I read this book for the Back
to the Classics Challenge 2017.
Pride and
Prejudice- Jane Austen (1813)
Delightful. The romantic comedy with a witty bite is told
from the point of view of Elizabeth Bennet, the smart sister. Lizzy is her own
person, for sure: she punctures the pompous manner of Mr. Collins; she triumphantly rejects
the haughty Mr. Darcy; she is beguiled by a wily man and forced into
introspection; she is mortified by her mother’s silliness; she stands up to
Lady de Burgh’s insolence. Her older
sister Jane is the pretty one, angelic in her optimism and tolerance. The two
youngest sisters, Kitty and Lydia, are giddy and boy-crazy. The middle sister,
Mary, a great reader, talks like a book. Lizzy’s father is an indolent husband
and father, happiest when not hassled and sarcastic when amused by the foibles
of others. Her mother is an idiot, a wonderful comic character. Elizabeth’s love
interest is first Mr. Wickham and then Mr. Darcy. The cast of secondary
characters is large, but delineated with much skill. Such is the clarity of
Austen’s writing that we readers never lose track of the ways characters are
connected to each other. Austen passes blunt judgements on her characters’
follies and empty-headed worship of money, class, position, property, and public
opinion, all of which can be lost quickly through lack of sense or luck. Austen
examines the undermining effects on social life of both willful deception and
sitting on home truths in the misplaced hopes that the impudent will somehow
reform themselves. Interestingly, she also has us readers think about how first
impressions are often as strong as they are wrong. It is mind-boggling that
this ground-breaking realistic novel was written by an author who was working with influences such
as gothic romances (Frances Burney), picaresque novels (Henry Fielding) and
adventure novels (Walter Scott). Hers is an artistic achievement – indeed, a marvel
- on the level of Lady Murasaki’s The Tale
of Genji, as Austen could not look to worthwhile models of witty novels of domestic manners,
set in narrow social worlds. Any reader that likes Anthony Trollope’s romcoms with
a little heft will like Pride and
Prejudice. But I think Austen's bluntness in describing characters puts her in the 18th century satirical style with Fielding and Smollet.
LOL, I definitely love enthusiastic reviewers like you, and fans of JA more than JA herself. It's not that I don't like this book, -which I've read twice-, it's that I don't seem to get her humor so much. (I still like her books, though)
ReplyDelete