JasonKoivu

Near perfection! Pride and Prejudice is one of those rare gems that weds character, plot and language all in one harmonious marriage.

They say, write what you know. Austen knew the life of the upper class (more precisely, the lower ranks of the upper class). She knew all about sitting around in parlors waiting to one day possibly be wed. She knew the rules of engagement that her class and gender imposed upon her. And so she wrote about those things and wrote well, weaving complex love triangles around the morals of the day in a style that heralded a return to realism.

Some readers, often American, complain that Austen's work is tedious. They are annoyed by characters that do not speak out or act when action would resolve the problems that arise in the social situations that make up the basis of Austen's stories. They lose sight of the fact that the early 19th century is not early 21st. Heck, it's not even the same country. To some living 200 years after Austen published, these sensibilities do not make sense. While I would not have wanted to be a woman living then, essentially tied down and utterly reliant on a wealthy man's whim for my salvation, I try to at least enjoy the spectacle of something absolutely foreign to the way I live. Watching these people in the midst of arguing or courting is much like watching the controlled chaos of a boxing match. The principle parties are dueling like fighters looking to beat the crap out of one another, yet under strict rules which they are bound by the game to follow. Break the rules and you're disqualified. You lose. The constraints these people put themselves under in the name of civility may seem fanciful to us outsiders, but for a woman whose very livelihood depended on winning this bizarre game, it was very real.