Pride and Prejudice (Book)

 I have been super excited to post about Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, as it is a great book and really worth reading!

Pride and Prejudice is about the Bennet family, who live in an estate called Longbourn. Mr and Mrs Bennet have 5 daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia. The story is about Mrs Bennet, their mother, trying to marry off her girls, and Mr Bennet laughing at the crazy antics of Mrs Bennet. The title of the book refers to two of the main characters in the story, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.

Mr Darcy is the owner of a great estate in Derbyshire which is called Pemberley. His main fault is pride, and throughout the book he learns to be more humble.

Elizabeth Bennet is the second daughter of Mr and Mrs Bennet and her main fault is prejudice. She instantly dislikes Mr Darcy because she hears him say that she is not pretty enough to tempt him, and maintains this opinion of him, even when it should've been obvious to her that she had no reason or foundation to believe some of the things that she did about him.

 Because this book is so amazing, I have tried not to give too much of the plot away. I will list three reasons why I love this book so much:

1. The characters speak for themselves

 What I mean by this is that you are not really told who is bad and who is good, but you are left to figure that out based on what the characters do. I like this because then you don't feel like you have more knowledge than the characters in the book, but that you are learning about new developments in the plot as they happen. It also means that the plot isn't as cliché as a regular romance novel. You don't really know who is going to fall in love with who. And you don't automatically know who has good intentions, and who doesn't.

2.  It doesn't seem like an old book

 With most good old books, you should almost feel like what is happening in the book could happen today, and Pride and Prejudice is definitely an example of that! Even though the English is older and more refined, and the culture was very different from our time, it still seems like it was only written yesterday.

3. The characters

 The last reason I love this book so much is because of all the characters in the book. There is a vast array of characters, and you can really tell that Jane Austen was very good at observing people and what they are like. The characters are not stereotypical, and they seem very real when you read about them.

I absolutely love Pride and Prejudice and it gets a 9.5/10 from me. I would recommend it for ages 13 and up, just because the English is old, and you have to be old enough to get the story before you will truly appreciate it. I also want to add that I would not recommend watching the BBC mini series until after you have read the book, because otherwise you will have all the characters from it stuck in your head when you read it, and you won't be able to imagine them for yourself. I am rewatching the BBC series right now, and I am aiming to post about it in a few weeks. Anyway I really hope you read it and I will end with the first sentence in the book, which is one of the most famous opening phrases in English Literature:

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