In accordance with my usual procedure, I finished reading this book earlier today (after lunch, while eating a few stray doughnuts); I am now doing my review of the book, and this evening at 7:00 pm I will be discussing the book with the other members of the Third Tuesday Book Club. I will say that I had read the book many years ago, certainly before I started keeping lists of the books I read (which was in 1999), and that I had remembered it as being a fun read. I can now report that my memory was not faulty on that point, even if I had forgotten just about everything else in the book.
The book opens with the immortal line, “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 September in the year 1811, and Mrs. Bennet of Longbourn is quite excited that a Mr. Bingley has taken the nearby country estate of Netherfield, and that he is rich and unmarried. Her thoughts immediately turn to how she can turn this chance into marriage for one of her five daughters: Jane (22), Elizabeth (20), Mary (about 18), Catherine, known as Kitty (17) and Lydia (15). She thereby applies to her husband, Mr. Bennet; he must call at Netherfield so that Mr. Bingley can eventually become introduced to the daughters. He does so, and a few weeks later Mr Bingley attends a dance with his unmarried sister, his married sister and her husband, and “another young man”, who is admired for being rich and handsome, until he was found to “be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased”. When Mr. Bingley encourages his friend, Mr. Darcy, to dance with the Bennet daughter sitting nearby, Mr. Darcy makes disparaging comments about the said daughter, loud enough for the daughter in question to hear. This is Elizabeth Bennet, who is intelligent, lively, and outspoken, with a tendency to judge on first impressions. She immediately decides that she cannot abide Mr. Darcy for his pridefulness; and her prejudice against him defines her relations with him for the first half of the novel.
The book follows the Bennet daughters, and Elizabeth in particular, as they make their way through the next year and a half, meeting other men in society. Mr. Collins is Mr. Bennet’s cousin, who will one day inherit Longbourn; as he is a clergyman who has a rich patron (whom he adores), and as she has told him to get a wife, he comes to Longbourn to marry one of his cousin’s daughters (he does not much care which one). Mr. Wickham, who joins the militia stationed in the nearby town, is quite the gentleman, who grew up with Mr. Darcy, and who feels he has been hardly used by Mr. Darcy.
Besides being a very good story, with unforgettable characters (Austen is quite as good at characterization as Charles Dickens), it is a fascinating window into a time and place little understood by those of us in the Western 21st Century. It is a world where people of a certain class have standards of style, dress, and etiquette to maintain, and where one simply does not do things that are not sanctioned by society. It is also a world where class is extremely important; there are rules and regulations (mostly unwritten, but still very important) for how one interacts with one who is of a lower social class, and how one interacts with one who is of a higher social class. It is furthermore a world where rich young men essentially do nothing, because they can afford to do nothing, and where women learn to draw, or sing, or play the piano, and wait for the rich young men to come and court them. The worst fate (almost) that can befall a woman is to not become married, because then one is dependent on one’s brothers for support.
I will also note the invaluable assistance rendered by my having read an Annotated edition of the book; the text of the book is on the left-hand pages, and the annotations are on the facing right-hand pages. The annotations cover unfamiliar words, and also contain citations from Austen’s life, letters, and other writings. One can certainly read the book and enjoy the book without the annotations, but in my opinion they made for a more enriched reading of the book; and I will happily use the information from the annotations at my Third Tuesday Book Club meeting tonight.
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