May 02, 2001 12:40 PM
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Jane Austen is regarded as the greatest of English women novelists, noted particularly for her sparkling social comedy and accurate vision of human relationships ; her novels are still as widely read today as they have ever been.
Jane Austen’s self-contained life often seems reflected in her novels, which, peopled as they are by impoverished clerical families, eligible country squires, foolish snobs and husband-hunting women, seem to portray the world in miniature.
''It is the truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife ''
–This is the opening para of ‘pride and prejudice’ which sets the tone of her sparkling comedy of manners and morals….There are five daughters in the Bennet family and marriage is the only career open to them. The plot revolves around a love story of three sisters: Jane, Elizabeth and Lydia from this family.
''Prejudice'' is said about Elizabeth, a beautiful young lady with eyes too beautiful and expressive even for artist’s paints.
''Pride'' is said about Darcy, a gentleman who falls madly in love with her.
Both are independent, honest, strong headed and blunt, but as the book progresses, their paths meet. Just enough for them to get to know each other and realize that their pride and prejudices about each other were misguided. They learn each other and learn to give and take for the sake of their love.
Only by taking the route of self-knowledge do they reach a mature understanding of each other and find lasting contentment.
Austen people’s her book with memorable characters. She uses conversations as her main device of characterization. For example, Austen uses Mrs.Bennet’s complaints to show us her weak, self-pitying egoism.
''I have no pleasure in talking to undutiful children. Not that I have much pleasure, indeed, in talking to any body. People who suffer as much as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied?''
Austen’s emphasis on conversation as the basis of characterization and of human relationships in civilized society betrays her Neoclassical sympathies.
She uses such ‘flat’ characters to incarnate and criticize a social condition. Mrs.Bennet is clearly not an exemplary female role model. Because of her station in the leisure class, she is preoccupied with money, marriage, and all other factors in climbing an ostensibly stable social ladder that has actually been made rather rickety by changing sexual politics in post French-Revolution England. Her machinations are made all the more difficult and frantic by the notions of feminine propriety that Elizabeth so unbecomingly holds. Faced with all these stimuli, Mrs.Bennet becomes very distressed and confused that a simple social phenomenon like marriage could become so complicated by love and politics and what not.
In Ms. Bennet, Austen draws up the most obvious caricature of traditional values and the quiet turbulence of the world of Pride and Prejudice.
It’s a sweet, short novel; it has humor, romance, wit and a great plot, all rolled into one book. This is my wife’s favorite book, she read it several times.
This is one of my favorite books too, as I like Elizabeth Bennett. She judges too quickly, stubborn, firm, honest, blatantly blunt and tends to stay that way until further notice!
