Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

(New York: Signet Classics, 2008)

Paperback, 401 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780451530783, US$4.95

ABCD Rating: CHECK OUT

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

From the Cover: Spirited Elizabeth Bennet is one of a family of five daughters; with no male heir, the Bennet estate must someday pass to their priggish cousin William Collins. Therefore the girls must marry well—and the arrogant bachelor Mr. Darcy is Elizabeth’s elusive match. An entertaining portrait of matrimonial rites and rivalries, Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s masterwork, timeless in its hilarity and its honesty. “A lady’s imagination,” notes Darcy, “is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.” With its intrigue, romance, and wit, Pride and Prejudice will immediately show readers why Austen herself called the book “my own darling child.”

My Review: Reading this book has been long overdue. It is funny, at least to me, that it took the introduction of zombies, kung-fu, and ninjas to Meryton to get me to finally read Pride and Prejudice. One would have thought that, as an English major and now heading into a Master’s program, I would have read Austen’s book at least once and yet, like Animal Farm, I have somehow managed to go my entire college career without once reading it, and after reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it was time to rectify that oversight.

In spite of all the misgivings I may have had going in (you may remember my reviews of Jane Eyre (which I know is not an Austen novel, but it is in the same family of novels) and Persuasion), and while I won’t go so far as to say that this is my absolute favoritest novel—I will say that I did enjoy my time at Meryton with the Bennets (in spite of the obvious lack of the undead).

Now, I don’t think I’ll be rethinking my position re: Jane Austen anytime soon. I quote from my review of Persuasion:

During our discussion of Persuasion my professor read a quote from an eminent Austen scholar (I can’t remember the name for the life of me and am too lazy to look it up right now) which went something to the effect of: “Jane Austen was the conscience of her time.”

I take umbrage with that idea for one chief reason: I feel that a so-called “conscience of [a] time” needs to say something of meaning and/or import about the society in which they live. Upton Sinclair would be a “conscience of [his] time.” H.G. Wells would be a “conscience of [his] time.” Theodore Dreiser would most definitely be a “conscience of [his] time” as would Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, and a dozen others. Jane Austen is most definitely not a “conscience of her time.” Why? Because, to put it in so many words, Austen does not challenge the status quo of her time in this novel, or for that matter any of her other novels.

The characters in Persuasion are all from the upper class and all have upper class concerns: i.e. rank, title, money, land, and “proper” marriage. I can think of only one character from the lower or working class in Persuasion and although she is at least favorably portrayed, her part is brief and an expository one at best. No where in the novel does Austen play the trickster and challenge the notion that the ruling class does not have any obligation to the lower classes, nor does she show the daily trials and travails of the lower and working classes. There is no indictment of the norms of society or call to moral obligation. The characters in Persuasion (as well, one could argue, Jane Austen) continue blissfully along in their little bubble of privilege without worrying how the “other half lives.”

This is not the literary action of a “conscience of [a] time.”

The same could be said of Pride and Prejudice. There is no indication to me that Austen is, in fact, “the conscience of her time.” It seems that all the Bennets are concerned with is wealth, status and class. There are no chambermaids or butlers or anyone from the lower class in P&P with significant speaking roles and even if, as some critics allege, the Bennets (as well as others in the novel like Mr. Darcy, Mr. Collins, Mr. Wickham, and the Lady Catherine) are so concerned with wealth and status and class so as to be farcical, it still, to me, does not indicate that Austen in anyway condemns this behavior or mindset. In fact by ending the novel as she does, Austen reinforces the class system in effect in England at the time and does not in any way act as the conscience of her time.

All that aside, though, I did in fact enjoy reading Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s prose is beautiful, and the wit evident in Pride and Prejudice is nothing short of brilliant. P&P is funny and full of pathos and is a well-written story, and—as I said earlier—in spite of an obvious lack of the undead, I did enjoy it, and I would probably recommend it to others (in fact I have recommended it to others) but I wouldn’t go so far as to canonize Austen and joint he ranks of Janeites that worship at Austen’s feet and sing her lauds, but I will say that Pride and Prejudice was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, and that it was actually quite enjoyable. There is just one caveat, and that is the fact that I am not convinced (and P&P does nothing to change the fact) that Jane Austen is alleged to be “the conscience of her time.”