Pride And Prejudice

Any reader of the novel Pride and Prejudice, be it novice or veteran, has certain expectations and apprehensions based on its incredible popularity and renown. The same can be said for the media, whose recent over-use of its famous opening line, ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged’ can be found repeated in the opening of many a news, magazine or blog article announcing some creditable or dubious connection to Jane Austen’s characters or plot. Interestingly, it has become the meme of the day passed along and re-used by those who want to appear in the know, but are sadly missing the point. It is debatable if Pride and Prejudice’s profound truths can be reduced to just universally acknowledged one-liners. If the novel was that easy to figure out we would not care two figs about it, and after nearly two hundred years, it would have been lost to obscurity! What one can expect though is so much more; an engaging plot that keeps you thinking and re-evaluating characters every step along the way, witty, sharp and humorous dialogue that others wish to emulate but never quite achieve, and a love story which just might reign supreme for all eternity. With all of these expectations before us, who could not be a little intimidated?

Reputedly a romance, a novel many novel-readers

feel called upon to have read: _Pride and Prejudice_

Other examples of Austen's use of irony abound in the novel. "Many pages of Pride and Prejudice can be read as sheer poetry of wit, as [Alexander] Pope without couplets," writes Reuben A. Brower in "Light and Bright and Sparkling: Irony and Fiction in Pride and Prejudice." "The triumph of the novel — whatever its limitations may be — lies in combining such poetry of wit," the critic concludes, "with the dramatic structure of fiction."

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“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

- An excerpt from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

This is the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice and stands as one of the famous lines in the literature. The quotation is significant in the context of the novel because Elizabeth Bennet as well as her sisters represents the dependent young women who must marry well in order to remain respectable, or even to advancement on the social ladder. The line therefore is also confirmation of Austen’s belief that women in her society were very much reliant on marriage and this has progressed to such an extent that women have thus ended up looking upon all rich bachelors as prey.