Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Bennet family lives in a wealthy area. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five unmarried daughters that they would love to set up with nice wealthy men. There is news that Charles Bingley is renting a home nearby. Mr. Bennet meets him, and at a Ball, Bingley pays a lot of attention to the oldest daughter, Jane. Bingley's friend, Mr. Darcy is also at the ball, but he does not find much interest in anyone. Jane and Bingley continue to see each other, and Darcy starts to become interested in the second oldest girl, Elizabeth. Jane eventually visits Bingley at his mansion, but gets caught in the rain on the way there and has become ill. In order to see her sister, Elizabeth walks through the woods and is very muddy by the time se gets to Bingley's house. Bingley's sister is upset to see that Darcy has eyes for Elizabeth. When Elizabeth finds out, she rejects him. But the second time he tries to talk to her she accepts it and talks back. Later on, Mr. Collins asks Elizabeth to marry him and she refuses. His spirits are crushed, but he eventually gets married to Charlotte, Elizabeth's friend. Elizabeth promises to visit them. The girls also meet soldiers, including a man named Wickham. Wickham is attracted to Elizabeth, but she is not interested. Lydia though gets permission to live where his military base is because she loves him. They elope and get married, an Mr. Bennet is upset by this. Jane and Bingley get married. Then Darcy proposes, and Elizabeth is supposed to say no because that is what she told his sister, but she accepts.

Jane is the oldest sister who marries Bingley. She is beautiful, kind and reserved compared to her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the next oldest, and ends up marrying Darcy. She is very sensible and intelligent. She was well educated and well read, and sometimes knows more about things than most people.

Mr. Bingley is the man who first moved here, and all the girls swarmed him. Many girls wanted to dance with him at the dance but out of all of them he chose Jane. Bingley is a gentleman and is kind and easy going throughout the novel. He doesn't care as much about the differences between classes, and compares greatly with Darcy.

Darcy is Bingley's friend, and comes to live with him when he first moves into the area. He is attractive, but no one likes him because of his rude and stuck up manner. Everyone thinks that he is very self centered and has a lot of pride. Elizabeth thinks this at first, but eventually gets to know him well enough that she does not see the pride in him as much anymore. They end up marrying.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are the parents of all of the girls in the story. Mr. Bennet does not take much interest in finding his girls a husband, and his favorite child is Elizabeth. Mrs. Bennet is obsessed with finding her girls a wealthy husband and is sometimes a bad mother because of it.

Mr. Collins is a wealthy man that tries to marry Elizabeth. She is not interested because of his odd personality so her friend, Charlotte ends up marrying him.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." this quote is important because it basically sets the plot for the rest of the novel. This is the first sentence of the book, and shows the idea of what the play will be mainly about; rich men finding wives.

"Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien..." This shows what people first thought of Darcy and the women looking for a husband really admired him at first. This goes on to say that they saw his pride and became less interested.

The narrative voice in this piece is in third person. The narrator seems to be all knowing, omniscient. They know everything about all of the characters and even though they are telling the story, they have a semi-subjective voice throughout. They will write in a way that makes the reader dislike a certain character, or feel bad for a certain character. The narrator also uses some imagery when describing certain situations or people to us, like when describing Darcy for the first time. There is not a huge variety of examples of imagery found, but it is still there to compliment the narrative voice in the piece.

THEME: Social standings and first impressions should not blind people from true love.
Examples of this are in the text, with the relationships between Darcy and Elizabeth, and even Bingley and Jane. Darcy first felt prejudice against Elizabeth and did not like her because of her social standings. Elizabeth, on the other hand, did not like Darcy one bit because of his pride and rude nature. After they are around each other enough and actually get to know each other a little, they can see past their first impressions and find a way to love each other. Bingley and Jane's relationship starts out stronger, and almost show the right way to feel and act in first impressions. Bingley automatically takes a liking to Jane, even though she is from a lower social class. Jane also takes a liking to Bingley right away because of his kind and genuine nature. They are a model couple of looking past all possible impressions that may be made.