"What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant." David Foster Wallace was describing the workings of the human mind. In Essays, author and narrator Michel de Montaigne's style and content exemplify Wallace's idea about the intricate proceedings of the mind. In addition, despite a difference in genres, a comparison between Montaigne's style in Essays and Austen's in Pride and Prejudice, results in some surprising similarities as well as differences.
Michel de Montaigne's Essays supports different aspects of Wallace's quote. First of all, it addresses numerous subjects that include allusions to Greek and Roman tales. He eloquently portrays the relationship between the topics he explicates in the present and those tales from the past, proving Wallace's quote describing how interconnected thoughts in the mind are. In addition, Montaigne's Essays number a hundred and seven different chapters in three books, with each chapter contributing more of Montaigne's perspective on life by focusing on one subject each. This enormous number of ideas from Montaigne's own mind justifies Wallace's statement about how vast the mind is. Even after the Essays completion, it seems as if more could be added to it, as if it "barely sketch[ed] the outlines" of an infinite amount of information and opinions hidden inside Montaigne's mind. All of this was only possible to decipher because Montaigne opened a door into his thoughts by employing a stream-of-consciousness technique in which he records the cascade of thoughts that enter his mind while he is composing his essays.
When compared to Austen's techniques in Pride and Prejudice, Montaigne's style is similar to hers in some respects. A number of Montaigne's essay themes, such as "Of Ancient Customs" and "Of Sumptuary Laws" mention the society of his time. Similarly, in Pride and Prejudice, Austen depicts the customs and family hierarchies that were present in the society of her time. At the very beginning of the novel, Mrs. Bennet addresses one of these customs when she says to Mr. Bennet, "Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not," implying that civil manners require the patriarch of a family to be present at a first visit to introduce his family properly. Furthermore, both authors show the complexity of opinions in their works by illustrating the natural thought process. In Pride and Prejudice, the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, makes a remarkable transition from despising a gentleman named Mr. Darcy to falling in love with him, as Austen reveals more truths about him and shows how they gradually change Elizabeth's perspective of him. Montaigne's quantity of essays in itself demonstrates how opinions aren't black and white because there are so many elements that are taken into consideration.
Despite these distinct similarities, Montaigne and Austen do travel down different paths with their styles. For example, Montaigne's perspective in Essays is his own because he is the narrator. However, Austen indirectly includes her views and personality into her novel as she writes from the fictional perspective of Elizabeth Bennet. Also, because Montaigne's writing is in essay form, his style is much more philosophical than Austen's in Pride and Prejudice. Consequently, Austen's writing is much more descriptive and concrete since she creates detailed images of actions happening at that moment in the lives of her characters. Though Montaigne incorporates current events of his time, he mainly focuses on abstract concepts such as sorrow, fear, friendship, and solitude. This leads to another disparity between the two styles. Montaigne contemplates a large number of abstract concepts in Essays, unlike Austen, who focuses on the same themes of love and reputation in society throughout Pride and Prejudice. Montaigne, on the other hand, leaps from one theme to the next, incorporating a new theme in every chapter.
A closer examination of Montaigne's Essays demonstrates how much it verifies Wallace's quote concerning the thoughts and processes of the mind, through its length and its enormous variety of topics. Even a comparison between the styles of Montaigne and Austen in their separate works proved, from an alternate perspective, how interconnected minds can be from the similarities that existed between the two.
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