Abril de 2007
Few novels could have a more famous first sentence, which at the time it makes laugh, provides the topic of the whole book, as the one Jane Austin uses to begin her work Pride and Prejudice:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife[1].
Austin is presenting a picture of part of the Eighteenth Century English society. Single women, like the character Charlotte, have almost no other goal in life that achieving a good marriage. As an example we can analyse how the sudden news of her engagement to Mr Collins is received by the family and even by herself[2]:
Lady Lucas began directly to calculate with more interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided opinion, that whenever Mr Collins should be in possession of the Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife should make their appearance at St Jame’s.
So basically her parents are not thinking about Charlotte, about her happiness, not even about the kind of man Mr Collins is (will he love her?, will he look after her?, do they come along together well?). For Ms and Mr Lucas, Mr Collins is just the future possessor of a good estate (that for the time being belongs to their neighbours). Let us see now what her siblings think:
The whole family in short were properly overjoyed by the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid.
The girls think that they will be able to come out sooner now. Why? Because their (elder) sister will be already married. Their parents will be relieved from the burden of getting Charlotte placed with someone, a good (acceptable at least) husband, and will take care of the younger sisters. Charlotte at twenty seven years of age must have been perceived as very old for that time standards. Meanwhile her brothers can have assurance not –again- that their sister will be in good hands or that she will be happy, but that they will not have to provide for her. And what is in Charlotte’s mind? It seems along the book that not even Elizabeth, her close friend, can figure out why she got married to Mr Collins. Austen says:
Charlotte herself was tolerable composed… Mr Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome… But still he would be a husband.-Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be the pleasantest preservative from want [3].
Within that context, a few sub-topics arise. They all have to do with the main issue of getting married, and depict the different attitudes with which the protagonists face this event in their own lives.
Since there is no space and time to describe at length each of the cases, we can at least mention them here. The different couples around the main one –Elizabeth and Mr Darcy- are: Mr and Mrs Bennet, Mr Collins and Charlotte, Lydia and Mr Wickham, Jane and Mr Bingley, and Mr and Mrs Gardiner. They all show, besides the main topic of getting married, the view they had from life. They show in their lives what the people of their kind used to do on an everyday basis. Their time was spent in paying visits to neighbours, playing backgammon [4] or cards[5], speaking about London[6] and spending whole months on holidays. Elizabeth spends days at Netherfield[7] visiting Jane, weeks at Hunsford[8] with Mrs and Mr Collins, and –at least in the original plans- months during summer at the Lakes[9].
Neither of the characters appears to have a job, and it is part of their class and their time. Yet at the same time the world outside (their social circle) faced wars, hunger and emigration from the United Kindgom to North America and Australia, just to mention two destinies. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s mansion (Rosings) or Mr Darcy’s Pemberley House were not an ‘average’ property for the time.
This is the world in which the author develops her novel, and which she herself was part up to some point. Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice’s main protagonist, lives in her time, but is not swallowed by it so to speak. She transcends it, lake probably Austin did with her own time.
Who
The main plot has to do with Elizabeth and Mr Darcy. But interwoven with them, Mr Bingley and Jane, Mr and Mrs Bennet, Mr and Mrs Lucas, Mr and Mrs Gardiner, Mr Wickham and Lydia, Mr Collins and Charlotte, appear on the scene. Other characters, not married (“yet” or “anymore”) are Elizabeth’s younger sisters (Mary, Lydia, Kitty), Charlotte’s brothers and sisters (already referred to in this work[10]), Mrs Phillips, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mrs Reynolds –Pemberley’s house keeper-, and –eminently- Lady Catherine de Bourgh, among others.
Mrs Bennet represents a character who was beautiful when young, but not very intelligent. She is all feelings, and tries to call attention from everyone else in the family. She may be depressed and overjoyed, or think someone the most wretched person or the most worthy in the world, just from one minute to the other. ‘Good gracious!’, she complains as she stays at a window in the morning,
if that disagreeable Mr Darcy is not coming here again with our dear Bingley. What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but he would go a shooting, or something or other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him?[11]
And yet, only a few hours later, she exclaims:
Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr Darcy! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! I am so pleased – so happy. Such a charming man! – so handsome! so tall! – Oh, my dear Lizzy, pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Everything that is charming! Three daughters married! [12]
In short, Mrs Bennet was a woman
… of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news [13].
Mr Bennet, Austen describes him, was
…so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character… [14]
Telling the whole story there is an omniscient narrator who ‘knows more’, though, about Elizabeth and has her as main focus.
What
Basically, Pride and Prejudice describes a part of Elizabeth Bennet’s life, and all the people involved with her in one way or another. And that concrete passage of her life is when she marries. The whole novel develops around two words that make for its title: Mr Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice about him. Along the months she gets to know him and thinks of him as a very proud man, in comparison to his friend Mr Bingley and even to his enemy Mr Wickham. Darcy is in love with Elizabeth almost from the very beginning, but she doesn’t know. For her, he is only a proud man that besides thinks very poorly of her. She doesn’t even consider him. As events go on, she will be every time more confirmed in her belief, up to the point in which Darcy proposes to her and, after her rejection, he explains himself in some of the reasons she gives when she rejects him. Elizabeth realises that she had been deceived, not only by her first impressions but also by Mr Wickham’s account of Darcy’s personality. From then on, through different events, the whole story will tend to Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s union.
When
It happens in a society like the one in the late Eighteenth Century and early Nineteenth Century. Probably the account, though happening during two different years in the calendar, lasts only a few months, maybe not even a year.
How
Austen first describes the characters, labels them in the protagonists’ and readers’ minds, and then builds a plot in which surprises take place. It is unexpected, for example, that Mr Bingley suddently vanishes from the Netherfields and goes to London without any notice to the Bennet’s (especially to Jane). It is surprising to find out that Fitzwilliam Darcy is Lady Catherine’s nephew. It is surprising that Lydia escapes with Mr Wickham. And it is, finally, surprising, to find the help Darcy provides to solve this problem.
Why
It seems that Austen is trying, on the one hand, to describe the society she lives in. Her main character Elizabeth could almost have been the author herself, though the plot’s outcome is sadder in real life than in the novel. Elizabeth, an intelligent woman, captured, however, in the rules of the social game of her time, makes her way on, and gets through the story with a happy ending.
I definitely liked the novel. At some points I felt it slow. But this is not a defect of the story itself, nor of the author, but rather a way in the style of the writer to show how long time went on sometimes for the characters.
I liked the way she manages to surprise the reader. I think the interest of the one who is following the plot would increase if Austen would have added a small paragraph at the end of all –or at leas most- of the chapters, in a way that the reader would not feel the chapter complete (only), but leading to something else. I have noticed that Tolkien, for example, uses this literary tool very well.
One cannot but feel sorry for ironic and at the same time careless Mr Bennet, who spends his life as if escaping from reality and his duties as a husband and as a father. Mrs Bennet becomes funny and annoying with the values she expresses. Her values are surprising, though surely representative of many women like her at that time and place. She seems ready to sacrifice her daughters’ happiness and even their reputation, as long as they gain in social recognition. And in a similar fashion, there could be a comment on every of the characters. Yet I just want to state here that they are not only characters of that time. They could perhaps be true characters of times in the past and in the future. They are in a way universal, and that’s what makes the work continue to be studied and read not only for purposes of academic study, but also for entertainment. Only a few years ago the BBC broadcasted a TV series reproducing this novel. [1] Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice. Wordsworth Classics. Kent, 1999, p. 1 [2] Ibidem, p. 85 [3] Ibidem, p. 85 [4] Ibid., p. 45 as an example. [5] Austen mentions five kinds of card games in which her characters spend a good deal of their time together: loo (p. 25), piquet (p. 32), lottery tickets (p. 51), quadrille (p. 61), casino (p. 114). [6] As an example, on (p. 91). [7] P. 24. [8] P. 106. [9] Pp. 105, 161. [10] On page 2. [11] O. c., p. 252. [12] O. c., p. 255. [13] Ibidem, p. 4. [14] Ibidem, p. 4.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife[1].
Austin is presenting a picture of part of the Eighteenth Century English society. Single women, like the character Charlotte, have almost no other goal in life that achieving a good marriage. As an example we can analyse how the sudden news of her engagement to Mr Collins is received by the family and even by herself[2]:
Lady Lucas began directly to calculate with more interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer Mr Bennet was likely to live; and Sir William gave it as his decided opinion, that whenever Mr Collins should be in possession of the Longbourn estate, it would be highly expedient that both he and his wife should make their appearance at St Jame’s.
So basically her parents are not thinking about Charlotte, about her happiness, not even about the kind of man Mr Collins is (will he love her?, will he look after her?, do they come along together well?). For Ms and Mr Lucas, Mr Collins is just the future possessor of a good estate (that for the time being belongs to their neighbours). Let us see now what her siblings think:
The whole family in short were properly overjoyed by the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte’s dying an old maid.
The girls think that they will be able to come out sooner now. Why? Because their (elder) sister will be already married. Their parents will be relieved from the burden of getting Charlotte placed with someone, a good (acceptable at least) husband, and will take care of the younger sisters. Charlotte at twenty seven years of age must have been perceived as very old for that time standards. Meanwhile her brothers can have assurance not –again- that their sister will be in good hands or that she will be happy, but that they will not have to provide for her. And what is in Charlotte’s mind? It seems along the book that not even Elizabeth, her close friend, can figure out why she got married to Mr Collins. Austen says:
Charlotte herself was tolerable composed… Mr Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome… But still he would be a husband.-Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be the pleasantest preservative from want [3].
Within that context, a few sub-topics arise. They all have to do with the main issue of getting married, and depict the different attitudes with which the protagonists face this event in their own lives.
Since there is no space and time to describe at length each of the cases, we can at least mention them here. The different couples around the main one –Elizabeth and Mr Darcy- are: Mr and Mrs Bennet, Mr Collins and Charlotte, Lydia and Mr Wickham, Jane and Mr Bingley, and Mr and Mrs Gardiner. They all show, besides the main topic of getting married, the view they had from life. They show in their lives what the people of their kind used to do on an everyday basis. Their time was spent in paying visits to neighbours, playing backgammon [4] or cards[5], speaking about London[6] and spending whole months on holidays. Elizabeth spends days at Netherfield[7] visiting Jane, weeks at Hunsford[8] with Mrs and Mr Collins, and –at least in the original plans- months during summer at the Lakes[9].
Neither of the characters appears to have a job, and it is part of their class and their time. Yet at the same time the world outside (their social circle) faced wars, hunger and emigration from the United Kindgom to North America and Australia, just to mention two destinies. Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s mansion (Rosings) or Mr Darcy’s Pemberley House were not an ‘average’ property for the time.
This is the world in which the author develops her novel, and which she herself was part up to some point. Elizabeth, Pride and Prejudice’s main protagonist, lives in her time, but is not swallowed by it so to speak. She transcends it, lake probably Austin did with her own time.
Who
The main plot has to do with Elizabeth and Mr Darcy. But interwoven with them, Mr Bingley and Jane, Mr and Mrs Bennet, Mr and Mrs Lucas, Mr and Mrs Gardiner, Mr Wickham and Lydia, Mr Collins and Charlotte, appear on the scene. Other characters, not married (“yet” or “anymore”) are Elizabeth’s younger sisters (Mary, Lydia, Kitty), Charlotte’s brothers and sisters (already referred to in this work[10]), Mrs Phillips, Colonel Fitzwilliam, Mrs Reynolds –Pemberley’s house keeper-, and –eminently- Lady Catherine de Bourgh, among others.
Mrs Bennet represents a character who was beautiful when young, but not very intelligent. She is all feelings, and tries to call attention from everyone else in the family. She may be depressed and overjoyed, or think someone the most wretched person or the most worthy in the world, just from one minute to the other. ‘Good gracious!’, she complains as she stays at a window in the morning,
if that disagreeable Mr Darcy is not coming here again with our dear Bingley. What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but he would go a shooting, or something or other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him?[11]
And yet, only a few hours later, she exclaims:
Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr Darcy! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! I am so pleased – so happy. Such a charming man! – so handsome! so tall! – Oh, my dear Lizzy, pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Everything that is charming! Three daughters married! [12]
In short, Mrs Bennet was a woman
… of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news [13].
Mr Bennet, Austen describes him, was
…so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character… [14]
Telling the whole story there is an omniscient narrator who ‘knows more’, though, about Elizabeth and has her as main focus.
What
Basically, Pride and Prejudice describes a part of Elizabeth Bennet’s life, and all the people involved with her in one way or another. And that concrete passage of her life is when she marries. The whole novel develops around two words that make for its title: Mr Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice about him. Along the months she gets to know him and thinks of him as a very proud man, in comparison to his friend Mr Bingley and even to his enemy Mr Wickham. Darcy is in love with Elizabeth almost from the very beginning, but she doesn’t know. For her, he is only a proud man that besides thinks very poorly of her. She doesn’t even consider him. As events go on, she will be every time more confirmed in her belief, up to the point in which Darcy proposes to her and, after her rejection, he explains himself in some of the reasons she gives when she rejects him. Elizabeth realises that she had been deceived, not only by her first impressions but also by Mr Wickham’s account of Darcy’s personality. From then on, through different events, the whole story will tend to Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s union.
When
It happens in a society like the one in the late Eighteenth Century and early Nineteenth Century. Probably the account, though happening during two different years in the calendar, lasts only a few months, maybe not even a year.
How
Austen first describes the characters, labels them in the protagonists’ and readers’ minds, and then builds a plot in which surprises take place. It is unexpected, for example, that Mr Bingley suddently vanishes from the Netherfields and goes to London without any notice to the Bennet’s (especially to Jane). It is surprising to find out that Fitzwilliam Darcy is Lady Catherine’s nephew. It is surprising that Lydia escapes with Mr Wickham. And it is, finally, surprising, to find the help Darcy provides to solve this problem.
Why
It seems that Austen is trying, on the one hand, to describe the society she lives in. Her main character Elizabeth could almost have been the author herself, though the plot’s outcome is sadder in real life than in the novel. Elizabeth, an intelligent woman, captured, however, in the rules of the social game of her time, makes her way on, and gets through the story with a happy ending.
I definitely liked the novel. At some points I felt it slow. But this is not a defect of the story itself, nor of the author, but rather a way in the style of the writer to show how long time went on sometimes for the characters.
I liked the way she manages to surprise the reader. I think the interest of the one who is following the plot would increase if Austen would have added a small paragraph at the end of all –or at leas most- of the chapters, in a way that the reader would not feel the chapter complete (only), but leading to something else. I have noticed that Tolkien, for example, uses this literary tool very well.
One cannot but feel sorry for ironic and at the same time careless Mr Bennet, who spends his life as if escaping from reality and his duties as a husband and as a father. Mrs Bennet becomes funny and annoying with the values she expresses. Her values are surprising, though surely representative of many women like her at that time and place. She seems ready to sacrifice her daughters’ happiness and even their reputation, as long as they gain in social recognition. And in a similar fashion, there could be a comment on every of the characters. Yet I just want to state here that they are not only characters of that time. They could perhaps be true characters of times in the past and in the future. They are in a way universal, and that’s what makes the work continue to be studied and read not only for purposes of academic study, but also for entertainment. Only a few years ago the BBC broadcasted a TV series reproducing this novel. [1] Jane Austin, Pride and Prejudice. Wordsworth Classics. Kent, 1999, p. 1 [2] Ibidem, p. 85 [3] Ibidem, p. 85 [4] Ibid., p. 45 as an example. [5] Austen mentions five kinds of card games in which her characters spend a good deal of their time together: loo (p. 25), piquet (p. 32), lottery tickets (p. 51), quadrille (p. 61), casino (p. 114). [6] As an example, on (p. 91). [7] P. 24. [8] P. 106. [9] Pp. 105, 161. [10] On page 2. [11] O. c., p. 252. [12] O. c., p. 255. [13] Ibidem, p. 4. [14] Ibidem, p. 4.