PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. An admirer of Jane Austen's novels is certain to regard as the best the one he happens to be reading, so admirable are they all in those qualities which make for perfect work; but on reflection he will probably give the palm to 'Pride and Prejudice,' if for no other reason, because he remembers it .the longest. This novel, with its clean-cut, logical plot, was published in 1813, though its first draft dates as far back as 1796 97, when Jane Austen was in her 22d year. It is the novel of a girl—a clergyman's daughter —who had been bred in the country among the minor gentry. The scene, except for a few excursions, is laid in two English villages named Longbourn. and Meryton. Within these narrow limits, Jane Austen studies the Bennet family—consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their six daughters — in relation with their neighbors, and especially- with the tenant of Netherfield Park, the young Mr. Bingley and his friend Mr. Darcy. In the end Jane, the eldest daughter of the Bennets, is married to Mr. Bingley; and Elizabeth, the second daughter, to Mr. Darcy; while a younger sister, Lydia, elopes with Mr. Wickham, the -villain of the story, who holds a commission in the militia stationed at Meryton.
The novel takes its title from the two lead ing characters — Mr. Darcy, who is proud of his birth, fortune and attainments, and Eliza beth Bennet, who resents his apparent con descension and superciliousness, and, not under standing his true character, becomes inordinately and unjustly prejudiced against him. Eliza beth's prejudice is first awakened at a village ball, where she overhears a remark of Darcy's in disparagement of herself and the other girls; it is strengthened by Darcy's attempt to detach Bingley from Jane, and by a false story about his dishonorable treatment of Wickham.
All the time Darcy is falling in love with Elizabeth, attracted by her very fine eyes, her vivacity, her frankness, her keen intelligence and genuine charm. The climax is reached when Darcy proposes and Elizabeth spurns him. Thereupon Elizabeth soon learns why Darcy has cast off Wickham, the spendthrift and libertine; she is made to understand why he has interfered in the match between Jane and Bingley; and she discovers that but for Darcy, who patched up a marriage between Lydia and Wickham, lasting disgrace would have fallen upon the entire Bennet household. Elizabeth and Darcy come to understand each other per fectly. Pride and prejudice vanish: and the conclusion is as logical as a mathematical demonstration.
In tone and atmosphere, 'Pride and Pre judice' is the novel that approaches nearest to Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' (q.v.) Elizabeth and Darcy give us much the same delight that we feel when we read of the wit combats between Beatrice and Benedict. All the other characters are also carefully differen tiated. The novel is pervaded with pure comedy, which Jane Austen occasionally allows to ap proach farce in the delineation of Mrs. Bennet, the match-making mother, and in the Rev. Mr. Collins, who would marry Elizabeth in order to promote his own happiness at the expense of hers. There is no tragedy in the novel. Over all the domestic affairs of life Jane Austen lets her mind play, diverting the reader with ((follies and nonsense, whims and incon Scott despaired of ever attaining to her delicate protrayal of character; and her art has had a potent influence upon Trollope and other later novelists down to Mr. Howells, who writes of her as divine