Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility

These summaries are based on presentations given by fellow students in a 19th Century British Novel class.

Pride and Prejudice (1813)
This is Austen's second of six novels. The original title was First Impressions which perhaps better captures the moral lesson of the dangers of mistaken first impressions. It is a romantic comedy of manners, but it is also a moral tale, offering biting social satire as to the superficiality of the gentry.

It has consistently rated in the most popular novels ever written: over 20 million copies have been sold. It has faux-sequels, been adapted to screen and stage, reworked with Zombies and spawned fan clubs and guides to romance.


Plot Summary:

The five unmarried Bennet sisters cannot inherit their father's manor as it is entitled to a male heir. The novel, set in turn-of-the-19th-century England, present the ups and downs of their searches for the right husbands, aided by their mother. Austen humorously portrays this "man hunt" by exposing the prejudices and vanity of aristocrats. The underlying social reality of the period is made clear: a woman's social status is directly related to that of her husband, while a man's social status is based on wealth.

Themes and Social Context:
The opening sentence of the book, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," touches neatly on three of the principle themes.

Prejudice: Most characters harbour prejudices, both positive and negative, towards those of higher and lower social classes. The main plot is based on a negative prejudice that leads Elizabeth to abhor her suitor, Darcy, and refuse his hand in marriage

Personal Fulfilment: As demonstrated by Elizabeth, fulfilment of a married woman depends on her ability to find love, her capacity to reason well, and the freedom to make her own decisions.

Marriage: Jane Austen presents three types of marriages in the novel.
Desirable marriage: based on love, mutual compatibility, and good manners.
Practical marriage: based on financial needs and convenience
Undesirable marriage: based on poor judgement and lust

Check out the difference between the 1940 version and the 2005 version of the same scene!

 

And just for fun, the book trailer for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Sense and Sensibility (1811)

Austen's first published novel.


Major Themes: 
Marriage: Presented as the ultimate fulfilment in a woman's life
Matriarchy vs. Patriarchy: Absence of paternal authority and controlling mothers.
Reason vs. Emotion: Finding equilibrium between them.














The book trailer for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. (It won Amazon's best book video of 2009)