Pride and Prejudice

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in
possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’

Lizzy and Jane, Darcy and Bingley, Longbourn and Pemberley – the characters and locations are so seeped into my consciousness they could be real. Mrs Bennet finding husbands for her 5 daughters, Mr. Bingley arriving at Netherfield with his sisters and proud friend, Mr Darcy. Ridiculous Mr Collins who’s to inherit Longbourn and smarmy Wickham, inveigling himself into their affections. I’ve seen so many screen adaptations that I thought I already knew the story and wondered what I would gain from actually reading the book. And maybe for the first 50 or so pages that was true as the characters and locations are put in place and the story really rattles along, by page 39 we already know that Darcy has noticed a ‘pair of fine eyes‘!

But then the book came into its own and I realised how wrong I was. This is very much the story of Elizabeth Bennet (rather than the family and neighbours), who despite the constraints of society is assertive and strident, she holds her own strong opinions and with the added characteristic of insight manages to be herself.

The verbal sparring and wicked wit was everything I was expecting, (Miss Bingley especially!) and romance blossomed. But there were two things that really stood out for me as different from the screen versions.

I must admit to never being much of a fan of Lizzy in the screen adaptations, she always seems a bit haughty but here I was struck by her youthfulness and found her much more likeable. She’s thoughtful and understanding, particularly with Jane, but she takes things to heart so fully that I found it easy to see her as a 20 year old girl. When Charlotte Lucas agrees to marry Mr. Collins, Lizzy thinks she’ll never be able to speak to her again

‘She had always felt that Charlotte’s opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she could not have supposed it possible that when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr Collins, was a most humiliating picture! . . . and Elizabeth felt persuaded that no real confidence could ever subsist between them again.’

Mrs. Bennet is a figure of fun and Lizzy’s almost constant eye rolling and embarrassment at her mothers behaviour is humorous and understandable but she is deeply hurt, indeed, ‘mortified’ at her fathers complete lack of empathy. Where is the twinkle in Mr. Bennet’s eye that we see on screen?

This was the second thing that struck me, the utterly unfavourable light that Mr. Bennet is cast in. Mrs Bennet might have her head full of weddings and red coats but at least she is involved in the lives of her daughters. Her pursuit of marriageable partners for them is a necessity. Mr. Bennet, patronises and jokes at the expense of his wife but he hasn’t invested in his daughter’s futures either financially or by giving them an education. He says to Lizzy

‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours
and laugh at them in our turn?’

He is completely ineffectual, patting hands and returning to his library. When Lydia runs away from Brighton,Jane Austen writing at the age of 22, makes it perfectly clear that the responsibility for Lydia’s ‘vain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled’ nature is laid squarely on the shoulders of her parents. The overindulgence of her mother and the moral absence of her father.

And if education is needed for girls, boys’ education needs an overhaul. Darcy talks about his own upbringing and education as encouraging him ‘to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world’. Published in 1813, forty years or so before Anne Bronte tackled the same subjects in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I wasn’t expecting Pride and Prejudice to be so subversive! It was a really wonderful read.