pride and prejudice

Jane Austen was bangin' out the hits back in the day, and Pride and Prejudice is one of her best known. Sense and Sensibility, and Emma are others she is probably most famous for. They were published in the early 1800s, with help from her brother, and here's where I want to kick a trash bucket across the floor; No one knew who wrote them until after her death, even though the first runs of many of them sold out right away.

Pride and Prejudice is written from the POV of Elizabeth
Bennet, and gives a marvelous glimpse into the mind of a young, English woman of the upper middle class--the daughter of a gentleman, as she is described in the text. Eliza is intelligent, quick-witted, bold, and is not the type to lie down and let the men in her life tell her what to do. She is, however, able to make her feelings known, and is certainly not above love and caring for men.

As the title indicates, Austen seems to be making her own thoughts clear on the silliness of the separation between the classes, who one assumes, looked upon her and her own family, as they look upon Eliza Bennet and her family, with both too much pride and distinct prejudice. Given that Austen was born in England just a few months before America declared its independence, one can imagine that she grew up in a society that was rapidly evolving amidst that struggle against aristocracy.
Pride and Prejudice celebrates those both inside and outside the aristocracy who rebelled against these societal sins.

That societal struggle is what underlays this story, but the principal narrative is one of relationships, love and romance, peppered with jealousy, envy, obstinance, stupidity, shamelessness, scandal, absent-minded-zealotry, scoundrels, and mean girls. whateverrr Its fresh and timely still, which must explain why it has been adapted so often for movies and plays.

Read this book. I've read it before, that's why is on my 'great' list, to the right. And I'll probably read it again.