“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It wasn’t a bad trip over. I like to watch movies on transoceanic flights. On this one, I watched Casablanca, which I still regard as almost a perfect film. Also Eddie the Eagle, which I enjoyed. (Rather an inspiring story, in its curious way.) And Clueless, the 1985 revisioning of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma with Alicia Silverstone in the title role. Which was appropriate because I’m just about finished re-reading Pride and Prejudice.
I’ve confessed before to my thorough enjoyment of Jane Austen. I’m a hopeless romantic, and I sometimes fear that my love for Austen novels and for most movie remakes of them — I except the 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson, which many people seem to like but which I regard as an abomination — casts doubt upon my masculinity. But there you have it: Although I try very hard (and, many of my critics would say, quite successfully) to be vicious, mean-spirited, abusive, and cruel, in my heart of hearts I’m really an incurable sentimentalist.
Posted from Stockholm, Sweden
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