Pride and Prejudice is a Classic. Of that there is no doubt, as it has stood the test of time for nearly 200 years, and been commented on and reviewed a multitude of times. I seriously doubt that there is little that I can say that is unique, original, or even all that helpful to anyone. I certainly won’t write the type of review that one of my friend’s on here wrote. I shall try, nonetheless.
The story is a truly intriguing love story. Two young, intelligent, yet naïve girls, Elizabeth Bennett and her sister Jane meet their potential suitors, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bingley and Jane hit it off right away, but Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth do not. At all. She is angered by his arrogance, which he has in ample supply; whilst he is disgusted by her tolerance and enabling of her horridly rude family, whom she certainly does tolerate and enable very much for the first half of the novel.
About midway through the novel, Elizabeth and Darcy have a confrontation, in which he professes his love to her, and she adamantly refuses to have anything to do with him. It was he who helped break up his friend Bingley and her sister Jane. He, who treated her, her sister, a friend of hers, Mr. Wickham, and people in general, so horridly, now wanted her hand? It disgusted her. He responded in a letter to her that her family warranted the ill manner in part. He also told her how Wickham betrayed his late father’s trust, and nearly ruined his teenage sister while trying to seduce her.
Much more happens during the novel, but that is not important to me for the purposes of this review. What is important is the lesson contained within the story, the lesson of compromise and changing one’s ways. Both Darcy and Elizabeth are right. Both need to change and both do change. Afterward, they fall in love. Jane and Bingley do get back together, and it seems so story book, but not so fast. In the last chapter, which acts as an epilogue of sorts, we learn how not everything is happy go-lucky. Yes, the two couples are happy, but not everything is peaceful as they have to suffer the discord of their extended relations, just as so many real-life couples do. This is so refreshing in our day of simplistic love stories, where everything is happily ever after, and there is little true conflict.
In the end, perhaps that is why the novel is still so popular. It is realistic, it tells a good story, it has characters, and it teaches a good moral tale, not to believe everything you hear until all of the facts are in, because you might make a serious misjudgment. And even if one is right, one can still have bad traits, and must be willing to change. This realism and moral teaching are what have made this book one of my favorite novels. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.
Let me take a moment to also recommend a brilliant movie adaptation of this seminal work. It is the 1995 BBC version starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. It is a truly marvelous work that is faithful to the source material in a way few movies that I have ever seen have been. The movie has all of the elements of the book, sometimes in excruciating detail where you have a desire to magically reach into the screen and throttle some of the annoying characters. You can see the conflict, compromise, love, and happy yet realistic ending of the couple. No, you don’t get the epilogue to explain everything as they have it in the book, but it is hinted at enough. You get the sense that these two couples are happy, but part of a very dysfunctional family.
The acting is superb, the music incredible, and the characterization and pacing are almost exactly like those in the book. A brilliant movie that I also highly recommend.
