Laughter duality in P&P

It is a universally acknowledge truth in our culture that fools’ mouth are full with laughter. Is this so? Well, according to what we can see in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen this is not entirely true.

In P&P we can see different characters representing different moral or intellectual values. For example we have our protagonist, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. We know that Lizzy not only was intelligent, but also a fan of laughter as we find her saying “What a shame, for I dearly love to laugh.”(Austen 36)

So, does this mean that Lizzy is a fool? Not at all! I think that her laughter comes from her clever sense of humor. Moreover, if fools are likely to laugh – as her sister Lydia – why does Lizzy admit that she loves to do it? Well, I think Lizzy is not afraid of what people might think of her. She does worry about her family wellbeing, but the fact that she rejected two proposals, walks alone without a chaperon, reads books instead of embroidering or whatever women were supposed to do at the time in which the novel takes place, makes Lizzy an extraordinary uncommon woman whose laughter shows everything but foolishness. On the contrary, she is very self-confident, bright and cultured. A woman eager to discuss relevant topics and most of all, give her opinion (a well-formed one by the way)

On the other hand we have the aforementioned Lydia. She is another woman from Austen’s book that adores to laugh. But her laugh comes from a different motivation. Lydia is reckless, and all her laughter comes from the fact that she doesn’t care about anything but having fun. Even if she or the ones she loved were prejudiced (harmed) by her.

"MY DEAR HARRIET,
You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who, I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him, so think it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater when I write to them and sign my name Lydia Wickham. What a good joke it will be! I can hardly write for laughing. […] Your affectionate friend,
LYDIA BENNET." (Austen 167)

I am not the only one who thinks the same. While I was looking for some information or inspiration to write about, I run into a publication of Elvira Casal. She couldn’t explain better the laughter issue in a few lines. She said:

“Although Elizabeth’s love of laughter is clearly of a different sort than Lydia’s, the presence of her wild, unreflecting, and sexually precocious sister in the novel tells us something about Elizabeth and her laughter.  On the most basic level, Lydia serves as a foil for Elizabeth.  There are many parallels between the sisters:  Like Elizabeth, Lydia likes to laugh.  Like Elizabeth, she is the favorite child of one of their parents.  Like Elizabeth, she does not always observe convention.  Like Elizabeth, she finds Wickham attractive.  There the resemblance seems to end, and the reader is usually more struck by the contrasts.  Yet the only real contrast that matters is that Elizabeth thinks and discriminates.  If Lydia’s love of laughter is implicitly linked to her sexuality, we may assume that Elizabeth’s is also, though Elizabeth will handle her sexuality with greater thought and discrimination.” (Casal 12)

Interesting, doesn't it? So, according to this, pride and prejudice, as well as laughter, also have a good and a bad side. The good one of being selective and the bad one of being too suspicious. Maybe that is the reason why the title of the novel was changed from First Impressions to Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it defines better all of these aspects of the book and also the internal journey from there (P&P) to the transparency of love.

Now you see that the duality in this wonderful novel is present in almost every aspect of it, even on laughter. 

 What do you think about it? Any other duality you'd like to mention? (besides the one about the types of love that Raúl mentioned in other post)

References

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. The Project Gutenberg EBook. 2008. PDF 
                      <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1342/1342-pdf.pdf>

Casal, Elvira. Laughing at Mr. Darcy: Wit and Sexuality in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen Society of America, 2001. October 2014
          <http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol22no1/casal.html>