Pride and Prejudice

張貼日期：Jan 31, 2010 4:29:38 AM

Pride and Prejudice

Recommended by Ms. Li-Wen Chang

Ever since its first publication in 1813, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has never lost its popularity in either academia or market. Doubtlessly recent movies such as “Bridget Jones’s Diary” (2001), “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason” (2004), “Pride and Prejudice” (2005), “Becoming Jane” (2007), and “The Jane Austen Book Club” (2007) have reinforced the public interest in Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, a novel that utilizes the theme of marriage to demonstrate the social manners, gender relationship, class issues, and moral standard in the U.K. at the turn of the nineteenth century.

One can easily perceive Austen’s humor and sarcasm on the marriage institution of her day from the very first sentence of the novel, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” A keen observer of her time and people in her social class, Austen is crystal clear about the meaning and function of marriage to both men and women. With the romances of the Bennet daughters, Austen not only exposes class hierarchy and the snobbishness of the upper/middle class, she also highlights how the social norms help to establish and stabilize gender stereotypes and the forms of courtship. With the seven marriage presented in the novel, moreover, Austen subtly ridicules traditional conjugal union, yet she does not forget to remind her readers that true love, while assisting people transcend class and social boundaries, is the essential foundation of a successful marriage.

Presented in third-person point of view, the story is basically told through Elizabeth Bennet: the ways she criticizes conventional matrimony, condemns class divisions, and generalizes people from the wealthy families. Her relationship with Mr. Darcy, meanwhile, underscores the title of the novel–her “prejudice” against his “pride.” It is not necessary for us to make a quick match and equate Darcy with “pride” and Elizabeth with “prejudice,” since both characters possess the two features that prevent them from seeing the truths and understanding each other. What we should pay special attention to, however, is how first impression (the original title) attach people to stereotypes, and how love melts antagonism between people in different classes. What we should also take into consideration is how this old novel goes beyond time and space and always remains in top 10 novels.