A Truth Universally Acknowledged

On this day in 1813 Pride and Prejudice was first published and Jane Austen’s novel is still endearing itself to new readers. In its essence, it is a story about manners, marriage, and class and yet her vivid characters, witty dialogue, and engaging plot translates easily to the modern world. Austen skillfully pokes fun at societal norms of the day where women were powerless and doomed to an unenviable life of spinsterhood without a husband and uses the first lines of her novel to reveal what its primary themes will be.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.”

Jane Austen only wrote six novels in her short life and I have read each of them many times but Pride and Prejudice remains my favorite. No matter how many times I have read it, I still laugh, cry, scold, and cheer along with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy as they progress through the novel building up the anticipation for Mr. Darcy’s proposal.

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

                I’m with Elizabeth when she does a double take at this pronouncement. Say what? Weren’t you the one who said I was ‘tolerable’? Aren’t you the same man who didn’t want to dance with me? “The man who thinks my family is beneath you?” Of course, in this respect, I have to side with Darcy about the Bennet family and its relations. The idea of having Mrs. Bennet as my mother-in-law sends shivers up and down my spine and let’s not even mention poor simpering Mr. Collins.

I love Elizabeth’s response to Darcy’s proposal. It sums up quite nicely her feelings and doesn’t leave Darcy wondering if Elizabeth was simply playing hard to get.

                “From the very beginning – from the first moment, I may almost say – of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”

What are your favorite Austen novels?