The Bennets are an upper class family living in rural England in the early 1800s, comprised of mother, father and daughters Jane, Elizabeth, Catherine, Mary and Lydia. Pride and Prejudice tells the story of how each of these daughters are married off, and sheds light on their quaint, yet undoubtedly flawed, 19th century way of living.
Thanks to Jane Austen’s compelling storytelling, names like Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are recognised by anyone in our modern culture, whether or not they have read the novel. And while Austen does do a marvellous job of writing complex and interesting characters, it is the book’s complete lack of a complex and interesting plot that put my rating at 3 stars. I understand that through Pride and Prejudice Austen seeks to highlight feminist and cultural issues of the day but there is only so much reading about petticoats and ballrooms that I can stomach, and I’m generally of the opinion that Charlotte Bronte did a much better job of calling attention to the subtly sexist ways of the era in Jane Eyre. Gentry women were in that time presented with few choices: they could marry (and rarely for love), live alone on their inheritance, or find one of few jobs considered acceptable, such as a governess or author. Perhaps I care so much more about Jane Eyre than Elizabeth Bennet because Jane is more spirited and independent, as opposed to Elizabeth who just sort of sits around on sofas waiting for the right man to come to her and rejecting everyone else in the meantime.
That said, Pride and Prejudice is a classic novel, and from reading it I can see why. Austen combines subtle mocking humour with engaging writing, and does it very well. Recurring themes that I noticed include the importance of family reputation, and the degree of humiliation that every family member feels when just one person has done something wrong (for instance, when one of the Bennet daughters attempts to elope, a family friend sympathises with her father by saying “The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison to this.”). Another interesting issue which I believe Austen discreetly raises is the aimless idleness of the landed gentry: as Mr Bennet pointed out, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?”
Despite these indubitably strong points, it’s the fact that the storyline revolves only around which of the sisters someone is in love with, and the lengthy and laboured descriptions of dresses and paintings, that makes the book so unreadable for me. This is my first Austen novel, and perhaps I will warm to her as and if I read more, but as it stands, I am with Mark Twain on wanting to “dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
An sparkling review, even before its final satirical clout round the head. I enjoyed reading it fully as much as I completely disagreed with it.
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?” isn’t, I think, a comment on idleness, or the role of the landed gentry, but Austen’s own opinion on the fundamental position of all of us in life. What’s wonderful about her writing, to me, is that she provides the best, most entertaining lesson possible, on the importance of making the laughter good-natured. A much more attractive prospect than a bleak wind across the moors into Haworth, or Mr Thomas Hardy raising his fist from the west country to shake it angrily at God, which are certainly alternatives, with their own fine but different qualities.
Incidentally your three stars reminded me of this essay by Calvin Trillin in the New Yorker ( https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/a-grateful-grandfather-sheltering-with-his-family ) where he describes the care they offered him when he needed to escape NY during the early days of covid. “Don’t get me wrong,” it begins, “I appreciate my daughter, Hilda, arranging to have me snatched from the dangerously crowded city and harboring me at her house in a semirural part of the state. I appreciate the efforts of my son-in-law, Desmond, who drove the getaway car, and of my teen-age grandsons, Jason and Justin, whom I now refer to as my tech-support team. So you must be wondering why I intend to give the establishment run by Hilda and her family only three stars on TripAdvisor.” Perhaps if there’s one thing superior to getting through life whilst being able to laugh good-naturedly at your neighbours, it’s simultaneously being able to laugh good-naturedly at yourself.
Hello David, thank you for commenting. I am flattered that my review moved you to do so! I think your comment was actually very illuminating for me, because I think you have described exactly what it was about her writing that I didn’t like, and which I found so difficult to articulate in my review. (I hope that as I get older and write more I will find it easier to put these ideas into words.) It is exactly the kind of light-hearted, wry overtone to Austen’s prose which as you rightly point out is in contrast to the rainy solemnity of Bronte or Hardy. For Jane Eyre, there is no sense of laughing at herself and her silly predicament, for she is not “merely” a player strutting and fretting upon Bronte’s stage. For Jane, her life is full of sound and fury, but it signifies something – something important, something meaningful – but that ineffable ‘something’ is nonchalantly dismissed in Austen. To clarify what I was saying about not wanting to read about petticoats and ballrooms, I understand that Austen is writing about this specifically to say that these upper class preoccupations are fundamentally unimportant. My point is that they’re not unimportant; life is very serious and I don’t understand why anyone would want to read a book with such a light-hearted attitude to life, however well-written or insightful it may be. Perhaps it’s just youthful idealism on my part, but at present, I too want to be shaking my fist angrily at God!