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DIANA: “Arnie asks: Can someone help me locate the famous line when the
narrator says that Elizabeth becomes careful about making fun of Darcy???

It is at the bottom of Chapter 58: Elizabeth longed to observe that Mr.
Bingley had been a most delightful friend -- so easily guided, that his
worth was invaluable; but she checked herself. She remembered that he had
yet to learn to be laught at, and it was rather too early to begin.”



Thank you, Diana, I was also directed to that passage by another helpful
friend. Don’t you find that passage curious, vis a vis our discussion,
that right before Elizabeth makes that speech to Darcy, she has stopped
herself from jabbing him, because she recognizes that he is still liable to
narcissistic injury when his character flaws (or bad actions) are pointed
out to him, especially in a satirical way?



DIANA: “And Arnie asks, Don't you think that Elizabeth, in rewriting the
history of their courtship, has unwittingly begun to fit, to a tee, her own
descriptors for the other women who Darcy was beset by?:
Well, no I don't. Elizabeth will never be like the other women because
first she is unique, and secondly situationally she is the one Darcy has
got, and who has got him, and they are completely happy with that state of
补蹿蹿补颈谤蝉.”



You beg the question, when you assert she is unique, because I would argue
it is even more plausible that she believes herself to be unique, a
“studier of character” (as Bingley satirically jabbed at her way back in
the Netherfield salon), but she is not so unique. She judges Charlotte for
being mercenary, and yet, we then get lots of pointed hints (just ask Sir
Walter Scott, with his memorable one-liner about that, tucked away in his
famous review of *Emma*) that suggest that, unwittingly, she is just as
mercenary as Charlotte. It's all about the point of view of the narrative
voice - I say you get two different novels, depending on whether you treat
the narrator as mostly objective or mostly subjective.



DIANA: “And by Chapter 60, when her spirits are rising to playfulness
again, she judges that he is now fully ready to be taught to be "laught"
at, and she indulges herself joyfully, making fun, with her usual means of
witty exaggeration, of both their previous misunderstandings, proclivities
and absurdities.”



Again, that is totally ambiguous -your interpretation is plausible, but
mine is equally plausible. As you know, I believe this is another in that
same category of ambiguities which she joked about (via her paraphrase of
Scott’s Marmion) in the famous letter to Cassandra, and we are called upon
to use our “ingenuity” to parse out all the possibilities.



DIANA: When she says he has always been noble and just, she is referring to
how she finally learned that he is a fine and amiable person under his
"disguise" - and her phraseology, "in spite of the pains you took to
disguise yourself," is tongue in cheek, an Elizabeth piece of wit.”



And yet again, you illustrate Austen’s pervasive mastery of ambiguity. Is
it tongue in cheek, or not? I’d wager that the vast majority of readers of
P&P have taken that line at face value, as genuine praise of Darcy’s
nobility and justness. But I readily grant you that it is plausible to read
it as ironic (and another Janeite claimed much the same in another
discussion group recently).



I’d say that Elizabeth tells herself that her spirits have risen again, but
it’s a sad shadow of the genuine barbed Beatrice-like satire she hurled at
Darcy during the first half of the novel. It’s abject flattery disguised as
wit.



DIANA: “She attributes his past bad humour and sullenness to his boredom
and annoyance with all the flatterers. It took time for Darcy to realize
that in this backwater of ill manners she was not one of them, but a
rarity. They have now arrived at a happy understanding of it all, and in
his eyes she can never be anything but somebody rare and special. Not a
Miss Bingley.”



But he was the rudest person in the room during the first half of the
novel, most of all when Elizabeth dared to turn down his first proposal.



DIANA: “And she forgives his earlier loutishness, because she has learned
his real fineness (and also enjoys his most agreeable and flattering love
of her!). If her approval of him now, and the praises she lavishes, sound
like Miss Bingley-like flattery to you, well, they are not. They're as
special and heartfelt as their love, and Lizzy will be laughing at him, and
Mr. Darcy enjoying it, for the rest of their lives.”



And I say that there are two plausible readings – one as you have
eloquently put it, and one that is the opposite – and I say Jane Austen
wrote both of those versions, because (as Margaret Atwood put it) in the
real world a man like Darcy reforms and repents after being told off by a
woman, out of love for that women, very very very rarely indeed – Jane
Austen was surely aware of that.



ARNIE