Paltrow as Emma
Sports Saturday
If you have ever found it quirky that, every Saturday, I turn to literature to make sense of something going on in the world of sports, you can now rest assured that I am not alone. This past week Maureen Dowd of The New York Times found parallels between Jane Austen and professional football.
In the old days, Dowd writes, during the holidays she would sometimes escape from her sports-crazy family and settle down with an Austen novel.
One day, however, she was forced to watch a game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys, one involving Washington’s exciting new quarterback Robert Griffin III, and she fell in love. She also started seeing parallels. Both Austen novels and the NFL feature
a rigid male-dominated hierarchical society with pompous wealthy overlords and opportunistic strivers and alluring young protagonists faltering with immature misjudgments and public opprobrium.
Other parallels that Dowd finds include:
Tangle sibling dramas
In Austen, Dowd notes, it’s the Dashwoods, the Bennets, and the Bertrams. In the NFL, it’s the Manning brothers (who played earlier this season), the Harbaugh brothers (who faced off in the Super Bowl), and, most recently, Howie Long’s two sons.
Emma’s attempts to reshape Harriet
The 19th-century author of Emma, the best makeover story ever, would have marveled at the macho makeover saga in Miami with the thuggish Richie Incognito trying to harden the brainy, viola-playing, Stanford-educated Jonathan Martin — the “bully” and the “baby,” as Mike Ditka curtly called them.
Talented young people who are full of themselves
The 22-year-old RGIII swept into town like Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever and rich,” as Austen wrote of her 20-year-old title character, but spoiled by “the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.”
Like Emma and Elizabeth Bennet, RGIII has gone through humbling experiences. His humiliations on the field this season alternated jarringly on TV with his commercials for Subway, concocted when the Heisman winner from Baylor was still flying high and grinning cockily.
After detailing Griffith’s many recent mortifications (to employ one of Austen’s favorite words), Dowd suggests that he could learn something important from Austen’s novels:
Like every compelling and high-spirited Austen heroine, the Redskins’ erstwhile hero has some growing up to do. He has to go through the fire, dig deep and learn some lessons about character.
One can come to know oneself, Dowd concludes, just as much in the locker room as in the drawing room.
It works for me.
Previous posts comparing football figures to literary characters
Manning and Brady as Homer’s Hector and Achilles
The Miami Dolphins Locker Room as a Lord of the Flies scenario
Richard Incognito as Steerforth bullying Jonathan Martin/Mr. Mell in David Copperfield
Tony Romo as Edward Field’s Icarus
Johnny Manziel as Oedipus and/or Faustus
The Harbaugh brothers in the Super Bowl as the brothers in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden
The Baltimore Ravens as Edgar Allen Poe’s raven
The Alabama Crimson Tide as Lord Byron’s deep and dark blue ocean
RGIII, Andrew Luck, and Russell Wilson as John Gay’s Mac the Knife
Peyton Manning as Flitcraft in The Maltese Falcon
The Green Bay Packers as the meat packers in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle
Cornerback Darrelle Revis, proprietor of “Revis Island,” as John Donne’s (no man is an) island
The Indianapolis Colts after Peyton Manning’s neck injury as the Geats after Beowulf’s death
Judge Doty ruling on the NFL players lockout as the goddess Athena appearing at the end of The Odyssey
New York Jets Coach Rex Ryan as Falstaff
Eight playoff teams, eight literary comparisons
Bill Belichick as Professor Moriarty
Peyton Manning as Robert Frost’s oven bird
Michael Vick (after his dog fighting conviction) as Hester Prynne
Michael Vick as Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner
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