ThunderReaders

If your opinion surfing hasn’t led you yet to one of her articles, let me introduce one of my favorite columnists, Maureen Dowd.  She’s smart, funny, irreverent, and her awareness of language is keen: you can bet the house that she got a “5″ on her AP language exam.

Today’s submission is so good that I could teach a whole unit of analytical vocabulary with it (irony, colloquialism, metonymy, metaphor, cliche, connotation, euphemism, pejoration…on and on).

But for now, just enjoy her voice and her ideas.  See if she doesn’t become one of your favorites too!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/opinion/25dowd.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

One of the neat things about Pride and Prejudice, like most great works of literature, is that everyone in it is a READER, just like us.  The characters “reading”, or interpreting each other’s words and actions are mirrors of those of us who are interpreting the pages.  Jane Austen hits us over the head with this idea in the quick, definitive and dismissive judgment made upon Mr. Darcy at the first ball. 

Mrs. Bennet and most of the women at the ball “read” the fact that Darcy doesn’t dance with anyone he doesn’t already know as a sign of what a stuck up and terrible person he is.  And in his withering comments about the girls at the dance (including herself) that Elizabeth overhears, we’re encouraged to make the same judgment about Darcy.  In your comment on this post, try out another interpretation of Darcy’s words and behavior.  Could you defend him, putting a positive “spin”, or “reading”, on his motives? Is there any other way to interpret Darcy’s behavior besides his being an arrogant snob?