Pride and Prejudice
This is the story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy and the pride and prejudice between the two. Elizabeth is the second daughter out of five and ready to be married but while her older sister, Jane, seems close to being engaged with a rich and lovely gentleman named Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth is, to her mother’s great distress, in no hurry to accept just anyone. Through Mr. Bingley Elizabeth meets Mr. Darcy, an eligible bachelor and even richer than Mr. Bingley but Elizabeth only sees him as arrogant and conceited. Mr. Darcy, on the other hand, thinks Elizabeth from a poor family and is quick to remark her shortcomings. Despite this he falls for her but being together is not that easy. Can they every have a chance if being together if they can’t get over their pride and prejudice?
I’ve said before that classic novels are a sensitive subject since it sometimes feels like you have to like them because they are a classic. However, I’ve stumbled across a few that hasn’t measured up in the least and I’m sad to say that this was one of them. It took forever to read the book and it was mostly because nothing every really happened. Yes, older books do have a different language and things aren’t like they are today but some classics are great despite this. I adored Persuasion, for example, but it felt like that story actually moved forward while Pride and Prejudice seemed to stand still most of the time.
Much of the story is just about being told what Elizabeth does during the day, how long her walks are and what she’s thinking about while she’s out walking. There’s a lot of details regarding her sisters and their lives, what they do and say even though it doesn’t feel like it brings anything to the actual story. A lot of things are repeated and I had a hard time understanding certain parts more than once since the characters talked in such a pompous way. I had to go back and reread many times though it did not always help. Big portions of the novel was spent at the same place during long intervals in which nothing really happened and the overall feeling was that the story stood still during most part of the novel. What I liked about Persuasion was that things actually happened and the characters moved the story forward while Pride and Prejudice mostly consisted of talking, thinking or the reading of many, many letters, most of which was very boring and not always necessary.
It’s almost painful to say these things since this is a literary legacy but I can’t lie and say that it was good. I was disappointed, though the love story between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy is ultimately sweet and at times actually made me warm inside. If the novel had just focused more on this and less on all those other boring parts (like Lady Catherine and all her useless chatter or Lydia and her superficial ways) I think this story would be really good but alas, it was not so.
I won’t go into any detail about the characters since I found most of them to be lacking in interesting personalities. I also had a hard time getting close to most of them since it was so hard to understand exactly what they were saying and therefore hard to understand them. However, the core of the story wasn’t bad and I liked that Elizabeth, in a time when a woman was only supposed to marry and be happy with a quiet life, didn’t accept the first man who proposed to her but instead chose to be alone and piss of her mother rather than marry a guy she disliked. She had spunk and seemed to know her worth and that was one of the good things in the novel. As to whether I recommend it or not… well, I personally think there are better choices out there but it’s not a horrible novel and if you want to give it a chance then you should, if not for any other reason than to make up your own opinions on it.