blog 10-LAU

Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring out- side stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times.(187)

"Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,'' said Bingley; ``but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Elizabeth Bennet looked remarkably well, when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice''(73)

In the book, Pride and Prejudice, the author had a deep attention on Elisabeth from the version of Miss Bingley. Jane went to Mr. Bingley’s house for dinner however she got cold because of rain. Elisabeth decided to walk to Mr. Bingley’s house because she worried about his sister. She ignored her was like a drowned mouse. She was still attracted but in wet. Darcy was surprised and he fell in love with Elisabeth. He did not realize her wet hair and dress. Miss Bingley tried to break his good impression because she wanted to marry with Darcy. She showed her jealousy in her conversation with Darcy. However, her behaviors made Darcy felt vapid and rude. Moreover, from the version of Miss Bingley, we could get another angle to describe Elisabeth. It also satirized the shallowness of Miss Bingley. Moreover，Miss Bingley detracted Elisabeth when Darcy admitted that he loved Elisabeth:“She a beauty!—I should as soon call her mother a wit”(282). This irony sentence showed Miss Bingley’s satire that she thought Miss. Bennet was a scheming woman trying to seduce Mr. Darcy. She paid attention to Elisabeth because she was the rival in love. Darcy just answered: “but that was only when I first knew her; it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.” The author used the deep attention to Elisabeth to explain the role of Miss Bingley. From these behaviors, we could realize Miss Bingley was rude and shallowness.