"When Charles Bingley, a rich single man, moves to the Netherfield estate, the neighborhood residents are thrilled, especially Mrs. Bennet, who hopes to marry one of her five daughters to him. When the Bennet daughters meet him at a local ball, they are impressed by his outgoing personality and friendly disposition. They are less impressed, however, by Bingley's friend Fitzwilliam Darcy, a landowning aristocrat who is too proud to speak to any of the locals and whom Elizabeth Bennet overhears refusing to dance with her."
Summary
Pride and prejudice was written two hundred years ago by Jane Austen and it describes a year in the life of an small group of young people who live in the coutry near London in a period of change ( XVIII and XIX century).
In the middle of this society we are able to find some special and funny people: The Bennet, who live with their five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine and Lydia. Mr Bennet is nice and intelligent and he dislikes the frivolity of his wife and his three young daughters but he has a good relation with Jane and Elizabeth besides he is very close to them.
Mrs Bennet is not as clever or educated as her husband. Her only aim in life is to find husbands for her daughters and her pleasures are visiting, talking and clothes.
However, their situation was worse than it seemed because of a lawyer's agreement, since Mr. Bennet had no son the property, when he died, would pass to a distant cousin, Mr. Collins. His daughters would not have nothing unless they married.
Style
Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character's speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character's thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke". By using narrative that adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth's viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth's point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth's misprisions."
Publication history
Austen began writing the novel after staying at Goodnestone Park in Kent with her brother Edward and his wife in 1796. The novel was originally titled First Impressions by Jane Austen, and was written between October 1796 and August 1797. On 1 November 1797 Austen's father sent a letter to London bookseller Thomas Cadell to ask if he had any interest in seeing the manuscript, but the offer was declined by return of post.
Austen made significant revisions to the manuscript for First Impressions between 1811 and 1812. She later renamed the story Pride and Prejudice. In renaming the novel, Austen probably had in mind the "sufferings and oppositions" summarised in the final chapter of Fanny Burney's Cecilia, called "Pride and Prejudice", where the phrase appears three times in block capitals. It is possible that the novel's original title was altered to avoid confusion with other works. In the years between the completion of First Impressions and its revision into Pride and Prejudice, two other works had been published under that name: a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith.
Austen sold the copyright for the novel to Thomas Egerton of Whitehall in exchange for £110 (Austen had asked for £150). This proved a costly decision. Austen had published Sense and Sensibility on a commission basis, whereby she indemnified the publisher against any losses and received any profits, less costs and the publisher's commission. Unaware that Sense and Sensibility would sell out its edition, making her £140, she passed the copyright to Egerton for a one-off payment, meaning that all the risk (and all the profits) would be his. Jan Fergus has calculated that Egerton subsequently made around £450 from just the first two editions of the book.
Egerton published the first edition of Pride and Prejudice in three hardcover volumes in January 1813, priced at 18s. Favourable reviews saw this edition sold out, with a second edition published in November that year. A third edition was published in 1817.
Foreign language translations first appeared in 1813 in French; subsequent translations were published in German, Danish, and Swedish. Pride and Prejudice was first published in the United States in August 1832 as Elizabeth Bennet or, Pride and Prejudice.The novel was also included in Richard Bentley's Standard Novel series in 1833. R. W. Chapman's scholarly edition of Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1923, has become the standard edition from which many modern publications of the novel are based.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen (December 6, 1775 - July 18, 1817) was a prominent British novelist. It is a model of a writer with a seemingly wealthy life but knew that faithfully reflect the drama in his novels.
Born in a rectory in the town of Steventon, Hampshire County. She was the daughter of Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra. He spent most of his life in that area. He had six brothers and one older sister, Cassandra, which was very close.
The only portrait is without doubt true of the writer is a drawing done by his sister and currently can be seen at the National Gallery in London. His brothers Frank and Charles were sailors and ended up being admirals.
In 1783 a relative took charge of his education, placing it first in Oxford and then Southampton. Between 1785 and 1786 he attended school for young ladies at the Abbey of Reading in Berkshire County. He received an education level higher than the women of his time.
In general, his life was calm and happy, despite a broken heart. In 1801 the family moved to Bath, the scene of many of his works, after the death of his father in 1805, Jane, his sister and his mother lived with his brother Frank and his family until, in 1809, moved to Chawton .
Jane never married but was engaged to a young man, Harris Bigg-Wither. Jane finally decided not to marry him. Already established as a novelist, continued to live relatively withdrawn and his health began to decline. It is believed he suffered from Addison's disease the cause is unknown. He traveled to Winchester for medical attention but her illness began to progress rapidly and died two months after his arrival in the city. She is buried in Winchester Cathedral.
The order in which they began and ended his novels does not correspond to the dates of their publications. Her novels with:
Sense and Sensibility (published in 1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Northanger Abbey (1818) posthumously, and Persuasion (1818) posthumously.
Austen also wrote three short pieces: Lady Susan, The Watsons (unfinished novel), and Sanditon (unfinished novel).
Review
"Pride and prejudice is one of the most exciting and fascinating books I have ever read. Although it was written two hundred years ago by Jane Austen, the ideas it gives to the reader and the problems which our main characters have to face are real and apply to moden life. Every single teenager their day-to-day life has experienced how first impressions can affect in our personal lifes and how the family can influence our decisions. I am sure that fifty or sixty years ago the idea of marriage was really important and with it, its social status. Many women neither loved nor respected their partner, but they wished to escape the terrible fate of becoming maid (the same happened to Chalotte Lucas, Elizabeth's best friend at the beginning of the novel) . To sum up, what I like most about Pride and Prejudice is that it shows us real situations, real problems and it tells us their possible consequences.
This book, like most of Jane Austen's works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech and by using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character, Austen invites the reader to follow the events from the speaker's point of view, sharing opinions, sadness or happiness.
I would recommend this book to those ones who love reading good literature or spending a good time learning how our ancestors lived and thoght and what aims in life they had."
