I know that many of you read Pride and Prejudice years ago but I just got around to it. Everyone in my family had read it. They have watched several versions in movie form. I finally ran out of new stuff and turned to the classics.
I was surprised. Pride and Prejudice was quite readable. The story was fairly standard. Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Girl wins boy. And they lived happily ever after. Good show.
Since I enjoy history I was fascinated by the way in which it opened up the period of the gentry in England. The class divisions are clearly portrayed. To Americans this kind of division is so strange that most people probably don’t recognize it. Maybe you did not notice but no one works. Everyone has servants. They change clothes frequently and spend more money in one day than a common family would spend all year. During this time period John Wesley was living and traveling on 30 pounds a year. The daughter in the book who ran away and was compelled to marry only had an income of 100 pounds a year and was considered very poor. The heroine married someone who was worth 10,000 pounds a year. To earn this money he traveled and changed clothes a lot.
It also gave me interesting insights into the mind of women. It was written by a woman for women. When they looked at a man and discussed him there werer three considerations: Wealth, social status and looks. It helped if he was nice and clean but really, if he had money and status he was a winner. As I read this and compared it to female conversations I have overheard I saw some real parallels. I was too naive and idealistic to understand. If I had read this when I was 20 I might never have gotten married. For this reason I think the book should be banned for all males under the age of 40.
I am almost tempted to read another one of Jane Austin’s books to see if she has a formula like Louis L’Amour had in his westerns.
Almost but not quite.
homo unius libri
Her books are similar in portraying the "upper classes" as worthless leeches on society. Taken at face value, they'd be the perfect argument for the socialists of that and subsequent eras.
ReplyDeleteDid she agree with that or is that our feeling now? The English class system is so ingrained in their thinking that I am not sure the would not think it was the right of that class. The sad truth is that they could not have continued for so long if the lower classes had not agreed in their hearts. America was supposed to be a new experiment.
DeleteGrace and peace.