Book 23: Great Britain: England (English) – Pride and Prejudice (Jane AUSTEN)

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession
of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his
first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds
of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property
of some one or other of their daughters.”
Surely that is one of the most famous, and best, kick-offs to a novel ever. And the pure brilliance of being able to summarise a plot in a single sentence carries through the book.

How do you choose what to read from a country that could keep you reading for generations, if you discovered the secret of immortality? In the end, I ended up with the book I was reading at the time (or, one of them).
Having escaped having to read it at school, I first had a go at this classic and deeply loved novel a few years ago. I found it hard to engage with a cast of females who seemed to have no aspirations for their lives other than to get married – it had little appeal to me and it all seemed rather sad. However at second attempt it did eventually grab me. I could hardly criticise a work for its theme (so wonderfully summarised in its ingenious first sentence) or for portraying life and mores of the idle rich and not-so-rich as they were at the time of its setting. Austen, like her heroine, does wry humour very well. It is in fact a very sparkling book and I can understand why it is so well-loved.
I don’t think it would be spoiling the well-known plot for anyone if I revealed that the guy gets his girl (or the other way round) in the end. Anyone who had lived in a vacuum and never heard of the book would see the inevitability of the denouement from the beginning. But it’s Austen’s genius that for almost all of the book we can’t see how the headstrong Elizabeth and the arrogant Darcy could ever get together. It took me a while, but I finally appreciate what a marvellous work it is..

Jane Austen (1775 – 1817), Pride and Prejudice, London: Penguin, 1975 (originally 1813), ISBN 0-14-043072-5