Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin
book, review
4/5 stars
The Bennet family has five daughters, all of them in a marrying age, so when a new, rich, polite and handsome neighbour appears, their mother immediately sets out to have one of them married off to Mr. Bingley.
And when Bingley and his party arrive at the local ball, the eldest daughter Jane indeed gets closer to him with the feeling seeming very much mutual. What’s more, there’s an even more interesting prospect in the form of Mr. Darcy. However, his distant aloof manner and.. ahem… pride puts everyone off immediately. In particular, overhearing an unflattering comment about herself, Elisabeth Bennet (the second daughter) becomes… prejudiced against Darcy from then on.
I think you can guess where that particular relationship is going to go.
And yet, this is far more than a clichéd love story of people who don’t like one another very much and the resulting comedy.
Pride and Prejudice, set in early 19th century and written likewise is a well-observed book full of intriguing people and sarcasm so subtle you might miss if but so biting it will make you guffaw. It is a delicious book, far more enjoyable and intriguing than I thought it would be.
It evokes a visceral distaste of the pompous Mr Collins, disgust with the condescending Lady Catherine de Bourgh and immediate liking of Elisabeth (who for all her cleverness will make you say "oh, honey" out loud on several occasions).
While the whole thing is rather lighthearted and no one is ever in any real danger, the plight of the women — having to secure a well-off and well-positioned husband before their 25th year or facing no support and few opportunities to support themselves — was keenly felt. Not all marriages in the book were loving or even based on mutual understanding. Nor successful or happy.
There’s a couple of things I did quite struggle with.
Partly, this is the "Tomas can’t handle more than three characters at a time" thing. The book starting with five Miss Bennets and one Mrs. (and my tendency to mix those up) didn’t help. Similarly, it took me a long time to realise that Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham were separate characters — this owing to them being introduced roughly at the same time.
But the book also has a tendency to be almost obstructively indirect, saying things like:
When Mrs. Bennet approached Miss Bennet and Elisabeth, she asked whether their travel was satisfactory. To this the latter replied in the affirmative.
(not a direct quote, but things like that are quite common there)
I understand what it means, but it is still a tax on my frequently exhausted mind and I don’t think that putting "Yes, the trip was wonderful", Elisabeth replied there would have hurt the novel’s literary acumen. Maybe everyone wrote that way in 1813, though?
But overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and I’m sure I’ll come back to it again some time.
This review was originally posted at Goodreads.
