Robinson Crusoe.
I really liked the divine comedy too but that needed cliff notes lol.

I mean, it's the first book I mentioned, so I'd hope so!

> Compare Lizzy to Caroline Bingley.

The entire quote that /u/nyanyaneko2 mentions is a thinly-veiled description of Caroline Bingley's behavior. Lizzy "pluralizes" the comment to make it less pointed and less mean. She's not intending to insult Caroline Bingley, rather to tease Darcy about all the attentions he received from her would be rival.

I don't think it's appropriate to think of it as truly a commentary on "other women" in general.

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Males have even more of an "I'm not like other guys" thought stream. They are as competitive trying to garner female approval or mate. It's a pretty natural evolutionary instinct while mating. Not conditioned at all. And seen in many other species.

It's just that nowadays it is a taboo for women to criticize other women or belittle them. An agenda driven censoring of your own feelings. It's natural for women to belittle each other. Its just social dynamics. Men tear each other to shreds without any social labelling.

There are hints of “She’s/I’m not like other girls” throughout the whole book, the first time I noticed it was very early on, near the end of chapter 4 here:

"You are over scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."

"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good-humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference."

“They have none of them much to rec- ommend them,” replied he: "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters."

It’s literally right there. I remember this well because I posted it on my instagram to point it out and talk about it with my friends.

> I don't understand why "I'm not like other girls" is criticized so much

Have you heard of the term "female misogynist"? This is why it's criticized. Basically, women are conditioned to believe that we're in competition with each other over male approval, and the "I'm not like other girls" thought process serves to undermine and belittle other women's interests and accomplishments.

In this section, she's teasing/flirting with Darcy. Her statements shouldn't be taken seriously, certainly not seriously enough to call her out for having a character flaw like that.

There's a grain of truth there, Darcy didn't care for women like Ms. Bingley who tried to flatter his ego, and she probably was one of the first single women Darcy encountered who didn't do that. But I doubt she's seriously making general statements about women, and how she's special.

If you look at the men Darcy is friends with, his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam and Bingley, neither of them hesitate to tease him (Bingley makes that joke about Darcy being a grump when he's bored and Fitwilliam laughs at his 'stupidity' when Darcy is being sullen). That is likely the personality type Darcy enjoys being around.

But wasn't that what was expected and pushed on the girls from a young age? The parents want the rise in social status and expect their children to fulfill that dream/expectation. That's how they were socialized. Comparing that with society's contrasting expectations of a women who should wear makeup and look like she's not at the same time which morphed into the NLOGs rejecting the same notion and feeling superior.

It's a side effect of her views on others. You might even call it her...pride and/or prejudice.

'“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority, of its being a degradation, of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.'

That's the most we get of his confession. I would note - her inferiority in this respect is the station of her birth - not of her as a person or her mind. Class structures in Britain dictated everything back then. We don't know what he lists as her positive qualities, because we know nothing of the actual speech he gave her, just that her station and family are an obstacle that he feels he's valiantly overcome.

Then again, maybe you have a deeper understanding of what the stuck-up noblemen of the early 1800s would have detailed in a love declaration, more than someone like Austin who grew up during that time period.

The book is called Pride and Prejudice. Darcy, the upper class, suffers from Prejudice, and Elizabeth, the middle/working class, suffers from Pride. It's a lovestory how Love overcomes these two vices in them, even though they clash and gives each other a bad first impression.

You could even argue that they fall in love with each other, because of the 2 vices. Pride loves Darcys prejudice, and prejudice loves Elizabeths pride. So is Elizabeth wrong? Does Darcy not love her, because of her passionate resentment at being looked down upon. But in the Lovestory, they both become the better person as love overcomes the vices, in the sense that 2 wrongs make a right, and that is why we love the story.

So you're just going to reduce him to a different completely incorrect set of stereotypes?

Nah, it's in things like his first proposal. When he's talking about how he loves Elizabeth despite not liking her and being unable to think of anything else, that's a woman's fantasy not an actual man.

I think what makes Lizzy so relatable is that she isn't a "perfect" person. She can be very judgmental, particularly of other women. I always think she was very harsh on Charlotte who had to make a cold blooded choice in order to secure her future. This was something a lot of women had to make as their options were so limited. I think Austin understood that.

Lizzy was a woman of intelligence and principle who had a relatively modern outlook for women and was trying to find her place in a world where this was actually a disadvantage.

I disagree. We never see inside Darcy's head, we only ever see his attraction through the propriety of social constructs during that time. Maybe the first time he saw her, he thought she had a banging set of tits and had to fight most of the night to try and get a better glimpse down her dress, but the social mores of the time would have branded him as an outcast for even the hint of such behaviour. Wickham is the type to happily shag anything that moves, and seemingly has no compunction about stealing away impressionable teenage daughters for a bit of fun before promptly abandoning them. But during social engagements, he has utterly perfect manners and never a hint of this side of him comes through, for all it was obviously present within him. That's because, in that time period, unless you were fabulously (royalty level) wealthy, to do so would be a social death sentence.

In her defense, she WASN’T like other girls. It’s not an easy thing to be - different. In her case she met a well-to-do guy who liked her assertiveness and didn’t mind her coming from a poor family. And whom she was attracted to. Jane Austen herself wasn’t as lucky, and she spend the greater part of her short life enduring the disadvantages of being poor, eventually the daughter of a widow with very scarce means.

I’m not mad about it, I just want to understand it better.

Go ahead! I’d love seeing different tales come in from there :)

That’s slightly unfair to lizzie cause although she undergoes a material change after she sees pemberly, it’s also after she read his letter and realised she’d misread the situation. I think her feelings change because she can see his efforts to engage with her when she meets him again and she’s touched that he would be so kind after she was so critical of him for a situation she knew nothing about.

While I think that makes sense, I also think it doesn't seem that much to me like "a sense of superiority over other women". Like... She's kinda right, no? Darcy is kind of disdainful of people who want his approval, because they must be after his money or something. See also, Wickham, who is not a woman, IIRC.

Lizzie kinda hates his guts at this point no? So she can't possibly be after his money, which means that... He can trust her opinions to have something other than greed behind them. Most of Lizzie's experiences re:"people who want Darcy's approval" is women, the shit with Wickham happened off-screen in the backstory, so that's kind of the whole sample she's working with.

Also, sidenote, I get that a lot of people have the "not like other girls" thing going on as a function of blindness to the depth and personhood of the women around them. And that is indeed bad. However, I find it frustrating that the vilification of internalized misogyny and the dehumanization of gender-conforming women seems to be coming at the expense of acknowledging like... the legit isolation that GNC women, gifted women, and women who are otherwise standing apart from the norm tend to experience.

Like, Lizzie is very different from most of the girls and women around her, she has a stronger relationship with her father than her sisters seem to, she is less interested in marriage and social maneuvering, she is out of step with her society and what it expects of her. And... When men are like that, that's kind of a good thing, no? Like, Hiccup in How To Train Your Dragon is not like the men around him, nor is Hamilton in Hamilton, nor is Captain America. It's a very standard male protagonist thing.

Shouldn't it be okay for a female character to also... just be different? And have enough observational skills and introspection to know it and remark on it?

I get that when male protagonists are different, that's a source of insecurity they must overcome, and when female protagonists are different, that's a source of pride, because of the relative standings the two cohorts have in a sexist society. But that's not going to change if we just... Decide to hold in disdain any female character who is different from other people along some notable axis and is aware of it.

She meant more how well he manages the property and how his servants think well of him. That's also when she first sees him with Georgiana, when his defensive guard is down.

I’ve also seen a more academic critique where the author suggested that part of her saying that about Pemberley was that despite the fact that the grounds are massive and the house one of wealth, the grounds were not over-maintained…they weren’t made into follies or fake paths; they were maintained as a natural setting, and Pemberley wasn’t overly ostentatious for its wealth (Elizabeth comments on this in the book); meaning that Darcy has good sense about natural spaces and about wealth that she might not have appreciated at first, but when we saw Pemberley, it showed he did not try to basically be as bling-y as possible. (I think the mention by Elizabeth is at the beginning of book 3).

It sounds more like she's dissing that he's rich. Basically, that other girls have to be nice to him because he has to power to ruin their reputation and their chance at getting a decent marriage -- something their livelihoods often depend on. If he wasn't rich, those girls would treat him as a rude and arrogant man (which isn't exactly untrue at that point in the story) and dismiss him.

That is also how his relative Lady Catherine behaves -- she has the power to ruin someone's livelihood if they displease her.

And also accusing him of having a "poor rich man" complex, and I guess she suspects him of pursuing her simply for sport. It was quite common for wealthy men to have mistresses before they got married.

So it is kind of a "not like other girls" but that's because a lot of other girls don't have the luxury of telling it like it is, so she's more saying, "I am just saying what other girls would say if their situations weren't dependent on finding a rich husband."

I always thought of it as a joking/not joking. That it’s a sad fact of their family finances really. Just always disappointing to me.