Pride Comes Before the Fall

I've just finished reading The Philadelphia Story by Phillip Barry, and like so many other things in my life recently, my response to it was a measure of how much I've changed in how I view the world and myself within it.

I'm no stranger to the story or script of The Philadelphia Story. It has for a long time been one of my favorite films. I want to believe that I first saw it at my father's mother's (Mama Kate's) house. I have a vague (but potentially totally imaginary) memory of sitting in her living room on her very worn couch and being utterly enchanted by the elegance and grace of the actors and the wittiness of the dialogue. I know that it was my first Katharine Hepburn movie, or at least the first movie where I was aware of who she was and remembered her after. For a long time, I would watch the movie as something purely for entertainment. It was a comedy, light and frothy and nothing much more. I admired Katharine Hepburn and I admired Tracy Lord (not to be confused with Traci Lords, the former underage porn star) for being such a clear representation of everything I thought a modern woman ought to be: fiercely intelligent, a tower of strength, sarcastic, classy, educated, noble, beautiful, desired, with high standards of behavior for herself and others. I never thought twice of her fall from grace, the tragic hero's ultimate trajectory. To me it was natural to want to marry someone suave like CK Dexter Haven rather than some stiff like George Kittredge, who didn't have the secret key to what was within the tower. So I suppose in a way I was subconsciously wanting the fall all along, but terrified of it.

The scariest part of skiing, after all, is pointing your skis down the mountain. Because what if you don't stop?

Tracy Lord was everything I wanted to be when I became a woman and everything I was jealous of -- money, connections, a life of style and refinement and privilege. I always have had champagne tastes. Certainly I have always had my blows softened for me, as Dexter suggests of Tracy, and if someone else could not soften them, then I would imagine a softening myself or else pretend it never happened.

I am now nearly twenty-four, the same age as Tracy in the play. I am not, as almost a woman -- or am I one? -- all those things I always dreamed I would be and certainly I am not at all Tracy Lord. I am fiercely intelligent, yes, beautiful, noble on occasion, strong when I must be and getting stronger every day, I am sarcastic and classy when I want to be, educated...but I am much more human coming to twenty-four than Tracy. I have had many a fall and have stopped attempting to escape the blows or even to soften them. I no longer imagine myself a tower of strength, and though my standards for myself and others are particularly high still, they are much lower than they once were and plummeting even farther down with each passing day. I am not particularly tolerant of people that I consider "beneath me," be it in intelligence or class or standards of living, and even harder on those in whom I see my old or current faults.

But the point is that when reading the script for The Philadelphia Story today, though I was taken as I always am with the cleverness of the writing and was, of course, thoroughly entertained, I enjoyed it on a completely different level: I appreciated the fall. I couldn't wait for the fall. I loved every second of it. I empathized. I was Tracy. I delighted in each misstep she took and urged her more and more past her delusion, wanted her to falter, encouraged her to misbehave, to go "haywire," as Elizabeth Imbrie says, celebrated her public humiliations, her failures, the upheaval of everything she thought she knew.

This is a huge step for me. I certainly still have my trouble falling in my acting and though I tend to wind up on my face repeatedly in life, my pride often gets in the way of my ability to admit that I tripped and especially that I may need help getting up.

Pride is not a bad thing by any means, but as I become a woman, as I turn twenty-four, as I start to willingly free-fall in life, I think the next thing I ought to learn, and the thing that will help me come to terms with and better discover who I truly am (as Terri suggested, I'd like to own my trials and triumphs so that I can be done with being erratic and start with being a leading lady) is when to replace pride with humility.

Part of me is resistant to this entire entry. A voice says this isn't entirely true, or at least that I may be pandering to people who might read this as I write it. Or that I want so badly to have discovered something by the strangely emotional experience of reading The Philadelphia Story that I'm reaching for anything that applies. But I just started to type and here it is, so whether it's completely honest or not, it is what it is.

I don't know. I feel hopeful, though.