Please prepare to get all hot and bothered by a character who has had book nerds swooning for centuries:

‘Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?’1 (Austen, 188)

I may faint dead away. Who wouldn’t swoon at such a marriage proposal?

I’m being facetious of course, but honestly, how in the world did a proposal of marriage go so far off the rails as this one from Pride and Prejudice? Granted, Elizabeth had already rejected him by this point in the conversation, but Darcy seems genuinely flummoxed that she would refuse him. From his point of view, he came from a well-established family, far above hers in the social caste which provided him the credibility of wealth and social standing; he established ethos. He couched his proposal in logic—logos—telling her that in weighing his feelings for her against his familial and caste obligations, he was simply incapable of repressing his feelings for her despite himself:

“He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand.” (Austen 185)

So far, he’s on track according to Aristotle’s recipe for rhetorical argument, but we know that his argument blows up in his face. Why? Because Darcy misses the mark on pathos by a country mile. Elizabeth has her own reasons for rejecting the offer, but she becomes incensed when

“[S]he could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security.” (Austen 185)

Elizabeth is almost inclined to pity him in her rejection but instead loses her temper because he shows no regard for her feelings. Darcy is concerned only with getting what he wants, fails to recognize Elizabeth’s feelings, and consequently performs what is perhaps literature’s biggest train wreck of a marriage proposal. His utter disregard for pathos in making his argument to her stirs her disgust instead of a more favorable emotion like joy or love, or even pity or regret. His inattention to pathos earns him a hard No instead of a gentle let-down.

We would all do well to learn from Mr. Darcy’s mistake in the real world, whether we’re proposing marriage, sitting at the Thanksgiving dinner table, or running for president. Remember Howard Dean? He was the governor of Vermont and Chair of the Democratic National Committee back in the aughts. And he ran for the presidency in 2004; in fact, he was the front-runner for the Democratic Party that year and lead the pack in campaign fundraising. He was a forward-thinking fundraiser, focusing on small-amount grassroots donations through the internet—a strategy that Obama used successfully four years later to reach the White House. He spoke out on the U.S. invasion of Iraq and appealed to broad swaths of the Democratic base. He had credentialed authority and a reasoned approach to the future. But then he went to Iowa.

Dean gave a rousing speech at the 2004 Iowa caucus. It starts with the crowd chanting his name, interrupting him to shout how much they love him. He said:

“Not only are we going to New Hampshire … we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we're going to California and Texas and New York. And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan. And then we're going to Washington, D.C. To take back the White House.”2

It was all going really well for good ol’ Howard Dean. But then—then—he uttered an unholy cry of victory that effectively ended his candidacy. If you don't remember Dean's impassioned Yeah!, you can re-live it in all its glory here.

Yeesh. I remember thinking at the time that that was an unfortunate sound, but surely not enough to negate his experience and logical proposals. But it was enough, as silly as that may seem. Why? Because of woefully mishandled pathos. He had a crowd that was excited, ready to be directed, and hungry for his leadership on how his campaign would progress. They were disappointed that Dean, who had been expected to finish in first place, finished third. But instead of whipping up passion for the New Hampshire primary as he intended to do, in that weird yeah, Dean invoked the crowd’s fear that he was somehow unhinged and un-presidential. And they recoiled from him. Quickly. A sound clip of his Yeah! was played practically in a loop in the following days, and Dean’s rivals were ready to exploit the fear he had accidentally stoked. Less than a month later, the would-be Democratic nominee formally ended his campaign because he was too far behind to maintain a tenable candidacy.

I remember thinking that people were being fickle and superficial about one weird sound he made, but this points to the power of pathos. Howard Dean may have been a wonderful president, but we'll never know because he scared his voters off. To disregard pathos is a grave mistake; it has power. Just as poor Messrs. Darcy and Dean found out, established character and reason are not always enough to win the argument. In both cases, these men failed to read and properly mold the emotion of their audience and they paid dire consequences. Luckily for Mr. Darcy, clever fella that he is, he learned his lesson and applied much more appropriate pathos on his second try:

‘That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny … You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.’ (Austen 346)

This proposal is grounded in appealing to her emotions instead of telling her why he should get what he wants. He still has the same ethos and logos, but he appeals to her sense of dignity on his second try. He’s careful to invoke and cultivate her happiness and uses it to show her that he is ready to be a respectful partner:

“You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” (Austen 349)

Now that’s a proposal to swoon for.

Where else do you see a failure of pathos? Let me know in the comments below, especially if you can come up with a more disastrous proposal than Darcy’s first go.

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Notes:

Artwork: "Watercolour" by Prawny is licensed under CC0 Creative Commons.

1)     Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Books, 2014.
2)     http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0401/19/se.05.html