lot of attention to the dialogical style of Jesus in John. When I read about Jesus’s interaction with Nicodemus in Chapter 3 as if it were taken down by a court reporter, it sounds like an inquisition. Nicodemus is a hapless tool and Jesus embarrasses him whichever way he turns. [6] When I read that same text as an example of a format John uses—and into which he puts Jesus—in order to raise and highlight questions that would not be available for consideration otherwise, I can read it differently. John is writing both parts (the Jesus in John’s writing and the Nicodemus in John’s writing are two halves of a set dialogue) and he is writing them so that his goal as a narrator will be successfully reached.
Or, in the case I am just about to describe for you, not even teaching; just convening. This year, at the senior center where I live, we used the Foreign Policy Association’s annual program, Great Decisions. It teaches itself, in a way. There is a video of eight 30 minute programs and a briefing book to go with it. My own job was simply to convene the group, show the video, and moderate the discussion afterward.
intended to be parallel to the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica and when the Pax Sinica (the peace guaranteed by Chinese ascendancy) is fully in place, they will say it is a parallel expression to the Pax Americana. So I, along with everyone else was familiar with the Pax Americana. It means that the U. S. is the principal guarantor of the dominant international order. But what kind of system is it that we guarantee?
Equality could be about politics— “one man, one vote” said the Supreme Court in 1963—but it cannot be disconnected from questions of economic equality. South Africa is a good illustration of that, of course, and I already knew that. Allowing the black citizens to vote changed everything politically and almost nothing economically. So what are we doing over there is the next bar to South Africa? That brought Jeremy Adelman’s distinction between liberty and equality right back to me and this time, with some force.
So the first thing to know is that the Sermon on the Mount is a device that Matthew uses to contrast Jesus to Moses. Moses goes up on the mount and brings down the Law; Jesus goes up on the mount (different mountain, of course) and refines the Law’s demands. That is why v. 39 (above) is preceded by v. 38, which cites “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as if it were clearly the Mosaic standard. And that is the point Matthew is trying to make: the “old law,” what Moses brought to Israel, is no longer enough and we must now open ourselves to “the new law,” that is, to Jesus.
Frances understands eventually what her mother understood right from page 1: Thelma is a predator and Frances is her prey. That is the nature of the relationship—mother gives several examples—and will continue to be the nature of the relationship unless some kind of fundamental change is made. You could argue, I suppose, that Frances might suggest that they both become prey; that no one take advantage of anyone else. But the only action that is entirely within Frances’s power is to become a predator just like Thelma and that is what she does when she cheats Thelma out of the tea set. And Thelma recognizes it right away. “I see that you, too, are now capable of predation.” That’s what “I am going to have to be careful “means.
The Dilettante's Dilemma 