Pride and Prejudice: a new favourite!

 Hi Everyone!

Wow... I can only say this about Pride and Prejudice: I loved it! But it will be a pretty boring review if that's it so I am going to talk about my favourite characters and a brief plotline, though a lot of you will probably either know the story, have seen an adaptation or read the book for yourself.

I started reading this book and there was a lot of pressure; I was quite nervous! Similar to Charles Dickens, Jane Austen is one of the most influential British writers and Pride and Prejudice is so many people's favourite book of all time. There is a lot of pressure to like it and to be honest most of that pressure I think I put on myself because let's face it I really wanted to like it. And I did! 

I can see why people love Elizabeth Bennet as a protagonist- I love her too. She is so independent, strong and intelligent. I love how she always knows what to say and when to say it. She is such a wonderful character to read about and an amazing person to get to know. 

Mr Darcy is such an interesting character. The fact he appears proud and arrogant and all the rest of it when Lizzie first sees him and then so much happens that makes you question everything you thought made up his personality.

Mrs Bennet is a person I think quite typical of the era. Her main goal in life is marrying her daughters off to wealthy gentlemen. With a modern eye, she is a funny character to read about as so many of her opinions are now unheard of. 

I could go on talking about all the various characters but I'll give you a brief plot description in case you don't know the story or if you just want a refresher! 

Pride and Prejudice is about the Bennet family. The protagonist is Elizabeth Bennet and she has four sisters: Jane, Mary, Kitty and Lydia. The novel opens up with Mr Bingley coming into the neighborhood and Mrs Bennet is determined to marry one of her daughters off to him. There are a lot of other characters involved too including  Mr Wickham, Mr Darcy and Mr Collins. There are also the friends of the Bennets, the Lucases. 

One of my favourite things about this book is the relationship between Lizzy and Jane. I love how close they are and how Lizzy can't keep secrets from Jane and the way they seem more like friends than sisters. I also love how independent Elizabeth is which I mentioned above. Of course all the intertwining love stories are wonderful but no spoilers!

I honestly love this book so much now and it is certainly one of my favourites of all time, along with Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. It has made me want to read more Jane Austen and I can't wait to. I think my next one will be Persuasion because I like the sound of it and it is shorter than some of the others because they are quite intimidating!

I fell in love with Jane Austen's writing style too. I am really enjoying reading classics at the moment for the challenge they bring and Pride and Prejudice was a challenge but one I loved!

I would definately recommend it as a good place to start with reading classics if you aren't used to the language because there are a lot of adaptations and you can always watch them before reading the book or part way through. I also recommend reading about the book and getting used to the fact that a few characters have several names (like Elizabeth/Lizzy/Eliza) and other things like that. I found a blog which gives good advice. Click here to view it. Alternatively I think Lucy Powrie did a great video on it. It is a very old one so she looks very young and I prefer her voice now for some reason! You can see it here.

I am so excited to have started on my Jane Austen journey so expect to see much more Jane Austen on my blog! Reading Jane Austen was also one of my main reading goals for 2021 and I accomplished it in January!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post all about Pride and Prejudice! 

I have it in the stunning Penguin English
 Library (you can see my collection behind it)
 for Christmas with my Grandma and Grandad.