Pride and Prejudice

Introduction

Jane Austen's early work began as satire, parodying the excessive sensibility of contemporary fiction. Her work continued in this vein in the tradition of the domestic comedy of Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Fanny Burney. With an appreciation of the ridiculous in human behavior, she developed skill in presenting the pompous and socially imprudent character. Her more mature work, like the domestic comedy of Burney, takes on moral undertones as her protagonists are challenged to grow and change within the confines of social custom. Pride and Prejudice, acclaimed as Austen's best novel, combines these elements. (Gillie 99)

Begun in the 1790's and offered for publication under the title “First Impressions,” the novel was initially rejected by publishers. Austen then reworked and resubmitted the piece under the new title, and it was published in 1813. While initially Austen's works were not as popular as were the works of Richardson and Burney, they have endured and developed a wide readership among general readers as well as scholars. Pride and Prejudice has been adapted to film and television, making Austen's works ever more accessible to the general public. The popularity of her fiction can be attributed to its themes of love and marriage, growth and self-discovery, as well as to their comic presentation of domestic life. Its tightly structured, focused plot, moving so purposefully and subtly toward its conclusion, distinguishes Pride and Prejudice as a classic work of literature. (Halperin 63)

Discussion

It has often been pointed out that Jane Austen's novels deal only with the world of which she had firsthand knowledge. They are set in the ballrooms, the drawing rooms, the bedrooms, and the gardens where, like the ladies in her books, she spent her life. Her books do not reflect the political turmoil of her time, revolution and conquest on the Continent, fears of revolution in Great Britain. If her works are limited in scope, however, they are not without serious import. Austen's methods are those of the satirist, her subject is society, and her preoccupation is the creation of an effective family unit through marriage.

As Austen shows so clearly in Pride and Prejudice, unsuitable marriages lead only to unhappiness and social instability. After discovering that his wife is incapable of comprehending anything he says, Mr. Bennet has stopped trying to communicate with her. A man of his reserved and scholarly nature can adjust easily to isolation from his family, and Mrs. Bennet is too scatterbrained to suspect that something may be missing from her relationship with her husband. It is the Bennet children who suffer most from the ill-conceived marriage of their parents. Left to their mother, three of the five Bennet daughters turn out badly. Mary Bennet is a pedant without intellectual gifts; Kitty Bennet, a flirtatious fool; and Lydia, a girl so unthinking that she runs off with the first plausible man who comes along, thereby disgracing her family and destroying the possibility of any other marriage or even, if she remains unmarried, her acceptance in respectable ...