In my effort to read canonical literature this summer, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice.
To mix things up, I'm also reading The Edge of Anarchy (by Jack Kelly), the nonfiction account of a railway workers' strike in 1894.
The stories told in these two books provide fascinating contrasts.
Pride and Prejudice is the story of Eliza Bennet and her family. It was written in 1813. To demonstrate my lack of knowledge about Jane Austen, I'd always thought that she wrote her novels in the 1870's and 1880's. In truth, she lived and wrote much earlier in the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution was just barely getting started.It's a story about the five sisters' efforts to find a suitable spouse, interwoven with all sorts of analysis of class and family relationships. There is a considerable amount of humor in Austen's writing, with characters like the pompous blowhard William Collins and the fretting, vacuous Mrs. Bennet. It also contains one of the most thorough accounts of falling in love that I've ever read: whereas most movies (and lots of novels, too) skim over the conversations that cause people to fall in love, Jane Austen devotes many pages to the evolving relationship between Eliza and Mr. Darcy.
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I like the organizing framework of The Edge of Anarchy: in order to describe and explain the labor unrest of the 1880's, Jack Kelly first presents short biographies of Eugene Debs and George Pullman.I learned about Debs in my 11th grade US History class (Mr. Martin emphasized his five Presidential candidacies, via the Socialist Party of America), but I have not thought or read much about him in the years since.
Born in 1855, Debs worked for railroad companies while young, scrubbing grease from the engines, cleaning the other cars, and serving as a locomotive fireman.
After first becoming involved with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Debs decided that the various railroad workers' unions were too segregated from each other, which prevented any single union from becoming truly powerful. His solution was to organize the American Railway Union, which welcomed all different kinds of railroad workers -- those with specialized skills and those whose work was considered menial.
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At first glance, these two books seem utterly different because the stakes are so small in the one and so large in the other. The characters in Pride and Prejudice have nothing more to worry about then whether they are wearing the correct clothes or speaking in the socially-appropriate manner, whereas Debs and Pullman are struggling to dictate the terms of American capitalism -- a struggle which will affect the lives of millions of people.
To put it differently, Austen is dealing with trivialities, while Kelly is exploring deep questions of inequality, injustice, and the proper means of effecting political change.
And yet, Eliza and her compatriots are, on a deeper level, engaged in one of the deepest human endeavors: trying to live a life that is both happy and meaningful. This is the same kind of life that Debs wants to achieve for the members of the American Railway Union, and the working class more generally.
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For me, one of the key takeaways of Pride and Prejudice is that relationships take time and effort. At a time when digital technology is overwhelming and distracting us, when life's list of tasks sometimes makes the days speed past, this book is a reminder to appreciate the slowly evolving conversation, the (seemingly) mundane details of our surroundings, and the necessity of appreciating every person (including the proud and prejudicial) for his or her own uniqueness.
I love this P&P character map.
It's a good reminder to me that visual aids can be incredibly helpful when trying to process information.
