5 - Pride and Prejudice

Summary

The slow and ponderous beginning of Sense and Sensibility, which details the Norland family, the estate and its entail, contrasts with the theatrical tour de force of Pride and Prejudice's opening, which mimics Samuel Johnson's mocking generalisations on the human condition – ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ There follows a quick antiphonal dialogue expressing the marriage of Mr and Mrs Bennet, comically at odds with what Austen later described in her ‘Plan of a Novel’ as usual novel style: ‘Book to open with father and daughter conversing in long speeches.’ When talk ends, the method switches to direct narrative comment of the sort usually preceding conversation in fiction; it declares what the attentive reader has already concluded: that ‘Mr Bennet’ is an ‘odd mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice’ and his wife a woman ‘of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper’ whose ‘business of … life’ is to get her daughters married. But the reader should be on guard: the narrative voice limits itself. Not stressed is the absence of Mr Bennet's ‘business of … life’, the proper care of a father for his numerous and precariously placed family. Five unprepared girls about to make the choices that will determine their adult futures should be a father's ‘business’ – especially in the light of his own unsatisfactory marriage. The narrator will not be a crutch for inattentive reading.