<![CDATA[Pride and Prejudice]]>

false <![CDATA[Pride and Prejudice]]> 1885 718 "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Next to the exhortation at the beginning of Moby-Dick, "Call me Ishmael," the first sentence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice must yep be among the most quoted in literature. And certainly what Melville did for whaling Austen does for marriage--tracing the intricacies (not to mention the economics) of 19th-century British mating rituals with a sure hand and an unblinking eye. As usual, Austen trains her sights on a country village and a few families--in this case, the Bennets, the Philips, and the Lucases. Into their midst comes Mr. Bingley, a single man of good fortune, and his friend, Mr. Darcy, who is even richer. Mrs. Bennet, who married above her station, sees their arrival as an opportunity to marry off at least one of her five daughters. Bingley is complaisant and easily charmed by the eldest Bennet girl, Jane; Darcy, however, is harder to please. Put off by Mrs. Bennet's vulgarity and the untoward behavior of the three younger daughters, he is unable to see the true worth of the older girls, Jane and Elizabeth. His excessive pride offends Lizzy, who is more than willing to believe the worst that other people have to say of him; when George Wickham, a soldier stationed in the village, does indeed have a discreditable tale to tell, his words fall on fertile ground. Having set up the central misunderstanding of the novel, Austen then brings in her cast of fascinating secondary characters: Mr. Collins, the sycophantic clergyman who aspires to Lizzy's hand but settles for her best friend, Charlotte, instead; Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr. Darcy's insufferably snobbish aunt; and the Gardiners, Jane and Elizabeth's low-born but noble-hearted aunt and uncle. Some of Austen's best comedy comes from mixing and matching these representatives of different classes and economic strata, demonstrating the hypocrisy at the heart of so many social interactions. And though the novel is rife with romantic misunderstandings, rejected proposals, disastrous elopements, and a requisite happy ending for those who deserve one, Austen never gets so carried away with the romance that she loses sight of the hard economic realities of 19th-century matrimonial maneuvering. Good marriages for penniless girls such as the Bennets are hard to come by, and even Lizzy, who comes to sincerely value Mr. Darcy, remarks when asked when she first began to love him: "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." She may be joking, but there's more than a little truth to her sentiment, as well. Jane Austen considered Elizabeth Bennet "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print". Readers of Pride and Prejudice would be hard-pressed to disagree. --Alix Wilber 3060926 book 1813 Pride and Prejudice total:189394|5:103893|4:50601|3:23650|2:7305|1:3945| 189394 811374 233608 11813 2 57 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 20:14:00 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 30 20:27:43 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 52 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Wed Mar 07 11:01:51 -0800 2007 Mon Mar 12 10:22:57 -0700 2007
I must confess I have been known to expre...more...]]> 5 34 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1994 Mon Feb 25 09:11:18 -0800 2008 Thu Apr 10 15:50:38 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 47 false false Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2000 Sun Aug 12 04:20:42 -0700 2007 Sun Aug 12 04:37:08 -0700 2007
I had to read it for AP English and I could not see the point. Girls need to marry. Girls can't get married. Girls are sad. Girls get married. Girls are happy.

I went to school to hal...more...]]> 1 31 false false Sun Oct 05 13:55:48 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 20 12:24:37 -0700 2008
Gentle Reader, please do not dare to vote for this review because, properly speaking, it is not a review; it is a raging, spittle-flying polemic, only tangentially related to its purported subject. If you vote for this -- in earnest, in defiance, or as a consequence of a wayward mouse click --...more...]]> 5 18 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1990 Sat Oct 20 15:39:23 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 20 15:39:23 -0700 2007 Pride and Prejudice that hasn't already been said a thousand times. It is one of the best books I've ever read, if not the best. It is like a textbook on how to pace a story, which is a hard thing to do, for me at least. It is a perfect social comedy. The dialo...more...]]> 4 9 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Sep 29 07:28:19 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 29 07:28:19 -0700 2007 P&P was a little hard to relate to because it was written a long time ago, when women had to wear uncomfortable clothing to try and look pretty and were defined mostly base...more...]]> 2 11 false false Sat Jul 04 20:48:09 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 14 02:56:13 -0700 2008 Sat Jul 04 20:48:09 -0700 2009 Pride and Prejudice: a Memoir (Volume One)

Characters:
Choupette: a greasy-haired, pockmarked, vampire-toothed adolescent
V.V. de Poi: Choupette's crazy-ass friend
Mariam: another friend (plays viola)
Suzy: scary weird person under the desk.
Miss Harris: despisè...more...]]> 5 8 false false Fri Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1993 Thu Feb 07 08:52:33 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 28 15:07:07 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 7 false false Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Sun Apr 15 11:20:17 -0700 2007 Sun Apr 15 11:20:17 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 6 false true Thu Nov 10 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Thu Feb 28 16:44:17 -0800 2008 Thu Feb 28 16:53:23 -0800 2008 When Charles Bingley, a rich single man, moves to the Netherfield estate, the neighborhood residents are thrilled, especially Mrs. Bennet,...more...]]> 5 7 false true Sun Jan 27 10:30:09 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 31 14:15:03 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 25 false false Thu Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2002 Fri Mar 20 14:42:44 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 20 14:45:19 -0700 2009 I was not, however, forced to give it 5 stars.]]> 5 8 false false Tue Jan 01 10:32:43 -0800 2008 Wed May 28 11:26:01 -0700 2008 5 10 false false Tue Jan 06 18:11:04 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 06:50:37 -0800 2009
When I was about 26, I decided to go back to school for my Master's (in Computer Science). As part of the application process, I had to take the GRE. One evening I was ha...more...]]> 2 6 false false Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Sun Dec 23 14:29:45 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 23 14:51:33 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 7 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 08 14:59:47 -0800 2007 Wed Jan 09 12:06:29 -0800 2008 This is taking a year.
Wait, who's Aunt is who's?
Funny that you Bennet parents birthed both flat characters and round characters. Is "round character" a recessive gene?
No! Don't write another long letter.
Oh, you should li...more...]]> 5 3 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1983 Tue Aug 14 15:17:34 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 16 15:27:10 -0700 2007
I feel compelled to add that this was long before Colin Firth appea...more...]]> 4 13 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 1997 Thu May 24 07:28:20 -0700 2007 Thu May 24 07:36:20 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 4 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1997 Sun Sep 09 17:50:51 -0700 2007 Sun Sep 09 18:19:59 -0700 2007
I was forced to read the book in 9th grade English class. This was perhaps the most tedious school assignment I've received to date. For several pages a lady remarks to a man...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=2328992