I knew we’d get to Jane Austen at some point in the course. And gladly so: popular as her novels are, I’d never read them. Gioia recommended her most famous, Pride and Prejudice. I had trouble getting into it at first, but ChatGPT helped me contextualize the work so I could both enjoy it more and relate it to my life. More on that below — but first, a recap.

Readings

Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners from 1813. It tells the story of the Bennet family in the English countryside. The five Bennet sisters are of marriageable age. And marriage was critical: their family home is entailed to a cousin, Mr. Collins.

Two wealthy bachelors — Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy — come to the neighborhood. At a ball, Bingley is smitten with Jane, the oldest Bennet sister. Darcy says mean things about Elizabeth, the second-oldest. Having overheard him, she starts disliking him.

Another young man, Mr. Wickham, comes to the neighborhood with his regiment. He confides in Elizabeth that Darcy has wronged him, increasing her dislike. She develops a strong prejudice towards Darcy, who she sees as proud and haughty.

Darcy and Bingley leave in a hurry. Jane is heartbroken. Elizabeth suspects Bingley’s sister nudged him away from marrying Jane, who lacks their connections and wealth. But eventually, Elizabeth realizes that Darcy himself instigated the separation. Her dislike grows.

So she’s surprised when Darcy asks for her hand in marriage. She rejects him, confronting him with how he’s wronged her sister and Wickham. In response, Darcy writes a letter explaining his actions. He admits to separating Bingley from Jane, but he thought she didn’t care for his friend.

The Wickham story is more complicated. Darcy explains that Wickham is a character of ill repute. Darcy tried helping him, but he repeatedly made poor choices, including trying to elope with Darcy’s fifteen-year-old sister Georgiana to get at her money.

Elizabeth starts softening toward Darcy. Just then, to everyone’s surprise, Lydia — the youngest Bennet — elopes with Wickham. To avoid the scandal — and unbeknownst to the Bennets — Darcy tracks down the fugitives, settles Wickham’s debts, and discreetly compels him to marry Lydia.

Elizabeth is bowled over. Darcy subtly reacquaints Bingley with Jane, who accepts his proposal of marriage. Darcy proposes to Elizabeth again and she accepts this time, despite (and ironically, because of) the opposition of his wealthy aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Audiovisual

Music: Ella Fitzgerald singing classics from the American songbook: music by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and Jerome Kern. I own both the Fitzgerald/Porter collection and the Berlin highlights on CD. I hadn’t heard the Kern, but of course these songs are very familiar.

Arts: textile arts. Even though this is among the most ancient of artisanal crafts, the article Gioia recommended focuses on contemporary artists. Some of their works are extraordinary.

A rectangular pre-Columbian textile with a repeating geometric design. The fabric appears aged and fragile and is displayed flat against a neutral background. Mantle (“The Paracas Textile”), 100–300 C.E. – via [Wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_arts#/media/File:Nasca._Mantle_(%22The_Paracas_Textile%22),_overall.jpg)

Mantle (“The Paracas Textile”), 100–300 C.E. – via Wikimedia

Cinema: Hitchcock’s THE 39 STEPS (1935), a classic spy action adventure film. The seeds for later Hitchcock films are all here: the cool blonde, the MacGuffin, the wrongly accused hero on the run, the innovative camera moves. etc.

MURDER! MYSTERY! TREACHERY! ROMANCE! — yes, the mannerisms, hairdos, costumes, props, etc. look dated. But overall, this stands up well for a 90-year-old film. One particular shot took my breath away: the camera panned from a conversation inside a car to the vehicle speeding away. I had to pause and re-watch it. 1935!

Reflections

I had high expectations when I started reading Pride and Prejudice. Not only was this a famous work: it was also a narrative text after two weeks where I had to deal with verse (which I find slow going) and political/legal tracts (one of which upset me.) Alas, I found the novel boring at first: lots of 18th century drawing room conversations that felt like a lot of gossip.

So I asked ChatGPT for help:

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice and finding it boring. All this talk about whether Mr. X will like one or the other daughter feels gossipy and irrelevant. 

Why is this novel considered important? How can I become more engaged with the story? Why should I care?

ChatGPT’s answer helped. It suggested four things to look for:

  1. Social stakes: in the Bennet’s world, failing to marry into wealth meant being cast into poverty. These girls and their mother weren’t just romantics: their lifestyles were on the line.
  2. Satire of social norms: Austen wasn’t merely observing the situation, she was mocking it. (ChatGPT used The Office as a contemporary analogy.)
  3. Character psychology: Elizabeth Bennet is one of the first modern protagonists in literature. The novel traces her psychological shift from disliking Darcy to loving him.
  4. Ironic language: Austen uses irony throughout to drive her points while remaining superficially engaging.

These were all important points I would’ve likely missed without this introduction, and they led me to see the story differently. The irony was evident from the novel’s famous opening line (“It is a truth universally acknowledged…”) and the character of Mrs. Bennet. But lacking context, I’d started without understanding what was at stake for this family.

With this in mind, this novel covers important ground. We might not follow the same customs today, but social contexts are still critical to our interactions. In a world where social media exists, it’s easier than ever to misinterpret people’s motivations and character. We parse others’ actions through prejudices as much — if not more — than the Bennets did.

Much of the intent you attribute to others might be in your mind. Missing the full picture, you fill in blanks with assumptions that lead you to misinterpret their character. This, in turn, leads to you make potentially catastrophic mistakes.

Notes on Note-taking

Besides using ChatGPT to contextualize the novel, this week I also experimented with new AI tools.

I’ve written before about my normal workflow when writing these notes:

  1. Capture my thoughts on the text in a new note in Obsidian
  2. Have GPT review those thoughts to point out what I might’ve gotten wrong
  3. Tweak my notes based on that feedback
  4. Clean up notes for the public version I share here

I’ve gone about steps 1–3 by copying-pasting text between Obsidian and ChatGPT and by using the Text Generator plugin to invoke GPT within the Obsidian note itself. But it’d been a while since I reviewed the state of Obsidian plugins. Perhaps there was something new out there that could expedite the process.

This search led me to (the unfortunately named) Copilot plugin, which integrates LLMs more deeply with Obsidian. Copilot not only lets me inject notes into the chat context directly, but also adds agentic capabilities such as searching the web and creating or editing notes directly. I can pick from several LLMs, including ones running locally on my MacBook Pro.

While I’m just getting started, the possibilities are exciting. The ability to inject vault notes into the context is powerful: my days copying-pasting stuff to ChatGPT might be over. I may move much of my writing to Obsidian, further cementing its central role in my knowledge garden. (I wrote this post there.)

Up Next

Again, we’re shifting gears: Gioia recommends John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and the first four chapters of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. I haven’t read either, but just yesterday finished another book that referenced On Liberty, so it’s good timing.

Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!