Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

[Thomas Novosel]

This is the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr.Darcy, and how they came to love one another. After a multitude of conversations, letters and gossip between their families, and others within the country. The rich Mr.Darcy begins to feel an attachment, and then a love, for Ms.Bennet. However Mr.Bennet is too proud of himself, his connections (his friends), family and wealth to consider being "With" Lizzy. And she upon noticing this pride, and how ridiculously full of himself he is, she becomes negatively biased to him. So this is the story of Mr.Darcy trying to earn Elizabeth's affectionl...

This classic written by Jane Austen in 1813, is at times slow to read, and some of the language used is hard to understand. To truly enjoy this book you have to take a full notice of the conversations between these characters. Becuase that is what this book is, conversation between characters, there is not a single action-packed chapter or page in this book, gladly...it does not need to be. I have read recently that this book is considered by many a "comedy of manners," and let me be the first to say, this is not a joke book, and most of the humor in the book comes in the form of irony between what the reader knows has occured, and what the characters say has occured. It is an enjoying read altogether, it seems to be the kind of book where you read it slowly and alittle at a time.

Story----- It's a love story in a world full of many traditions, standards, and customs to which its members apply...image is everything in this book, which is why it's romance must slowwwwwlyyy...unfold.
Characters----- Some are good, some not so good. When I look back on the book it seems the most memorable character was Elizabeth Bennet, becuase she expresses her interests and opinion, but still is elegant about it.
Language----- The words are big, but after the first three chapters (about 9-11 pages) you begin to find it easier to read.

The book is obviously not a page turner, but to those kind of people who like evolving romances,... than this is probably for you, but keep a dictionary handy if your below a 12th grade reading level.

8/10

[kev67]

This is the only Jane Austen book that I've read. I was expecting something quite stodgy, but it was quite an easy read - a page turner in fact. I liked Lizzie Bennet. She did not need to go an assertiveness course.

[Buh4Bee]

I've never read it, but I have seen some version on Masterpiece Theater. I also thought it would be boring. Good to know it is not.

[kelby_lake]

The BBC series is a must watch :D At all costs, avoid the travesty that is the 2005 film version.

[qimissung]

Actuasally, I know this is heresy, but I like the 2005 version, almost as well as the mini-series. But the book is the best one of them all. I guess it's my favorite Austen. Maybe you could read it this summer, Buh4Bee. It's a treat, it really is.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Actuasally, I know this is heresy, but I like the 2005 version, almost as well as the mini-series. But the book is the best one of them all. I guess it's my favorite Austen. Maybe you could read it this summer, Buh4Bee. It's a treat, it really is.

Yes it is heresy but I won't send the boys round on this occasion. Yes I've just finished re-reading this and was an absolute delight.

Currently re-watching the BBC Sense and Sensibility (2008) which is likewise outstanding, beautifully set. I have been dreaming of that cottage on the hill. If you have not seen that it comes highly recommended.

[MorpheusSandman]

It's a masterpiece, though I still prefer Emma for its impeccable craftsmanship and Mansfield Park for its attention paid to the "outsider". What I love most about P&P is how Austen manipulates the reader's perspective through EB's gaze and mind. We see and think what she sees and thinks, and when her epistemological foundation is shaken, so is ours. In S&S Austen really set out to make a clean distinction between her titular representatives, but in P&P she set out to obscure exactly which appellation belongs to which character, and it's quite brilliant to watch.

[qimissung]

It's a masterpiece, though I still prefer Emma for its impeccable craftsmanship and Mansfield Park for its attention paid to the "outsider". What I love most about P&P is how Austen manipulates the reader's perspective through EB's gaze and mind. We see and think what she sees and thinks, and when her epistemological foundation is shaken, so is ours. In S&S Austen really set out to make a clean distinction between her titular representatives, but in P&P she set out to obscure exactly which appellation belongs to which character, and it's quite brilliant to watch.

And that is why she is so brilliant.

I have to admit I love the movie "Emma" because it is really funny (I have read the novel, but it's been awhile), and there's something so fresh and bouyant about P&P, too.

I haven't read "Mansfield Park" but I know I will like Fanny (actually I started it but never finished it). I feel a kinship with her, our personalities are similar. I find it interesting that hardly anybody ever seems to like her. Even then a more sociable, outgoing, assertive personality was approved of. I always think Jane Austen modeled Fanny on her own sister, who was apparently rather shy and retiring.

[MorpheusSandman]

Well, Fanny is the goody two-shoes who is always wanting to curtail the fun of the other characters in the novel, but I think everyone doesn't read beyond what they see as her being a personal fuddy-duddy. She was abandoned by her parents and sent to live with wealthy relatives (as it says early on), and I think that it's meant to be clear that the attitude that action fostered in her was that she had to be perfect so she wouldn't be abandoned again. Meanwhile, the children of that family have grown up wild because they feel privileged. As I see it, it's a novel about how we feel free only when we take our safety for granted, but when we've had that safety stripped away, we impose restrictions on our lives to regain that sense of safety.

[qimissung]

Brilliantly done, Morpheus!

[prendrelemick]

Fanny Price is just no good as a modern heroine. We like them plucky and lively these days - like Elizabeth Bennett in fact. Her miserable and serious demenor seems to affect Austin herself. It is as though proto-victorian values have overwhelmed and stultified her natural lively instincts. The moral of the story, that if you are good and do nothing and be patient, every thing will come to you (via the male hero,) is a message that later heroins of Victorian meladrama take on board and is also not for a modern audience. Fanny is in many ways a pre-cursor of the very moral Jane Eyre, but without her passion.

[MorpheusSandman]

Fanny isn't a good modern heroine if we think we're supposed to identify and agree with her, rather than understand why she is the way she is, and what that says about the social, moral, and personal world she inhabits. There are people who read and demand a kind of character identification, but I am not one of them.

[qimissung]

In fact, she is an intuitive feeling person, if you want to get into the Meyers Briggs thing. And, yes, they tend to be passive. It is interesting to look at the language we use to describe people and the values we ascribe to these characterizations.

Fanny was not asking these others to wait, as she did, nor did she know, or possibly believe that simply waiting would bring her what she wanted. I get the feeling (I started the book but didn't finish) that she would like to be more of an agent in her own life but she was thrust to the outside of the action before she could take stock of herself.Nor did she know how to, being quiet. It was her task to learn that. Why is being quiet always associated with being miserable?

She intuited that the interlopers did not bring with them things that would broaden their world but things that brought danger to it. It was up to her adopted family to learn to listen.

One of my main problems with the book is the city versus country theme. Why is it that the city is always presented as dangerous? I felt this was somewhat limited on Austen's part.

I myself have often had difficulty enjoying books in which I did not identify with the character. I think to a degree I am still there, but working my way to a place beyond that. I wonder, though, if part of why Fanny is seen as merely drab is that Edmund is not as dashing as Rochester. Jane Eyre is more gothic than Mansfield Park. Mansfield Park is a different kind of novel altogether and neither Fanny or Edmund have the darker, more intriguing characteristics inherent in that genre. They are, I suppose, more realistic, and are therefore, more suited to a novel that is exploring social change.

Edmund was the real wet blanket if you ask me.

[MorpheusSandman]

The comforting country VS dangerous city motif is one of the oldest in the arts and goes back to the anxiety brought about by technological advancement. One can see it depicted crystal clear in the art of pretty much every century, even the 20th (ever seen the silent film masterpiece, Sunrise by FW Murnau? It literally titles its female character who leads the married farmer astray as "the woman from the city").

[Cosmopolis]

I really, really (http://star-trek-online.browsergamez.com/) like P&P and it also was the first Austen novel I read. I pick it up again, and again, sometimes just for a few pages, may favourite (http://super-hero-squad-online.browsergamez.com/) is "Northanger Abbey" though. I just really like the teasy Mr. Tilney.

[prendrelemick]

Northanger Abbey is many people's favourite (including mine,) which is a bit strange because it is clearly not her best work. What it has though is a great deal of charm.

[TurquoiseSunset]

I love Pride and Prejudice. In fact, it's my favourite book and I read it once a year, at least. However, I can't say the same of Emma and Sense and Sensibility. I tried, I really did, but S&S was incredibly boring and I hated Emma (the character).

I also liked Northanger Abbey, but haven't tried the rest yet...it's S&S and Emma's fault.

[Alecia Stone]

Now this is a wonderful read. Loved the authenticity in both the story and the characters. One of my favourite books.

[khamsin]

Pride and Prejudice is not a novel that is only about the “conversation between characters” nor is it only a romantic storyline. But, it is truly about how the British society at the time was presented. Everything that occupied the mind of the majority involved around securing the future of a woman- simply by her being married. In a way it is to state that if a woman is not married she can’t be seen as presentable in society.

I would like to also point out that the term "comedy of manners", does not imply that this book is a joke, for the comedy of manners is a genre which depicts the manners and habits of how a society is conducted. For instance in Sheridan’s play “The School for Scandal” written prior to "Pride and Prejudice" depicts a plot on manners with a scandal to which Austin’s novel also shares and this therefore makes it appropriate to state that this term suits both works.

Manners are the “standards of conduct which demonstrate that a person is proper, caring, polite, and refined”. But, is this always the case? Jane Austen in her character of George Wickham – a handsome, polite and well mannered officer was in fact a fortune-hunting liar. We were all fooled and deceived since his cruelty was masked by his polite manners, use of language and position in society. This however, I am sure Jane Austen didn’t want to set across or demonstrate that: proper manners have no worth, since she provided us with other wealthy characters teaching us otherwise, such as Mr. Darcy.

Confucius communicated that if one did not “possess a keen sense of the well-being and interests of others his ceremonial manners signified nothing”.

In short I must say, to communicate, that I have enjoyed reading this classic British novel.

[Dreamsqueen]

it is true what you said "it is truly about how the British society at the time was presented" but most of the novels are like this , for example, sense and sensibility too

[booklover1971]

Northanger Abbey is many people's favourite (including mine,) which is a bit strange because it is clearly not her best work. What it has though is a great deal of charm.

I like Northanger Abbey the most, that being said I really enjoyed P&P as well.

[manuscript]

i would love to offer a review of P&P but it has been about 5 years since i read it and it is not fresh enough in my mind. i loved them all except S&S which i found boring and unconvincing and felt i did not really understand at all especially the character of Elinor which nauseated me with its extreme perfections. i loved Northanger both as a satire and a validation of the concerns of gothic genre especially with the nature of tyranny. my favourite was Persuasion for the reason that Austen situates it very carefully in a minutely specific historical location indicating an awareness of the temporal nature of many of the relationship concerns between men and women of her era but reserves as a purpose of the composition the timelessness of equality. a transcendent work and the jewel of her genius.

[cacian]

The one thing I take from Jane Austen is the fact that we do no longer talk or think the way they did then.
All characters are incredible but not true if we were to match them with our modern day characters.
How can a whole society devolve from such an eloquent language to swear words and slang. Attitudes and manners are no longer supportive the Austen era let alone love matches of a Darcy standard.
Had Austen been around today she/he would not have stood the chance to write the way she did. Imagine then. Where would all the sense and prejudice be then?
Let's pause and think. I guess what was in the past stays in the past.

[E.A Rumfield]

The one thing I take from Jane Austen is the fact that we do no longer talk or think the way they did then.
All characters are incredible but not true if we were to match them with our modern day characters.
How can a whole society devolve from such an eloquent language to swear words and slang. Attitudes and manners are no longer supportive the Austen era let alone love matches of a Darcy standard.
Had Austen been around today she/he would not have stood the chance to write the way she did. Imagine then. Where would all the sense and prejudice be then?
Let's pause and think. I guess what was in the past stays in the past.

The society that she described was not real in her time either. If you took a step out of that hermetically sealed world you would see what everything really was.

[OrphanPip]

The society that she described was not real in her time either. If you took a step out of that hermetically sealed world you would see what everything really was.

Well it was real to an extent, but Austen is operating from a conventional language and form that was not intended to simply capture reality like a photograph. Austen's sense of realism is one that is still drawing on Neoplatonic aesthetics, so that her goal was to provide a glimpse of an ideal reality rather than of the material world. Even so, her novels are skeptical of romantic idealism and are in dialogue with a pragmatic vision of the pedagogic potential of the novel, one that is starting to move towards an appreciation of the form as art within and of itself. She is also a pioneer in terms of the concept of characters with internal worlds. Austen's characters are arguably the first individualized figures in fiction. They are more than caricature or allegory.

[bounty]

have posted this elsewhere---I loved pride and prejudice and zombies---the movie, I couldn't get through the book.