Pride and Prejudice - Summary

Summary of Pride and Prejudice

The novel Pride and Prejudice is written by Jane Austen and was first published in 1813. The plot deals with the Bennet family in Hartfordshire, England, during late 18^th century. Mr. Bennet is an English gentleman living with his overbearing wife and five daughters. Mrs. Bennet is frantically prosaic obsessed over marrying off her daughters as quickly and advantageously as possible. This due to the Bennet family doesn’t from an upper class and if Mr. Bennet dies, their house will be inherited by a distant cousin whom they’ve never met. Therefore their family’s future happiness and security is dependent on the daughters making good marriages. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s daughters consist of the beautiful and dutiful Jane, the quick-witted Elisabeth, the bookish Mary, the immature Kitty and the wild Lydia.

          Most of the action in the novel centers on the two eldest Bennet sisters: Jane and Elizabeth. Those girls lives are turned upside down when a wealthy young gentleman called Mr. Bingley and his best friend, the dashing, but proud Mr. Darcy arrive in their neighborhood to spend their summer in a mansion nearby the Bennet’ property. Jane falls in love with Mr. Bingley, while Elizabeth finds Mr. Darcy as a snobbish and proud man and whom she swears to loathe forever. It’s particularly Elizabeth and Darcy that drive the plot through a combination of their total inability to get together, due to their common low opinions of one another – or at least the belief that the other part has a low opinion of them. With their relationship, hasty prejudgment and a battle of the sexes are introduced.  But soon, love is in the air also for these two and finally after many trials and tribulations that stand between the Bennet sisters and their happiness, including class, gossip and scandal, the novel ends with two marriages on the same day.

         

// Rebecka Belge