Book Review - Classic - Pride and Prejudice

Book Review - Classic

Introduction:

I have read the book Pride and Prejudice that is written by Jane Austen.

Jane Austen

She was born in Hampshire in England 16 December 1775.  She was the youngest child in a family of seven children.  Her father was a country parson and he encouraged Jane to read and write. When she was only fourteen years old Jane started to take interest in writing. She came from a wealthy home and they moved around a lot in the south of England. Jane grew up in a safe England all though there was the France revolution in Europe. The year of 1801 Jane's family moved to Bath, were her father, died four years later. Two of Jane's brothers were admirals and they left home early. The daughters were housewife's and followed their mother from Southampton and later on to Chawton. Jane and her sister Cassandra stayed with their mother in Chawton. When Jane was only twenty years old she became an author. All of her books are counted as classics because she is one of the most famous authors in England.  Her first novel that was published was Sense and Sensibility. After her first novel she published three other novels before she died: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma. Her two other books were published posthumously of her brother.  Her books take place in a country side environment, in English higher middle class families. She had a gift to describe different characters in different situations in daily life, with irony.  Even though Jane didn't have so much experience in love between two couples, she is really good at describing it well from both sides, with deep feelings and compassion. She had a man once that proposed to her but she said no, I'm not really sure why. I think she is a really good author because of her little experience in life and still, she can write fantastic novels that you will remember in a huge stack of books. Jane Austen died 18 July 1817 in Winchester. There have been said that she probably died in Addison's disease.

The book is about people in the little village, Longbourn and their life and destiny's. The main characters are the family Bennet. The family consists of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters: Jane, Elisabeth, Mary, Catherine (called Kitty) and Lydia. Elisabeth is the main character in the book. She is the eldest daughter and her father's favourite. The book begins with rumours about a handsome young man with quite a lot of money; in short he will come to the village and rent a property there. His name is Mr. Bingley. Mrs. Bennet has decided to do every thing she can do, to get one of her daughters married with Mr. Bingely. Mrs. Bennet's mission in life is to get her daughters married to wealthy men so she secures her future if Mr. Bennet will die. The sisters meet Mr. Bingely for the first time at a ball. Elisabeth's oldest sister Jane and Mr. Bingely dance together and it looks like they like each other. At the same ball Elisabeth meets Mr. Darcy but he is not that nice as Mr. Bingely. Mr. Bingely and his sisters and the family Bennet get to now each other through the story. The sister, Bingely pretends to like is Jane, but he doesn't. It is a lot of intrigues in the book that keeps the story alive. Elisabeth and Mr. Darcy don't like each other in the beginning but as the story proceeds they meet each other here and there and it starts to change.

Settings:

Jane Austen describes the life of a middle class family out in the English countryside in the 1700 century. The family Bennet is not a rich family, but they are still counted to the society people. They have house keepers and they don't work, they are just interested in doing their hobbies, gossiping and having parties of different kinds.

I don't think Jane Austen describes the environment so deeply. It's just in a few places she does that. But on the other hand she describes feelings with great excellence, so you can really imagine what the characters feel.

Characters:

Elisabeth Bennet: the main character in the book. She is the second of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet's five daughters.  She is about 25 years old and likes to read and play the piano. She is not that interested in balls, social life and hunting for joy and rich men as her younger sisters, but she still takes part in it. What she really likes is to walk and she does it a lot, she prefers to get out on her own. She looks at it, like a possibility to think and reflect about things. She is characterized as intelligent, prejudiced and honest. She is well-liked, not at lest of her father. Elizabeth is a sensible, yet stubborn, woman. She protects her family and their reputation. Closest to Elisabeth is her older sister Jane.  Her best friend is Charlotte Lucas. Elisabeth is one of the characters in the book that have the most prejudice about people. Elisabeth improves as the story goes on and she gets more and more herself. Elisabeth is not calm and passive as the ideal woman of those times should be. She upsets people by saying what she honestly thinks about things when she finds a way to solve a problem. She is not afraid of people that are counted as better, then her and of her background. But she's also a good woman that wants to please her parents. Her prejudice in the book change when she realises that you should listen more to people before you judge somebody.

Mr. Bennet: he is married to Mrs. Bennet and father to Jane, Elisabeth, Mary, Catherine and Lydia. He has a sarcastic humour and he likes to use irony when he talks to some people. He is also amiably and somewhat an eccentric man. He is not amused by his wife and his three silly daughters Mary, Catherine and Lydia. His favourite daughter is Elisabeth but he also likes Jane the oldest daughter.  He likes them better because they have won his approval by possessing a greater amount of sense then the other three sisters. He is a strange man.

Mrs. Bennet is married to Mr. Bennet. She thinks that Mr. Bennet doesn't respect her weak nerves. Her main concern in life is seeing her daughters married to wealthy men, so that they will be taken care of after Mr. Bennet's death.  Her favourite daughter is Lydia.

Mr. Darcy: He is a prude, rich, young and handsome man. Admired and good hearted is two words you can say about him but you can't always see it behind his pride. He is also very intelligent and reserved. He likes Elisabeth's charm, but he hesitates because he doesn't like Mrs. Bennet and the three younger sisters. He thinks they are vulgar and he will not be mixed with them.

Message:

The message in the book is quite easy to see you just have to look at the book title: Pride and Prejudice. But I want to describe it more than that. I begin with pride, pride is one thing that in this case or in this book prevents people from getting out of there shell and get to know each other. One example of this is Mr. Darcy he lets all his pride stand in the way of getting to know other people and in this case mostly Elisabeth. He also apprehends people in a wrong way; it's where all the prejudice comes in. I think that pride will produce prejudice but you also can have prejudice without having pride involved.  So the message in this book is that you should not let your pride stand in front of your good personality and you should not have prejudice about people. When there is a person that you have to get to know, or talk to, you have to get a wider knowledge of him or her. If you don't, you may have a wrong opinion of that person that they, maybe don't deserve.

Conclusion:

I have a lot of opinions of the book, both good and bad. I think the beginning was muddled and boring and kind of hard get into. This has probably something to do with the old language that is used in the book. But once you get started and getting used to the old way of writing and when you...