Pride and Prejudice opens with a sharp joke about marriage—Austen’s way of telling us that love, money, and social status will collide in almost every scene. The five Bennet sisters live in a world where a good match can secure a future and a poor one can undo a family. When wealthy Mr. Bingley rents nearby Netherfield Park, his friend Mr. Darcy arrives with him, and first impressions harden fast: Bingley is charming, Darcy is proud, Elizabeth Bennet is witty and skeptical, and Mrs. Bennet is immediately in campaign mode.
Beneath the dances and drawing rooms, Austen tracks how people misread each other. Elizabeth’s quick judgments and Darcy’s stiff reserve keep them at odds; gossip, vanity, and social pressure make everything worse. As events unfold—from awkward proposals to family crises—both Elizabeth and Darcy are forced to re-examine what they value. The book is warm, funny, and honest about human blind spots, and it lands on a simple truth: real affection requires self-knowledge, respect, and the courage to change.
I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.
fromPride and PrejudicebyI am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.
fromPride and PrejudicebyI have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
fromPride and PrejudicebyA lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
fromPride and PrejudicebyThere is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others.
fromPride and Prejudiceby