“Pride and Prejudice” (1813) is a romance novel by Jane Austen, widely considered her best. Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy cannot stand each other – but then
Warning: Spoilers!
fall in love.
The first sentence:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
It is set in Regency England (1795-1837), among the landed gentry of Hertfordshire, 40 km north of the centre of London. It is probably the early 1810s – there is still a war going on – or arguably the 1790s when Austen wrote the first draft. Austen is why so many romance novels are set in that time and place.
Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” (1929) on Jane Austen and Emily Bronte:
“They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue – write this, think that.”
The Bennetts have five daughters. From oldest to youngest:
- Jane (age 22)
- Elizabeth – “Lizzy” (20)
- Mary (18)
- Catherine – “Kitty” (17)
- Lydia (15)
The bachelorettes: Jane, Elizabeth, Lydia, and their cousin Charlotte Lucas.
The bachelors, listed from richest to poorest by yearly income in pounds:
- Mr Darcy – 10,000
- Mr Bingley – about 4,500
- Mr Collins – 2,000+ after Mr Bennett dies
- Mr Wickham – less than 1,500 (what a colonel makes)
They have first names, but they hardly ever use them.
Money: In those days, the middle class started at maybe 150, the upper class at maybe 1,000. Upper-class income comes mainly from owning land, sometimes by having a commission in the army or a living in the clergy. At 10,000 a year, Mr Darcy is one of the richest men in England.
Elizabeth’s father makes 2,000. But because he has no sons (see above), upon his death his wealth will fall to the nearest male relative – the cringey Mr Collins himself. That means Elizabeth will be left with just 40 to 50 a year. Thus the need for the five daughters to marry well.
Love: The book is not so much about love but about picking the right man to be happily married. Lydia marries for love, Charlotte for money. Both become cautionary tales for Elizabeth, our heroine. Elizabeth says she married for both – and for Mr Darcy’s excellent moral character – but arguably she fell in love not so much with Mr Darcy himself but with his vast, beautiful estate of Pemberley in the north of England. You be the judge!
Empiricism: This book most reminds me of – Thucydides! He wrote a history of the war between Athens and Sparta, which sounds like a very different book. But Austen and Thucydides not only write in the same classic prose style, but both take an observational or empirical approach to human beings, judging character and motive based on people’s rational self-interest and a close observation of what they do, not what they say. Something Elizabeth Bennett learns the hard way in the course of the book. Austen lays bare people as they are, not as we wish them to be.
– Abagond, 2021.
See also:
- books – books I read in 2021
- Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own
- English country houses
- Money in Jane Austen’s time
- classic prose style
- love stories:
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Abagond 
I first read this novel in my 50s, almost 20 years ago. The opening line grabbed me. For the first time in my life, I felt potentially useful, if only I had a good fortune.
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