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Introduction Among the British Library’s collections is a curious wooden case containing three pairs of spectacles, an inkpot and a penknife: Jane Austen’s portable writing desk. It is the 18thcentury equivalent of a laptop, and she must have been frantic when it was almost lost in 1798, placed in the wrong carriage at a Dartford inn. The desk was given to Austen on her nineteenth birthday, a thoughtful and unusual gift from a father to a daughter in 1794. Yet Reverend Austen must have known by then that his daughter was happiest with pen and paper to hand – she had already filled several notebooks, including A History of England, written aged 15 by ‘a partial, prejudiced, and ignorant Historian’, with the warning: ‘N.B. There will be very few Dates in this History.’1 It hints at the self-deprecating humour that marks Austen’s subsequent writing. Pride and Prejudice was Austen’s second published novel, first appearing in print in 1813; she began writing it in 1796, under the working title First Impressions. On her death in 1817, Austen left four published novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma), with a further two (Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) published posthumously. Today, it is largely due to the popularity of screen adaptations of Austen’s novels that we are so familiar with the ‘visual vocabulary’ of Georgian England (the period covering the reigns of the Hanoverian King Georges, from 1714 to c.1837): balls and white dresses, pillared mansions and elegant town crescents, ‘taking the waters’ and tea-drinking. Yet scratch the surface of Pride and Prejudice and you will find ugliness lurking: drawn-out sickness, the exhaustion vi
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INTRODUCTION
of multiple childbirths, a desperate scrabble for economic security, and the Napoleonic wars. Austen herself died aged only 41, after months of pain and debility, unable to complete the seventh novel (Sanditon) she had been working on. Rather like Austen’s portable desk – so quaint in a world where few now write by hand – the characters of Pride and Prejudice may sometimes seem distant in their tastes and behaviour. However, the hopes they entertain, the disappointments they suffer and the emotions they experience are not so different to our own.
Contexts Family life and love At first reading, Georgian life is likely to baffle modern readers, with its strange manners, oddly named dances and card games. Austen’s female characters lead stultifying lives, with little opportunity for education; the excitement generated by visitors and newcomers reveals how small a world many women occupied. With endless talk of marriage from the very first line, sympathy for some of the novel’s female characters can tip into frustration. However, for middle- and upper-class women, marrying well was a practical necessity as much as an aspiration: without it, most faced living off the charity of male relations – as did Jane and her sister, Cassandra. Surely marriage at any cost was preferable? From the relationships that Austen depicts, we can guess that she – like her heroine, Elizabeth Bennet – thought not: certainly, not every marriage is a happy ending in Pride and Prejudice. Indeed, just as it is often noted that Austen’s closest relationship was with Cassandra, you could argue that the most fully realised relationship in the novel is that between Elizabeth and her sister Jane.
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CHAPTER 1 It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. ‘My dear Mr Bennet,’ said his lady to him one day, ‘have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?’ Mr Bennet replied that he had not. ‘But it is,’ returned she; ‘for Mrs Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.’ Mr Bennet made no answer. ‘Do not you want to know who has taken it?’ cried his wife impatiently. ‘You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.’ This was invitation enough. ‘Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.’ ‘What is his name?’ ‘Bingley.’ 1
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JANE AUSTEN
‘Is he married or single?’ ‘Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!’ ‘How so? how can it affect them?’ ‘My dear Mr Bennet,’ replied his wife, ‘how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.’ ‘Is that his design in settling here?’ ‘Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.’ ‘I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better; for, as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr Bingley might like you the best of the party.’ ‘My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be any thing extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.’ ‘In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.’ ‘But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.’ ‘It is more than I engage for, I assure you.’ ‘But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general you know they visit no new comers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him, if you do not.’
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
‘You are over scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying which ever he chuses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.’ ‘I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so good humoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.’ ‘They have none of them much to recommend them,’ replied he; ‘they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.’ ‘Mr Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.’ ‘You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.’ ‘Ah! you do not know what I suffer.’ ‘But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.’ ‘It will be no use to us if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.’ ‘Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty I will visit them all.’ Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-andtwenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news. 3
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Glossary Common words with archaic spellings – for example, ‘chuses’ for ‘chooses’ (p.3) – have not been glossed where the meaning is clear from the context. The use of the em-dash to censor names and dates, for example, ‘in the —shire’ (p.79), was a 19th-century literary convention, possibly to enhance realism or to avoid accusations of inaccuracy. Chapter 1 1
Netherfield Park: a neighbouring grand house
1
chaise and four: a closed carriage drawn by four horses
1
Michaelmas: 29 September, the feast day of St Michael, traditionally the start of autumn
2
it will be impossible for us to visit him, if you do not: it would have been seen as improper for women to introduce themselves to a new male acquaintance
3
develope: here, meaning ‘explain’ or ‘describe’
Chapter 2 5
ball: a formal dance party
5
called on him: visited him formally at home
Chapter 3 7
assembly: a formal, public gathering for the upper classes, sometimes with music
8
Hertfordshire: county just north of London
8
large estate in Derbyshire: extensive house and grounds in a Midland county
10
to give consequence to: pay attention to, but also implies that, by dancing with her, some of Darcy’s social status would ‘rub off’ on Elizabeth by association
11
the Boulanger: finishing dance at a ball 416
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GLOSSARY
12
one of your set downs: to put him in his place
Chapter 4 13
breeding: the result of upbringing, as shown through behaviour and manners
14
Affectation of candour: pretending to speak honestly
14
seminaries: private educational institution for girls
14
trade: business, i.e. wealth ‘created’ rather than inherited
14
the liberty of a manor: the right to hunt game in the grounds
15
ductility of his temper: he is easily ‘led’ i.e. influenced
Chapter 5 17
his presentation at St James’s: formal ceremony of introduction at St James’s Palace, the official court of British royalty
19
hack chaise: a hired carriage, like a taxi, for those who could not afford the expense of keeping their own
Chapter 6 23
Vingt-un ... Commerce: card games
25
airs: tunes, folk melodies
26
a house in town: i.e. in London
27
complaisance: now obsolete term, implying a willingness to please
28
wish you joy: congratulate on marriage
Chapter 7 29
entailed, in default of heirs male: i.e. property law designating heirs to land, here, if none of Mr Bennet’s children are male
29
a respectable line of trade: not a ‘lower-class’ trade such as a slum landlord
29
milliner: a hat-maker 417
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GLOSSARY
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regimentals of an ensign: the regiment’s distinguishing uniform; the lowest-ranking commissioned officer in a rein a regiment
30
a red coat: a soldier (the British army wore red coats)
31
footman: a male (uniformed) servant
31
tête-à-tête: private conversation (from French: lit. ‘head-tohead’)
33
feeling really anxious: in Georgian times, a common cold might lead to pneumonia or worse
33
no horse-woman: not a good rider
35
apothecary: old word for a pharmacist
Chapter 8 36
retired to dress: In upper-class Georgian households, people would change into formal evening dress for dinner.
37
decorum: ‘proper’ behaviour
38
low connexions: i.e. family in trade or the professions, like their barrister uncle; to Miss Bingley, these occupations are ‘low’
38
Cheapside: area in the financial – and therefore unfashionable and less ‘respectable’ – district of the City of London
38
vulgar: ‘low’ or ‘common’
38
at loo: another card game
38
playing high: betting considerable money
40
cover screens and net purses: two occupations for ‘ladies’: making fire-screen covers and crocheting purses
41
the modern languages: i.e. not Latin or Greek but French, and so on, like today’s MFL
42
paltry device: an ungenerous trick
Chapter 9 43
waited on: visited
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mince pies: a sweet pie containing minced-meat (dried fruit, nuts and spices)
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