Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a novel published in 1813 that centers on the five Bennet sisters and their relationships with each other and their potential suitors. Jane Austen has written several other novels, including Emma, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, and one book I read this summer after I read Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. The novel gives us a time capsule back to England in the 19th century, where a concerned mother’s main objective in her life is to make sure that all five of her daughters get married soon.
The book focuses on the two protagonists, sisters Elizabeth and Jane Bennet, and their respective love interests, Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. As the sisters navigate which men have good intentions and which men will damage the Bennet family's reputation, they become closer to each other and gain a deeper understanding of people’s motives and what it means to be in a relationship.
Elizabeth Bennet is perceptive and quick to judge, more dubious of people’s intentions than her sister Jane, who is kind and assumes the best of everyone. Elizabeth’s love interest, Mr. Darcy, is shy, non-social, and unable to show his affection towards Elizabeth because he is rude and blunt. Jane’s love interest, Mr. Bingley, is kind, positive, and clueless about the greater tension between Mr. Darcy and his greatest enemy, Mr. Wickham.
I enjoyed how Elizabeth and Jane contradict each other, and so do Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, who are still good friends. I also like how Austen pairs the love interests with similar personalities. This contrast dramatizes the long journey to love of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth in comparison to the relatively simple journey of Jane and Mr. Bingley. For effect, Austen purposely makes her audience irritated with how long it takes each of the characters to stop pretending to not love each of their love interests, even though it was obvious that ultimately everything would work out.
The other sisters, Kitty and Lydia, are immature, inseparable, and both obsessed with the idea of having military officers as suitors. The fifth sister Mary is very quiet, always studying, but not actually very intellectual. Meanwhile, the question of her children getting married is so all-consuming to the Bennet mother, Mrs. Bennet, that it is all she talks about. Her worry and desperation are in contrast to that of Mr. Bennet, the Bennet father, who is so irresponsible, impulsive, and untroubled that their oppositions only exaggerate their individual personalities.
One of the most important themes in Pride and Prejudice is the concept of marriage for love or marriage by design to get ahead socially and economically. While some characters, such as Mr. Collins, a distant cousin of the Bennet family, may be happy to get married to Charlotte, Elizabeth’s friend, purely for design, other characters like Elizabeth will only get married if it is for true love.
Another important theme throughout the novel is recognizing which characters accept societal norms and conventions. For example, in many ways, Elizabeth does not. She refuses to get married if not for love, and is unafraid to refuse men who request marriage purely for design. However, in other ways, Elizabeth is more reserved and follows societal norms more than her sister Lydia, who ends up eloping with Mr. Wickham and consequently bringing great shame to the Bennet family. Yet, while Elizabeth differs from society in speaking her opinions, Mr. Darcy might be even more extreme, as he does not display basic manners to other people at social gatherings.
Reading Pride and Prejudice gave me a more profound understanding of Austen as an author and the types of books she generally writes, so I would recommend Pride and Prejudice to anyone who enjoys this type of storyline.
There is something very comforting about Austen’s books; she portrays a similar setting and time period in all of her novels, so by reading many of her books that setting becomes so familiar and recognizable that all her books have the magical effect of being able to take you to a whole other world. And although such should be true for all books, Austen’s detailed depictions of juxtaposing characters, tragic misunderstandings, and ultimate wedlock make her a spectacular author.
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