Pride and Prejudice Introduction PDF

‘An unmarried man of fortune — four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!’ When Mr Bingley decides to rent Netherfield Park, Mrs Bennet is delighted. She has five unmarried daughters, and a rich, single man in the area is very good news. Mr Bingley doesn’t disappoint her. He fal...

‘An unmarried man of fortune — four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!’ When Mr Bingley decides to rent Netherfield Park, Mrs Bennet is delighted. She has five unmarried daughters, and a rich, single man in the area is very good news. Mr Bingley doesn’t disappoint her. He falls in love with Jane, the eldest and prettiest of the Bennet sisters, and everything seems to be going well. His only fault is his friendship with Mr Darcy, who is rich but very disagreeable.At the same time Elizabeth, the second sister, becomes friendly with a soldier called Wickham. He seems a good match for her quick intelligence and lively nature, and he tells shocking stories about Mr Darcy’s bad character. Then, suddenly, Mr Bingley moves away and Jane is left with a broken heart. Elizabeth discovers that Mr Darcy was responsible for this sudden departure, and |her already low opinion of him sinks even lower. But when disaster strikes the Bennet family and all hopes of finding good husbands for the girls seem lost, help comes in a very unexpected form. Jane Austen was born in 1775 in Steventon, a village in Hampshire in the south of England. She was the seventh of eight children. Her father, George Austen, was the minister of Steventon Church. Although her mother was from a wealthy family, Jane’s father had financial difficulties. There were usually paying guests in the parsonage to help support his large family. Jane spent the first twenty-five years of her life with her parents in Steventon, where she learnt French, Italian, music and needlework. She was taught by her father, who encouraged her to read widely. The family also enjoyed performing plays, and it seems that Jane took part enthusiastically in these. writing at the age of fourteen as entertainment for her When George Austen retired in 1801 the family Bath, a busy, fashionable city often featured in Jane’s both Hampshire She began family. moved o stories, In and in Bath, she had a good social life. She attended parties and balls; she went on trips to the seaside; she visited London and other cities. She enjoyed male company and was considered quite pretty, but she never fell seriously in love, She became close to one man, but he had no fortune so wag unable to marry her. Another, wealthier man made a marriage Jane accepted, but changed her mind the next day. She proposal; remained single. Jane was very close to her sister Cassandra, who was also unmarried, and to her brothers’ children. Two of her brothers were church ministers and two had very high positions in the navy.A fifth brother, Edward, was heir to a rich cousin who left him houses and land in Kent and Hampshire. Jane often went to stay with Edward at his grand home in Kent. When her father died in 1805, Jane moved back to Hampshire with her mother and sister, eventually living in a small house owned by her brother Edward. The last few years of Jane’s life were affected by the development of the disease from which she died in 1817, at the age of forty-one. Jane Austen’s life was relatively uneventful, but she used this to her advantage in her writing. She wrote about what she knew: the everyday lives and concerns of ordinary middle-class people. Austen’s early writing often made gentle fun of popular fiction. Her first book, Love and Friendship, was completed in 1790, when Jane was only fifteen. It looked at the silliness of the typical, wildly romantic fictional heroes of the time. The story which later became Northanger Abbey was written a few years later. The main character in this book loves reading novels, and as a result confuses literature with real life. Jane Austen’s first attempt to get her work printed was a failure. In 1797, her father offered an early form of Pride and Prejudice to a friend in the book business, but the friend refused the story without even reading it. She continued to write, but it was fourteen years before her work was finally recognised outside her family circle. In 1811, Sense and Sensibility became the first of her novels to appear in print; she had started work on the story back in 1797. Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816) soon followed. Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were printed after her death in 1817. Jane Austen’s name did not appear in the books that appeared in her lifetime because it was difficult for a female novelist to be taken seriously. Although the novels were fairly popular from the start, they only achieved the success that they deserved after her death. They are loved today for their sharply and humorously observed characters, for their amusing details of the manners and morals of the characters’ social group, and for the love stories at their heart, which have always attracted readers and continue to do so today. Jane Austen lived in a world of firmly divided social classes. At the top were the nobles, with long family histories of wealth and power. Beneath them were gentlemen, who were less powerful than nobles but owned enough land and property to live comfortably without a paid job. This was the social class to which most of Austen’s characters belonged. When a nobleman or a gentleman died, his property passed to his eldest son. If there was no son, a nephew or cousin was usually the heir and, as in the Bennets’ case, the man’s wife and children could lose their home. Relatively small amounts of money were left to the women and younger sons of the family. In the Darcy family, for example, Mr Darcy had /£10,000 per year; his sister was seen as an extremely rich young woman, but had the much smaller amount of ,£30,000 in total. Younger sons usually made a living in the church or the army. Even in these professions, however, family help was important. Local landowners were responsible for appointing church ministers; to get a good job, a man needed rich and powerful friends.To buy a position as an army officer you needed money; the richer you were, the higher your position was. Other professions — the law, for example — were less respectable, and a life in business was considered very inferior, even if it made you rich. Since most of the family money went to the eldest son, it was very important for young women to marry, and to marry well. Marriage was for life, and most people hoped for a marriage based on lasting love. Other considerations, however, were equally important. Marriage was seen as the union not only of two people, but also of two families.A ‘good’ marriage, to someone of higher social position or greater wealth, brought added respect to the whole family; a ‘bad’ marriage had the opposite effect; and any woman who lived with a man outside marriage was not welcome in high society and dragged the whole family down with her. And if the perfect marriage proposal never came? For women, this could be a serious problem. Jane Austen herself was able to live respectably without a husband, thanks to the wealth of her brother Edward. Many unmarried middle-class women were less lucky. They had to live with their brother’s family as an unwanted, unloved member of the house. Many others had to take low-paid work, often as teachers, and their social position was lost forever. Although the author chose to remain single, she does not disapprove of her character Charlotte Lucas’s decision to marry the awful Mr Collins and gain a comfortable home. Of all her novels, Pride and Prejudice was probably Jane Austen’s favourite. She called it her ‘darling child’ and she was particularly fond of Elizabeth Bennet, the story’s main character, who shared Austen’s own quick intelligence and lively sense of humour. The author’s preference is shared today, judging by the number of successful films and television series of the story in recent years. Although social practices have changed since Jane Austen’s day, the main message of the novel is as important today as it ever was. A person’s true character is hard to judge, and you cannot trust a first impression. Look beneath the surface and you may find a few surprises.