Read @ Musselman Library

Kate Will
President

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

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Those novels were savored by 19th Century people who did not have television or computers or telephones-and they were meant to consume lots of long winter evenings. They were entertainment-Dickens in particular could be hilarious-but they were also serious in their dramatic engagement of what is important in life.

Austen opened that century with several stunning novels (Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility, etc.). Women writers were not plentiful in those days, and one of the best later novelists still felt compelled to use a man's name-George Eliot-rather than her own-Maryann Evans.

Austen focused on female characters from female perspectives, which naturally appealed to me. Austen's novels are witty and thoughtful and beautifully constructed. Her main characters are entrancing, even in their foibles.

Pride and Prejudice is a classic for me (I have read it perhaps five times and return to it as to an old friend) because it brings together a set of characters who are vividly alive, who make mistakes, who are growing-who are believable. We can all see some of ourselves, if we are honest, in all the characters, not just in one. And so it is a growing and contemplative experience for the reader, and read differently at different times in one's life. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet are both proud and both prejudiced, but they both evolve, and the resolution of the novel is really satisfying in a way that life is often not. The bad get their comeuppance in a truly delightful way, the good are rewarded, and the lovers are united in affectionate matrimony. How can you get better than that?