Love & Literature

I was a Jane Austen virgin until the fall of 2006 or so. I picked up a copy of Austen's second novel Pride & Prejudice and immediately fell in love. How could I have gone so long without reading this masterpiece?

Originally titled First Impressions, this brilliant piece of literature begins with the introduction of the Bennett family and the story centers around the Bennetts' daughter Elizabeth. Early on, Elizabeth Bennett makes the acquaintance of Mr. Darcy (the new renter at Netherfield in the Bennetts' neighborhood) and they strongly dislike one another. They each despise the others' pride, but it is their own pride which makes it difficult to overcome the prejudices they have against one another. As events unfold throughout the novel, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy slowly come to learn more of one another and dislike turns to apathy, then to affection, then eventually to a great love.

Like all of her novels, this Austen work has a very narrow scope, encompassing merely a few families in a specific area of England, with very little mention of the surrounding country or the world at large. Any references to distant places are just that: distant and cursory. Jane Austen is renowned the world over for her razor-sharp satire of English society in the early nineteenth century, but is also lauded for showing such an unfettered view of a woman's experiences in that time.

As much as Austen mocks the rigidity of society and its norms in the Victorian era, she was also very dedicated to tradition. In this way, it comes as no surprise that Austen's writing style is very consistent with the way a woman was meant to behave in that era. One of the most common complaints about Austen novels is that there is a lack of overwhelming emotion, which is understandable because Austen tends to shy away from such effusions of feeling. However, the careful reader will not find it hard to sense Austen's--and her characters'--subtle passion throughout all of her novels. Women in Austen's time were meant to think sensibly and rationally which meant that outbursts of emotion and passion were discouraged. However, suppressing those feelings didn't mean that they weren't nearly bursting from the seams of their corsets, much like any Austen novel's binding is practically splitting from the passion held within its pages.

For other reviews of this wonderful classic story, please visit the following:
Amazon Customer Reviews
Good Reads
CHUD.com

Also, the entire novel can be read in linked-hypertext at Pemberly or in book form at Google Books.