Pride & Prejudice Book Review

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! –When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library”

~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

I included this quote because I also have a love for reading!

If you have never heard of Jane Austen, you are living under a literary rock. She is known for this popular novel, Pride & Prejudice, released in 1813 as this novel have many film adaptations, including the movie ‘Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’. The 2005 adaptation of the novel is the most close adaptation to the novel. Jane Austen called his novel her own child.

Though it’s a romantic novel, this novel can also been seen as a novel of manners due to the main character development, Elizabeth Bennet, who learned throughout the novel the consequences of making hasty judgments and the difference of goodness in terms of superficial and actual. Elizabeth is one of the five daughters of Mr Bennet of the Loungbourn estate and came to realize that the Bennet property can only be passed onto a male heir. This makes it imperative that one of the girls must marry well to support the others, which is the main motivation that drive the plot of the novel.

The novel also drives around the importance of marrying for love, not for money or social prestige despite the pressure to make a wealthy match. Thus we are introduced to the five sisters:

• Jane Bennet (22), the eldest (Favored by the father due to her personality)
• Elizabeth Bennet (20), the second eldest (Main protagonista)
• Mary Bennet (18 or 19), the middle sister (Described as the only plain and solemn)
• Catherine “Kitty” Bennet (17, turned 18 later in the novel), the fourth daughter (Described as “weak-spirited” “irritable” “ignorant”)
• Lydia Bennet (15, turned 16 in June), the youngest (Stout, well-grown for her age)

Readers are introduced to Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy in the beginning of the novel at a ball that the entire neighborhood attend in rural 19th century England. While Mr. Bingly is seen as cheerful, friendly and popular with the guests, Mr. Darcy is quite the opposite, aloof and haughty.

I’ll stop right here to not reveal much of the plot, but there are more male and female characters introduced to the novel that causes a lot of miscommunication and confusion with the characters. The title, Pride & Prejudice, is a representation of the main couple as one character learned to overcome his/her pride wile the other overcome his/her prejudice, which led them both to their love for one another.

Though not written in the English that we speak today, this is a great novel if you are looking for a comedic (look into the sarcasm spoken by the characters, specifically Elizabeth) love story.

“There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense”

~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice via Goodreads.com