I've Been Doing It Again: Rereading Pride and Prejudice

I have a problem: Ever since high school, I've been compelled to reread Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice every three or four years. And that doesn't count how many times I've seen the A&E miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice, which is six hours long and takes most of its dialog directly from the original novel.

I've even seen that silly Keira Knightley version where Darcy and Elizabeth make-out like a couple of randy teenagers at the end.

The number of hours I've dedicated to this book is a little silly, but I know that I'd do it again in a heartbeat. It's a book that keeps on giving, no matter how many times I've read it. I'm always surprised by what I've forgotten, and I'm captured completely anew.

The Mr. Darcy-Elizabeth love story is always titillating, of course, in its restrained 19th-century sort of way, and the main characters' struggles, triumphs, and transformations are enthralling every time.

But the most impressive thing about Pride and Prejudice  is that there's not a single character in the book that goes to waste. No one in Austen's novel is ever flat or one-dimensional. From Mr. Collins to Lydia Bennet to Lady de Bourgh, no one is spared their displays of silliness and buffoonery, yet all of these characters seem familiar, too, and a little bit vulnerable, and incredibly lifelike. They're ridiculous, but they're intensely lovable, as well. It's kind of like finding an old friend's flaws endearing instead of off-putting, and loving them a little more for having them.

I think that, like Dostoevsky and Dickens, Austen's brilliance comes from the world she creates. Sure, the novel's plot is good, and the ideas behind the characters are certainly there, but it's the rich array of side characters that makes Pride and Prejudice such an enduring pleasure to read.

This time, I read Austen's novel aloud to Charlie. This was both a challenge and a pleasure. When reading Austen's sentences, which are quite long and well-packed with meandering asides, commas, and stray phrases, I had to start each sentence with a deep breath and blind faith that it would go somewhere grammatically correct, even if, in her typically circumspect manner, Austen had buried the object of her verb half a paragraph away!


[ GASP! ]

But, around Chapter Fifteen, I got so used to Austen's voice that I couldn't stop talking like her. I kept pestering poor Charlie about "the renewal of that gentleman's addresses" and being "quite set on" reading another chapter and wondering if Lucky Charms for breakfast was considered "keeping a good table." Eventually, I had to ask Charlie why on earth he was "regarding me with a look of such vexation!"

Anyway, classic literature like Pride and Prejudice often gets a bad rap for being old and having funny words in it and being pushed upon you by high school librarians who wear those long, beaded eyeglass dangles. But Pride and Prejudice is one of those books that justifies all librarians and English teachers alike: it has the potential to show students that classics are classics for a reason.


Visit Project Gutenberg and Librivox for free online versions of Pride and Prejudice.