Last week we went to see a production of the new musical AUSTEN’S PRIDE, the story of Jane Austen‘s creation of the world of Pemberley and Darcy and Lizzie and Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Wickham and … well, the entire world that lives between the covers of the book Pride and Prejudice.
Precis: Miss Jane Austen has had a successful run with her book Sense and Sensibility, but her publisher wants a new work. Simultaneously, her intended fiancé decides to break with her. She’s been rejected a few times, and is living in genteel near-poverty. All she has now to her assets is an idea with no form or view. Just some observations.
Austen’s world becomes a reflection of her re-creation of the past through the lens of her present experience, and her world is of a beneficent England where the rich are seen as positive conveyors of meaning and value, the middle-class of nature who live in penury are still to be admired and respected for their achievements and manners—Mr. Bennet is a gentleman not as a courtesy given for his good nature but for his privileged level of respect in his society—and the poor might exist in Austen’s imagined world but only as a condition to be desperately and rightfully avoided. (Mr. Wickham’s actions are explainable as a man who uses his power of charm and position to gain access to the money of hapless romantic women, solely to avoid the very real horrors of poverty in Dickensian England.)
The world she creates is Austen’s world, and while it has charmed us for over 200 years, it is entirely crafted on the lathe of Austen’s imagination.
For both of us, the musical was thoroughly enjoyable. Not only did we see the parallel worlds of Jane in the world of pre-Victorian England and the world of Lizzie in the author’s imagination—the author herself becomes a part of her own story, interacting with each character as the troublesome God of creation who can be rebuked by her creatures.
And it became part of a story that I am writing myself of myself—the story of what world has created me, and the story of the self I am attempting to re-create in a different image. I have been made into something by my world, and all the creations that come from me come from the person who was created by my world. Like Jane Austen, my original thoughts and output are explained by the world that I live in.
Thinking about this led to some questions: of what form are we created; from where does that creation arise—and even who is the creator?
I’m thinking about how to answer the question because of a provocative statement made by someone I respect greatly—Andre Henry, a gentle man of deep courage: perhaps we should stop saying the word ‘white’ and instead use the word ‘antiblack.’
Did I blink when I read that? Sure. Guess how I would classify myself: white. Guess what I have been working on strenuously for myself for a decade now: embracing diversity and elevating those who are oppressed. Guess who I deliberately and genuinely esteem: my brothers and sisters in the communities of color, especially my Black siblings.
I read those words and they spoke to the hole that is in me that I’ve been working to identify for decades, much less fill with little effect: how did I turn out this way, to be so broken in my love for my human family? Where was the moment of turning? How was I formed to be who I am? And who made me white in all that I am and do?
I’ve been working on my own understanding of being white and whiteness as something that exists as a primary thing, with characteristics of both positive and negative connotations, often for the same word or concept: superior, dominate, normal, privileged, central, standard, deserving, valued….
I’m aware of a few of them, but with effort I can list them and continue to find new words to add to that list.
What gets me, though, is how this is work on my part.
When I had the moment of revelation a decade ago, that I was deeply racist and completely comfortable in that racism, I had the thought that at least I know what’s wrong—at least I can work on this, to expunge the stray thoughts and poor attitudes and wrong choices. It would be easy, I thought, to change my actions because really, way down deep, I was just a good person who’d picked up some bad habits from the people around me.
But as I’ve been steadily working on my own brokenness, I’ve come to realize that my very person is broken, right at the start, way down deep, where the I exists.
That person was created and formed as an twentieth century American white male. The characters around me have been what I have chosen to shape me. The circumstances largely have been my choice, and when they have not been, I have chosen to act in ways that re-affirm my whiteness. I’ve been made to be antiblack, and largely untroubled by that shaping.
I’ve been ignorant, not blameless. My comfort and self-esteem were important to me. God, I have said some truly terrible things to frame myself as innocent and good, and come Jesus’ return, I suspect I will get the side-eye from quite a few people who will enter paradise way ahead of me.
The people in Jane Austen’s world could speak back to Jane, and complain about their fates, and attempt to reject her leading—but Jane ultimately held the control of the world she created. (Tho’ she seemed scared at times by the strengths of her characters and seemed to give way to their pleadings.)
It’s similar but different with me. I can complain to the world that created me (and that I ended up extending in my own creation), I can reject what my shape is even though my creators and sustainers push back hard to keep me in line with the world I was created to live in—but unlike the characters in Jane Austen’s works, I believe that I can, with great effort and consistent work, become my own man.
I’ll be shaped still by my world. I can’t get around that completely. But I hold on to the idea that by rejecting the system that would keep me safe and unchanged, I can leave behind the things that have broken me and even shaped me, and I can make my own decisions on the kind of person I want to be.
It not because I mean well. It is because I mean to become well.