Self Knowledge and Pursuit of Happiness

Savina Villani

Staff Writer

This article is a partial retelling of the lecture of the same name and a partial student reflection of the topics discussed. A full recording of the event is available on Assumption’s Vimeo page.

This year is the 250th anniversary of English novelist Jane Austen’s birth. In commemoration of Austen this semester, a 300-level “Novels of Jane Austen” class is being taught by Prof. Rachel Ramsey and several events relating to her work are being held on campus.

A few of these events were hosted by CTEQ, Assumption’s liberal arts program, including one from the Fortin-Gonthier lecture series called “Self Knowledge and the Pursuit of Happiness,” held on October 16th. Professor Dustin Gish, the guest speaker of the evening, came from the University of Houston to give the lecture to a mixed group of students, alumni, and professors.

“Jane Austen rewards close reading,” he began, as he introduced the question of what it means to be a good reader. In general, Austen’s novels explore what it means to read situations and people, and what kind of education an accurate and even insightful reading requires.

Her heroines begin in a state of “wilful self-deception,” which blinds them to the truth both about themselves and others.

Towards the middle, the heroine’s love interest reveals an uncomfortable truth which makes her reconsider her most closely-held beliefs. After experiencing a painful metamorphosis from this circumstantial education, the heroine emerges at the end as a humbled and improved reader, who ends up marrying the man who helped her to grow in erudition of the world.

“Austen does not use her novels to teach us,” observed Dr. Gish. Instead, she merely provides us readers with a story which is meant to inspire self-reflection. She appears to believe that conventional teaching itself does not provide the student with a formational education.

Gish mentioned a conversation in “Pride and Prejudice” wherein the heroine Elizabeth says to her sister Jane, “we all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing.”

Through Elizabeth, Austen criticizes the typical education of her period, where every respectable household’s daughters were expected to be taught by a governess, who would teach them history, music (typically from a keyboard instrument like the piano), drawing, and other facts or practical skills in high society. Gish remarked that these are good skills to have, however they lack the more profound wisdom that Austen believes constitutes a true education.

A true education, the things that we cannot teach but that are “worth knowing,” comes from a person’s own reflections about life experiences. This education enlightens a person to a sense of good morality, justice, judgment, and philosophic understanding.

Dr. Gish made the apt comparison of true reading (i.e. “reading” events that happen in the world) to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. A person only frees himself through a painful and reluctant crawl towards the light at the exit of the cave.

The cave itself is comfortable. The prisoners’ complacency makes them wish to content themselves in their blissful ignorance and remain in the cave.

It takes a herculean effort to emerge from these “depths of wilful self-deception,” and in Austen’s novels, this emergence is rather forced upon the main characters than it is willingly and enthusiastically undertaken.

In the beginning of “Pride and Prejudice,” Elizabeth is depicted as a judgemental reader––‘judgemental’ not in a completely accurate way, but in a prejudiced way, where her first impressions govern all of her subsequent interpretations of characters and events.

In this light, it would make sense why the originally intended title of the novel was “First Impressions.” Dr. Gish discussed how Elizabeth’s first impression of Mr. Darcy skewed her view of the truth not only about Mr. Darcy, but also about others (for instance, Mr. Wickham).

Towards the middle of the novel, Mr. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth not knowing her indignation about the things he has done. She rejects him and reprimands him––a shock to Darcy who thinks so highly of himself, rich and well-connected as he is, as to expect anyone to accept his proposal.

The very next day, Mr. Darcy presents a letter to Elizabeth to explain the circumstances and his motivations which she had misinterpreted. “I demand it of your justice,” says Mr. Darcy, upon handing her the letter. Elizabeth, disgusted by Darcy’s character, is disinclined to read the letter at first, but she is bound by something greater than herself––justice.

Gish reminded the audience that her reading and rereading of the letter uproots the unjust prejudices she maintains.

Elizabeth visibly struggles to reconcile with Mr. Darcy’s strong yet well-reasoned contradictions to Elizabeth’s preconceived notions of the truth; it is a struggle against her whole self, especially regarding her attachment to her wrong depiction of the truth. In order to comprehend correctly, she needs to reorient herself away from that object of falsehood.

After reading the letter, when she realizes the extent to which she had been wrong, Elizabeth exclaims, “How humiliating is this discovery!––Yet, how just a humiliation!…I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.”

Dr. Gish called Mr. Darcy’s letter the “mirror” before which Elizabeth could self-reflect.Yet he also noted how Darcy himself, through the aid of Elizabeth’s just reproach of his action, undergoes a similar self-transformation.

To use Gish’s words, Elizabeth’s reproach prompts Darcy to “explain himself to himself.” It appears that Darcy, like Elizabeth, also ‘never knew himself.’

One might expect that after these characters make amends for their mistakes, they would no longer err in their newly-informed interpretations. Yet, as Gish pointed out in the lecture, they continue to misconstrue themselves and others.

After Elizabeth witnesses Darcy’s transformation and develops a deep admiration for him, she doubts that he will ever propose to her again. In the attempt to avoid self-deception, Elizabeth still deceives herself. She has reoriented herself to another falsehood.

At the end of the novel, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth do get married, which proves Elizabeth wrong that Darcy would not propose a second time. Dr. Gish made the intriguing claim that the mutual concern for self-reflection brings about conjugal felicity.

Darcy and Elizabeth are both wrong about themselves and others in different ways, and their outside observation helps them to guide each other towards the truth.

Even more compelling is the probability that Darcy and Elizabeth somehow fell in love with each other against their will. During the rejection scene of the first proposal, Darcy relates to Elizabeth how he had fallen in love with her against his reason and his inclination, for she was of a far lower class than him, and her connections were embarrassing.

Yet he could not get over the intelligence of ‘those fine eyes’ of hers.

It is possible that Darcy and Elizabeth’s love of the truth brings them together. They work together, unknowingly at first, to help each other gain a better self understanding which enables them to view the world with more clarity.

Only after this enlightenment do they realize that their love for each other is more than just their love for each other. They are bound together by the truth and their ability to view it rightly.

Gish advanced his argument, saying that the couple is brought together, perhaps forcibly, by Divine Providence. Elizabeth and Darcy do not love each other just for each other, but for something far more significant than themselves––something which Austen never explicitly mentions.

This marriage, Gish commented, is also a sign of Darcy and Elizabeth’s possessing equality in superiority, i.e., that the extent to which they are superior is the same.

The other couples in the novel are by some degrees more blind or avoidant of the truth––Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are constantly squabbling about nonsense, Mrs. Collins avoids Mr. Collins like the plague, Mr. Wickham despairs of the irresponsible and infatuated Mrs. Wickham, and even Mr. and Mrs. Bingley (who love each other dearly) both view the world with too much docility and kindness to paint a realistic picture of events that happen.

Gish’s argument about the newly-wed Darcys’ equality in superiority is one not merely about their happiness; it is most importantly about their ability to grow in the understanding of the truth through conversation.

Gish concluded that ultimately, these characters’ prospects in happiness depend on Divine Providence, which alone initiates the reorientation from self-deception to self-knowledge.

The talk was well-appreciated by the audience and was followed by several questions, including ones about whether Mr. Bennet is a true philosopher, why Austen lacks good parental models in her novels, how thumos and eros operate in the story, and what the distinction is between what is simply “knowing” and what is truly “worth knowing.”