So, just finished with Pride and Prejudice - the second time I took up the book; but the first time that I couldnt help but enjoy it.
I'd blame my own poor understanding for finding it a dreadful bore when I first tried to read it - at 13 years of age.
Well, its everything but a dreadful bore! Often when authors or even movie makers try to combine all of comedy, drama and suspense into one, the result is a mess.
Jane Austen, however, manages that successfully and effortlessly. The secret to this success, I believe, is her trademark 'superficiality'. Not going deep into the characters' emotions and staying away from all bad feelings that may result from bad happenings in the plot.
What is described in details is trivial, and stuff which you would expect other authors to fill pages and pages with - is lightly brushed upon, all condensed (at times), into just one paragraph.
The story is about a mother whose sole object in life is to get her 5 daughters married to well-off husbands, though that is only the secondary/tertiary focus of the author. It is also about how the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet overcomes her prejudices and looks at certain people in a new way. Throughout the book, the first time reader might keep wondering if the heroine and the hero are going to end up together, and when and how?
The hero, by the way, is Mr. Darcy - he has all the hero qualities too. He is super rich and handsome and generous and has a fantastic house and though you might not think it in the beginning - he does a lot of charitable stuff.
Elizabeth Bennet's character is supposed to be complex and there are a lot of people who'd sit and spend hours analyzing it. I found it to be a very readable character though. She is ahead of her times, no doubt, but she is all too fallible. She mis-reads, mis-constructs, mis-represents almost till the very end.
She represents Prejudice.
On the other hand, Mr. Darcy represents Pride. Too proud to even dance with someone he considers beneath him, he goes on giving these airs and building a reputation which has him pinned as unpleasant, proud and repulsive.
All, of course, is solved in the end, where both realize their faults and make due amends. A certain happy ending is hastily described where all members of the family settle down after a book-full of chaos and unnecessary emotional uprisings.
Jane Austen, it seems, loves cheesy happy endings and so do I.
I'd blame my own poor understanding for finding it a dreadful bore when I first tried to read it - at 13 years of age.
Well, its everything but a dreadful bore! Often when authors or even movie makers try to combine all of comedy, drama and suspense into one, the result is a mess.
Jane Austen, however, manages that successfully and effortlessly. The secret to this success, I believe, is her trademark 'superficiality'. Not going deep into the characters' emotions and staying away from all bad feelings that may result from bad happenings in the plot.What is described in details is trivial, and stuff which you would expect other authors to fill pages and pages with - is lightly brushed upon, all condensed (at times), into just one paragraph.
The story is about a mother whose sole object in life is to get her 5 daughters married to well-off husbands, though that is only the secondary/tertiary focus of the author. It is also about how the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet overcomes her prejudices and looks at certain people in a new way. Throughout the book, the first time reader might keep wondering if the heroine and the hero are going to end up together, and when and how?
The hero, by the way, is Mr. Darcy - he has all the hero qualities too. He is super rich and handsome and generous and has a fantastic house and though you might not think it in the beginning - he does a lot of charitable stuff.
Elizabeth Bennet's character is supposed to be complex and there are a lot of people who'd sit and spend hours analyzing it. I found it to be a very readable character though. She is ahead of her times, no doubt, but she is all too fallible. She mis-reads, mis-constructs, mis-represents almost till the very end.
She represents Prejudice.
On the other hand, Mr. Darcy represents Pride. Too proud to even dance with someone he considers beneath him, he goes on giving these airs and building a reputation which has him pinned as unpleasant, proud and repulsive.
All, of course, is solved in the end, where both realize their faults and make due amends. A certain happy ending is hastily described where all members of the family settle down after a book-full of chaos and unnecessary emotional uprisings.
Jane Austen, it seems, loves cheesy happy endings and so do I.
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