Pride and Prejudice
I've just finished reading 'Pride and Prejudice' and all of a sudden it became my favorite novel. It's charming and heart-warming in its own way. The novel's first line-- "
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife"--gives you the idea that the novel revolves around marriage. It gives emphasis on the society of the eighteenth century and the need for young women to find a husband in possession of a good fortune. The motive of marriage is purely for the sake of economic survival.
I will only give a short narrative about the book. It starts with the conversation at Longbourn, the Bennet household, about the upcoming arrival of Mr. Bingley, "a man of large fortune" to Netherfield Park, a nearby estate. Mrs. Bennet sees Mr. Bingley as a potential suitor for her daughters, and attempts to persuade Mr. Bingley to visit him. There are five daughters in the Bennet family. Mr. Bennet seems to prefer Elizabeth, the second oldest, because of her intelligence, while Mrs. Bennet seems fonder of the oldest, Jane, because of her beauty, and the middle child, Lydia, because of her good humor. We follow Miss Elizabeth Bennet through a number of early-18th-century crises her first encounter with the excessively proud and unlikeable Fitzwilliam Darcy; her desire to nourish the growing affection between her older sister Jane and the somewhat unassuming Charles Bingley; her refusal of the proposal of marriage from her odious cousin the clergyman Mr. Collins; her relationship with Mr. Wickham -- who is not all that he would prefer to seem; her visit to Rosings Park, the domain of the Lady Catherine, an aristocrat of great "condescension"; her trip through the Peak District with her aunt and uncle Gardiner, culminating on the grounds of Darcy's huge estate at Pemberley; Lydia Bennet's elopement with Wickham; and eventually Eliza's marriage to a Darcy now revealed as perfectly amiable.
If you haven't read the book, I suggest you read it. It's really a great book. It gives you a lot of insights and a picture of the society of the eighteenth century. I can't wait to see the Pride and Prejudice movie which stars Keira Knightley.
Labels: books, love, marriage
