Pride and Prejudice

Ok. I'm not going to lie on this one. I probably would have put off reading Jane Austen for a while simply because I find the language a little difficult. But, it was one of the options for a book to read in one of my classes this term, so I went with Pride and Prejudice.

I had read this book previously (and I've seen the Kiera Knightly version of the movie), but this is one of those books that I think you have to read a couple of times to fully understand the meaning. I remember the first time I read it, and I was very confused, not fully grasping the point of the book and why it was always being dubbed a classic novel. I get it this time around. I don't know if it's because I'm older or if I'm married and I can understand love a little better, but I definitely get what Jane Austen was trying to say in this particular novel.

Elizabeth Bennet is a free spirit to say the least. She makes for such a great main character, I think, because she is so observant of every person that crosses paths with her, but at the same time, she isn't afraid to tell them what she thinks of them to their faces. She has this almost unabashed since of self and, while she can be very proud and is proven to be very much prejudiced (hence the title), she apologizes when she is wrong, and if she feels that she isn't wrong, she won't apologize.

Mr. Darcy is almost the dream man of every little girl's fantasy. Except for the first volume of the novel. He is a very proud man and is nearly as stubborn as Elizabeth is. His problem mainly comes from being extremely prejudiced. He sees people at their first impression and holds them to that without making an attempt to get to know them better. He assumes so much about a person's entirety from a single meeting on one night. But he gets basically reprimanded by Elizabeth about halfway through the book and I think he sees her reproach of him as something that is needed to be fixed and he goes about changing. I love him at the end of the book. He definitely becomes the man that Elizabeth deserves.

If you start reading this, I strongly encourage you to not give up on it. It has some very unfamiliar words to our day and age. I read it on my Nook and I had to look up several words over the course of my reading. So I suggest doing it on some sort of e-reader, or have a dictionary close at hand. And if I'm saying that, it's tough. I know words.