Tonight, I finished Pride and Prejudice (1995). I think I smiled the entire time, more than I've smiled in ages.
I started out simply wanting to revisit a cherished series from my childhood. Perhaps I was in search of the girl I used to be. But this story has much to offer the woman I am now.
In Pride and Prejudice, I found a representation of love that I deeply believe in: love as an experience of mutual transformation.
By the end of the series, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are changed by one another. Love meets us where we are, and it also expands and deepens us.
In Elizabeth, I found a brilliant and complicated woman who will not compromise her values. When Mr. Darcy proposes the first time, she rejects him.
She does not feel that she's been treated well, and she will not force herself to love a man just because he gives her attention.
As the series unfolds, she discovers much about herself. She realizes that her initial impression of Mr. Darcy was inaccurate, or at least incomplete.
She must confront the limitations of her own discernment when Wickham ends up fooling her (as he fools many others). Who a man appears to be is not always who he truly is. Oh, how I have learned that lesson myself!
With Mr. Darcy, at first I was focused on Colin Firth's good looks, but he brings to life a character I grew to greatly admire.
In Mr. Darcy, I see a man of integrity. A man who can admit when he is wrong, when he has hurt others, and then takes action to make it right. That is a rare quality indeed.
These two people rise to meet one another. I believe that true love asks something of us. It asks us to take love out of the realm of words and to actually show it, express it, and open ourselves to its enormous, even frightening, power. Love should shake us to the core. We should be altered by it. I truly believe that.
I want a love that makes me more myself, not less. I want a love that makes me better, not worse. I want a love that brings peace, not chaos. I want a love that is reliable, not inconsistent. I want a love that enhances, not one that diminishes.
I may never find that love, but I'll hold out for it, just as Elizabeth does when she turns down Mr. Darcy's first proposal. She did so without the assurance that she'd ever be proposed to again. It was a risk worth taking.