Pride and Prejudice: A Classic Through a Modern Reader's Perspective

Moria Algren - December 4th, 2023

Published in 1813, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a favored classic that has seen multiple film, television, and play adaptations, earning it a firm presence in modern day popular culture. Pride and Prejudice is even featured on the Advanced Placement test for the Senior Literature class which is how I ended up reading it. The plot of Pride and Prejudice is simple, but enticing. It is an enemies to lovers, rags to riches story that intertwines banter, scandal, and miscommunication all into one enjoyable read. In Pride and Prejudice, the main protagonist Elizabeth Bennet meets the lead love interest Mr. Darcy at a ball where they famously start to dislike each other right away. As time moves on and tensions rise, Elizabeth simply cannot stand the man as he is arrogant, prejudiced, rude, and argumentative whilst Mr. Darcy finds himself becoming deeply enamored with his lesser.  The two fight, they bicker, and they misunderstand each other until eventually Elizabeth is forced to reconcile with a hard truth. Maybe Mr. Darcy isn’t as bad as he seems, maybe he is nicer than she originally thought. Over time, she begins to care for the man, finding herself falling deeply in love until she is unable to deny her feelings for him any longer. Luckily Mr. Darcy is as bewitched with her as he was the day they met. 

The characters are very well written and strong, having flaws, challenges, and shortcomings next to their better traits. Elizabeth who is very strong minded and stuck in her ways is in no way too stubborn where she is annoying and unlikable. Mr. Darcy is arrogant, but quickly changes his pride for awkwardness. Even the most annoying characters such as Mr. Collins are very well characterized and influence the plot in their own way. The antagonists are easy to understand and easy to dislike due to their actions and dispositions whilst the side characters are very well fleshed out as well. Austen’s writing truly shines with her characterization and development of each and every one of the characters in her world.

Finally, the writing style is very elegant, but can be very difficult to read at times. Austen is not a fan of indicating who is saying what at certain times and occasionally structures her sentences strangely. It can be easy for readers to get bored with Austen’s long paragraphs meticulously setting up the scene and characters in it before even getting to why that scene was important in the first place, and can be difficult to understand because of it.

Overall I heavily enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys enemies to lovers, slow burn romance, with a very strong female protagonist. I rate it 5/5 stars.