Pride and Prejudice…Again

I can barely remember a time when I hadn’t read Pride and Prejudice. My mother read it over and over so it was always lying around the house and one day I picked it up. The rest is, as they say, history. By the time I was ten or so I had read all of Austen’s novels and every biography about her that I could get my hands on. I was slightly obsessed. I still am. Austen’s novels are what I pick up when I am tired, when I am stressed, when I don’t know what book to bring with me when I am walking out the door. I don’t always read them all the way through. Sometimes it is enough to selectively read my favorite bits. Sometimes I binge them one after the other. Whenever and however I read them they are gems.

Jane Austen’s novels can be whatever you need or want them to be in the moment. Maybe you want to read about people falling in love and getting married. Her books definitely provide that but they are so much more. You can read them as a social commentary on women’s place in society at the time. You can read them for their wit. After all, who could fail to laugh at Mr. Collins? Some people read them for the window they provide into a previous time period. Others read because they simply enjoy a good story. No matter what your reason is, every time you read an Austen novel again you find something else to admire, some nuance of language or little connection that you missed before.

Most people know the basic outline of Pride and Prejudice. Five daughters, an entail, various eligible and not so eligible gentlemen, and several marriages at the end. It does not sound like much of a plot to base a book around when you phrase it that way but that is part of Austen’s genius. She takes the little things, everyday life, and makes it enthralling. We are all somehow in the story with her as she writes it. We all cringe with Lizzy as her family exposes their foibles at the Netherfield ball. We all read Darcy’s letter along with Elizabeth and then feel her embarrassment when he unexpectedly arrives at Pemberley. The story feels real even though it is set in a time and place unfamiliar to us. The people feel real. They are admirable and flawed, comic and sedate, arrogant and friendly. They are people we could meet in our everyday lives and we probably have met people similar to them.

Pride and Prejudice tends to be the general favorite of Austen’s novels and it was mine for many years and still is on some days. It is just as “light and bright and sparkling” as Austen herself described it. It was written by a very young woman and it reads that way in the best possible manner. It is accomplished and touches on darker themes while being overall light and fun. The reader enjoys the wit and only later thinks about why Mrs. Bennet is so determined to marry her daughters off or why Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins. It takes an unbelievable amount of talent to write such a fun book that has so many layers to it.

As time has gone on many readers have turned Darcy into the perfect romantic hero and Elizabeth into the perfect heroine. There is a whole world of Darcy-themed paraphernalia for sale. (How about a “Talk Darcy to Me” t-shirt?) But, in a way, this misses the mark. They are near-perfect characters but they are not meant to be perfect people and that is a large part of their success. Darcy was arrogant and unfriendly at times. Elizabeth was judgmental and difficult. They displayed pride and prejudice. They needed to grow as people. We love them because that is what they did and not because Darcy is dark and brooding.

I like to think that I loved Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice before loving them was cool. Before the merchandise and the miniseries and the movies. I think many people feel that way. They, and I, want to believe that our relationship with an author who has been dead since 1817 is real. That somehow she is special to us and her books are our own. But that isn’t true, much as it pains me to write it. That is part of her genius. Several hundred years later she is still working her magic on us, her readers. We are still reading and rereading. We always will. That is a truth universally acknowledged.