Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

I was sad when I finished this book because it's that good! I loved Emma, and I loved Sense & Sensibility. I loved Persuasion and Mansfield Park. I always thought Pride & Prejudice couldn't be that much better than her other books--until I read it. I can see why this book is her most famous, and I can't believe she wrote it at nineteen. This book is known for inspiring romance fiction, but honestly, I don't know why other people bother writing spin-off stories. This story is too perfect to be improved upon.

The greatest works of art have both universal and simple basic elements, and this story is both incredibly simple (boy meets girl), but also contains a variety of dynamics so that almost anyone to relate to it. A wise aunt told me years ago that you can have 4 kinds of guy problems. 1. No guys.

2. A guy likes you, but you don't like him. 3. You like a guy, but he doesn't like you. 4. You and a guy like each other. (More later on why that's a problem.)

In this story, Elizebeth Bennet experiences all four scenarios in that order, with the addition of Wickham, who Lizzie liked, but shouldn't have. The book opens with the five Bennet girls waiting around for husbands to rescue them from poverty. And all the while, "Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets." (Read that out loud with a British accent.)

First, Lizzie rejects two proposals, once from Mr. Collins who is ridiculous, and once from Mr. Darcy, who she dislikes altogether. So the transition from "no guys" to two proposals is all bad news in Lizzie's book.

As the plot unfolds and Lizzie finds herself mentally attached to Mr. Darcy she is disappointed in herself for rejecting him. She begins to like him and he must not like her. By then we know they are both in love with each other, but Lizzie thinks she is wasting her emotion to care about him. This is why liking each other is a problem - the problem is coming to the revelation. For Lizzie, part of the problem is explaining why she's going to marry this man she used to hate, and now it looks like she's just marrying for money. She tries to convince her parents of her real emotions, but in the end, only Darcy really understands how she feels. In fact, her problems are not over until Darcy's second proposal. She is still embarrassed, and feeling "more than common awkwardness and anxiety."

There is no dialogue in the book at Lizzie's acceptance of Darcy's second proposal, only that her reply was with "gratitude and pleasure." And Jane Austen's genius shows in the way she handles these important moments. She zooms out, and leaves the couple standing there, almost as if even the reader doesn't dare intrude, and tells us, "The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do." She leaves you amused, and wondering what's so sensible about a man "violently in love."

I think the beauty of Darcy and Lizzie is that in the end, they were both humbled by their love. Darcy married far below his social status and disappointed his family's expectations. He humbles himself to pursue a peasant. For Lizzie's part, she has to admit that she loves Darcy when she had rejected him to his face and to others. She is humbled to receive his love, and the gift of his saving her entire family from ruin. Only Jane Austen could make you think that a poor disgraced girl marrying a millionaire was actually a humbling experience for the girl. But we know, ironically, since many characters in the book don't realize, that they really married for love. This book ends non-famously by saying that the couple stayed friends with the Gardiners, "who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them."