Pride and Prejudice

UK hardcover, 1st edition.

Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austin first published on 1813-01-28. The story is set in England in 1812 and follows the Bennet family as they interact with their friends, neighbors, and potential husbands for the Bennet daughters. A large part of the story revolves around social manners, and how they often mask a person's true identity with superficial kindness contrasted with how an ill-mannered person can have genuine kindness.

I decided to read this book in order to better acquaint myself with female authors and famous literature. I knew about how famous Austin is, and have seen film adaptions of some of the books before reading this. I haven't seen an adaption of Pride and Prejudice, but I did wee Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which actually helped me follow the plot.

Status

I don't own this book, but I finished an audio book on 2019-11-05.

Review

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The entailed estate being sought after by William Collins sets up some interesting tension and urgency, although, not much ever comes from it.
• The book paints a pretty clear picture of what life was like for semi-rich English people in the early 1800s. Although, since I know little about that time period, I can't speak to the accuracy.
• I do like the large vocabulary employed by Austin, and it's especially impressive for such a young author.

Bad

• Although some of the characters are interesting in a despicable sort of way (Lady Catherine de Bourgh and William Collins are both particularly wretched), I found most of them to be either dull or irredeemable. Mrs. Bennet, for example, is downright annoying.
• Mr. Darcy is presumed to be a scoundrel because he is so standoffish and ill-mannered, then Elizabeth learns that he isn't quite as bad as she thought he was, but, the reality is, her incorrect presumptions aside, he's still pretty awful!
• Elizabeth, becomes ashamed of herself for so quickly dismissing Mr. Darcy as a rogue and trusting Wickham, and vows to be less judgmental, only to immediately trust Mr. Darcy that Wickham is horrible before finding proper evidence that he is. Lesson not learned.
• The oft-repeated claim that Ezilabeth should fix Mr. Darcy's faults is quite misguided.

Ugly

• I had a very difficult time keeping straight the many characters. Austin provides almost no physical descriptions of any of them, only descriptions of the mannerisms, so I never developed a picture of anyone in my head. Without a picture, I could never put a face to a name, and, through most of the book, I was mixing up characters.
• The book is dreadfully dull. It's several hundred pages of a spread out story of people gossiping about each other with some puritan romance thrown in. No thanks.

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