Pride and Prejudice

Fülszöveg

Inl 816, three years afterthe publication oiPride and Prejudice, the royal librarian suggested that Jane Austen write "an historical románcé illustrative of the House of Coburg" - an idea prompted by the forthcoming marriage in England's reigning family. Miss Austen declined as follows: I could not sit seviously down to write a serious románcé under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensible for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had űnished the ürst chapter. Her refusal to aecomodate the royal family throws light on Pride and Prejudice, as rollicking a story of family life as has ever been written. Mrs. Bennet is the most unfortunate of mothers; she has five daughters to marry off and not a penny of fortune for any one of them. Nor is Mr. Bennet a help, good husband and fond father though he is. For, while admitting that daughter Jane is beautiful and Elizabeth intelligent and... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Inl 816, three years afterthe publication oiPride and Prejudice, the royal librarian suggested that Jane Austen write "an historical románcé illustrative of the House of Coburg" - an idea prompted by the forthcoming marriage in England's reigning family. Miss Austen declined as follows: I could not sit seviously down to write a serious románcé under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensible for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had űnished the ürst chapter. Her refusal to aecomodate the royal family throws light on Pride and Prejudice, as rollicking a story of family life as has ever been written. Mrs. Bennet is the most unfortunate of mothers; she has five daughters to marry off and not a penny of fortune for any one of them. Nor is Mr. Bennet a help, good husband and fond father though he is. For, while admitting that daughter Jane is beautiful and Elizabeth intelligent and spirited, he claims that the three younger girls are so silly and ignorant that he has hardly the heart to wish them on any man. But the race to find husbands for the Misses Bennet is on, with the hurdles engendered by Pride and by Prejudice marking the whole of the course. The phrase "Relax with a good book" was never more aptly applied than to the reader who smiles, who laughs aloud, who sheds an occasional tear over the pages of Pride and Prejudice.
Jane Austen Cl 7 75 to 1817) was born in Steventon, England, the youngest oí the seven children of the Reverend George Austen. Most of her life was spent within the confines of her father's parish - two villages whose joint population numbered somé three hundred souls. Whatéver the geographical limits of her horizon, her love for people and her ability to laugh at the foibles to which convention tied them were boundless. Her education afforded her the aecomplishments which her day demanded: miles of needlework, French conversation and a smattering of Italian. Her prof ound knowledge of the English language and her love of books were extra-curricular - and bore results. Her earliest copy-books sparkle and bubble with her commentaries on the life around her and on those who people her world. In time, the copy-book commentator became a novelist whose polished phrases ring with wit. None of the credos of the middle-class society in which she moved is harpooned more deftly than the belief that capturing a husband was woman's reason for being. Perhaps the fact that she lived and died a spinster was a measure of her revolt against this. Certainly, her role of maidén aunt to her brother's children was filled by her with humour and spirit. It is this humour and spirit, together with her gift for holding her society up to the light of honest criticism that make Jane Austen one of the great among English authors, that make Piide and Prejudice one of the íinest works of the early novelists. Vissza