Elizabeth Bennet is at first determined to dislike Mr. Darcy, who is handsome and eligible. This misjudgment only matched in folly by Darcy's arrogant pride. Their first impressions give way to truer feelings in a comedy concerned with happiness and how it might be achieved.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground.
Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
Victorian literature at its finest:
Pride and Prejudice is viewed as one of the finest novels ever written, and rightfully so. Despite being only 22 years old when the original manuscript was finished, Austen displays an astonishing mastery of the English language that has rarely been equalled. The prose is so expertly constructed that the book maintains a brisk pace throughout and never becomes dull. Being so heavily dialogue-based, it's critical that the conversations in this book keep the reader interested. Fortunately, the snappy dialogue... more info
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." I'm going to be honest. This novel didn't get interesting to me until page 202. If you look above at the total page number, you'll see this is WELL into the novel. I didn't feel any tension? Any real conflict? So there's a woman living in a house with her parents (both of whom are pretty kooky, though Mama Bennet takes the cake) and four sisters (only one of whom seems... more info
Very nice formatting on a classic:
Regarding the content, I think the content needs little to no introduction. Jane Austen's classic is still as good as ever. This is one of the better formatted editions of this book that I have ran across. It has a linked TOC and the margins/spacing a perfect for a book that has a lot of quotes and letters in it. The increased spacing and line breaks makes it easy to follow conversations and read the letters in the book. Very satisfied with this one for the price.
Good but not great:
Most of the 'insights' included in this edition were very helpful and interesting.There were a few that were just plain silly, but on the whole they were good. While Pride and Prejudice is, in my opinion, one of the greatest novels ever penned, this edition had a few too many spelling errors and wrong words for my liking. There is one in the second sentence of the book...
