Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics)

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Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." The novel begins with the arrival of Mr. Bingley, a wealthy gentleman, to Netherfield Park, a nearby estate. He is accompanied by his sisters and his best friend, Mr. Darcy. The Bennet family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters, including Elizabeth, is excited by the prospect of meeting the new neighbors. However, when Mr. Darcy snubs Elizabeth at a ball, she immediately takes a dislike to him, and he to her, due to his pride and her prejudice against him. Throughout the novel, Austen skillfully explores the themes of class, gender, and social hierarchy in Georgian England. She depicts a society in which a woman's value is determined by her ability to marry well and secure her family's future, and in which the upper classes maintain their status through strict adherence to social norms and codes of conduct. However, Austen also shows how individuals can challenge and subvert these norms, through their intelligence, wit, and courage. She’s great, and she gets extra points for just how well she plays off of Colin Firth, but I have a fundamental problem with Ehle, which is that she just doesn’t match my vision of Lizzie. I just can’t entirely buy her in the part.

Until its concluding paragraph, the rest of this chapter consists entirely of dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Dialogue occupies much of Jane Austen’s novels, and presentation of character through dialogue is one of her fortes. In this case, Mrs. Bennet’s excitable exclamations and exaggerated phrasing reveal her flightiness and impetuousness, while Mr. Bennet’s terseness and irony reveal his cool detachment. The romance isn’t a wild passion, but a slow build between two people who are wrong in their first impressions of one another, then grow to admire the other.

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Bonus! A studious and completely objective discussion of the merits of the leading actors and actresses in the major P&P movies and TV miniseries.

But such of us as wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary." I am physically unqualified, because I could write infinite words about how much I love this book, and I type in a weird way that makes my wrists hurt so infinity is simply not going to happen.

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So. Yes, I'm unashamed to admit that I am that cliché of a woman who loves Pride and Prejudice. Unashamed! Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.’

I LOVE this book. It gives me...uh…(everyone stop reading this to save me the embarrassment and allow me to preserve my rough and tumble reputation)...butterflies. Boy did I hate him at first. To get anywhere with this book one has to immerse oneself in the realities of life and marriage in the nineteenth century. At first all this talk of entailment and manners just left me cold. I liked the language to be sure. Austen's dialogue is delightful through out but dialogue alone (no matter how delicious) does not a great novel make. Pride and Prejudice is the dullest most wonderfully written book that I have ever read. I read it simply to get a feel for the author's fantastic ability at arranging words, and really I mean it when I say, oh what wonderful blather. The author created a fantastic and varied cast of characters. The absurdities of the secondary characters are what kept the plot light and fun.Netherfield Park is the name of a house in the local area; it is later described as three miles from the Bennets’ residence. It was common for houses, if grand enough, to be given a name, often including words such as “park” to indicate their attractive and rustic character. It was not unusual for large houses to be rented out, for it cost a substantial amount of money to staff and maintain a grand home, and many landowners were unable to afford it. In Jane Austen’s Persuasion the heroine’s family, thanks to the father’s extravagant spending habits, is forced to let their house and move into apartments in the resort city of Bath. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow."

Some of my happiest, and most looked-forward-to days of the year are the ones that I reserve for the re-reading of Pride and Prejudice. To quote Austen herself from Sense and Sensibility: ‘if a book is well written, I always find it too short,’ explains perfectly how I feel about this book; no wonder she called this ‘my own darling child,’ for, for me, P&P is perfect in every conceivable way. It’s the kind of book, the moment you finished reading, you are tempted to start over again immediately. However, reviewing this is another matter… I’m excited, enraptured, but at the same time agitated, knowing that it’s impossible to do justice to the author nor to the book. The perfection of this novel is amazing and until today it´s difficult to impossible to name another book that has the same character development, hidden social critique, and amazing characters in a classical setting dealing with the grievances of an epoch. So less action and so much suspense just created by the inner perspective of the main protagonists that it´s a pleasure to read and reread. I just can´t get behind how Austen could write like a goddess and what makes each scene, word, setting, and plot twist so smooth and easy-going, while diving so deep under the skin of this bizarre, ancient society.

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At a time when great writing could just be powered by talent, perseverance, intelligence, exercise, and passion (because there was no creative writing course just around the next corner or online), avoiding conservative worldviews and dogmas of the time, Austen wrote vivid, cliffhangery, and in perfect length with an inherent instinct for the rules of how to make true art. Not like many, mostly male, others, who praised their stupid beliefs in their racist, intolerant, and bad novels, or became pseudointellectual and impossible to understand for mentally healthy readers without narcissistic tendencies to push their ego (here, gratuitously hyped author, take that Nobel prize for that. Again), she wrote literature at it´s best. I guess that many critics don´t have the time or interest to invest more effort than just reading it without a bit of researching history and the authors' biography to get the full pleasure of all the hidden easter eggs. Without that, it may really seem much more superficial and less well constructed than with the extra knowledge that enables one to enjoy it in full fan mode. I am also unqualified generally, in the grand scheme of things, because so many people have written so intelligently about the wonderfulness of this book and I have nothing better to add. So love conquers all. Austen was a strong advocate of social mobility, and often it’s based upon love in her works. But she only believes in real love. She’s not interested in fleeting moments of heat and sexual lust; she portrays true and lasting romantic attachments, relationships that are strong and real. For her, such things transcend class boundaries, wealth and intelligence. Love is love. It doesn’t matter who it is with as long as it is real; hence, Austen becomes a critique of society and its customs that prevent these relationships from being realised. She knows how stupid it is, and she loves to poke fun of her caricatures of the old stilted class of her era: the ones that resist her ideas.