Pride and Prejudice

Pride And Prejudice is a difficult novel for me to review because, although this was my first reading of Austen's work, I have already encountered its essential storyline in televised adaptations and numerous other novels so I felt as though I was revisiting the book rather than coming to it fresh. I enjoyed the humour, especially Austen's partly-veiled observations on the predicament of women rendered useless without a husband and, of course, her wonderful characters. Austen had such a talent for observation and for just exaggerating foibles enough to make people such as Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine ridiculous, but not unbelievable. Personally I wasn't convinced by Darcy's complete change of behaviour mid-book, but both he and Elizabeth have wonderfully sparkling conversations and spats with the great energy fairly leaping from the page. The repression of their social situation contrasts brilliantly with the obvious strength of their emotional attraction to each other.

I was interested to learn from Ian Littlewood's introduction that Pride And Prejudice was pretty much an overnight success upon its publication, but that it took some sixteen years and at least one drastic rewrite to get to that stage. The book was refused on its first submission in the late 1700s, even though Austen would have paid for the printing herself! An example to authors everywhere of the importance of not giving up!

Though I do want to read on, I found this book impacted me the same way as a title by James Galloway or Wayne Edwarde Clarke. Each of these authors have some quality I can't define which screams "unpublishable" yet "compelling" at the same time. They've also all got a lot of sex or sexual exploitation, and each their own bête noire (I believe Galloway had Foxes, Clarke measurements, and Irvine's seems to be implausibly convoluted acronyms).

There were a few things that irritated, a King Harry, for instance, and the Belief that the US was better off with Bush Junior than other presidents which seems strange, but then I'm not American. Also a collection of grammatical slipups, sadly par for the course on Kindle, and a few little things that I didn't bother to note. Still, it kept me reading, for although religion isn't my scene and I didn't see any depth to the characters and in fact I regret buying it somewhat, I also wanted to see where it went and, , in spite of myself, want to read more. Weird, much?

So when I was in school taking a mock-exam for Eng.Lit. I came across some questions about a passage from a Jane Austen novel. This was "unseen" i.e. had not been taught in class and I certainly hadn't read any Austen outside class. There was the option of writing an essay about something else - I have forgotten what but the questions looked easier. How wrong can one be? By the time I got to "What else did you find funny about this passage?" I knew I was in trouble, having found nothing at all funny about it...

The exam was a disaster and I learned to take my teacher's advice and do the essay regardless of what the alternative was when it came to the real exam several months later. I ended up with a B grade. Luckily my blushes were saved by an A in Eng.Lang...

But my mock-exam trauma had an astonishingly long-lasting effect; I had a horror of Austen that lasted until I finally managed to break through it and give the poor lass a fair chance as an adult this year...and guess what? It's funny! More precisely, it's witty and ironical - also dramatic and fantastical...the latter in the sense of it being something of a female wishful-fulfillment fantasy for Regency British ladies of no great family. But that is only repeating Austen's widely dispersed reputation.

Initially the wit struck me, later I was set for an amusing but dramatically dull story - proved false by a wholly unexpected event - and yes, somehow I managed to remain ignorant of the detail of the plot through my entire life. Even then, I was not entirely won over, although I was keen to discover how everything played out and the inevitable conclusion was arrived at.

I was finally won over completely quite late on when our heroine stands up to Lady de Bourgh. So much so that I was thinking along the lines of, GO! Lizzy Bennet!, during that scene. From thinking, OK, I can see why people like it but do I really want to read another Austen after this? I went to expecting to work my way through all the Austen novels in due time.

Of course this means that I'm going to have to take a look at the Brontes and maybe even give George Eliot a second chance, too...I'm already tackling some Dickens. It looks like my school nightmares may have worn off completely...only took two and a half decades.