Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is not my Cup of Tea

There is not much that can be said about Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice that has not previously been said, but conciseness was not Ms. Austen’s strong suit and it is probably not mine either.

Pride and Prejudice is pretty neat, but it’s not my thing.

The book is almost a magical artifact, because characters like Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are icons in their own right. I cannot use quotes from the work, because the most illustrative passages are already famous. The world in which it is set—the balls, strolls and hushed letters—has cast a genteel shadow over English literature and continues to electrify the hearts of readers around the globe.

Austen’s works survive, not for their plot, but for their characters. Pride and Prejudice is a love story, in that it is a story about the perils of social and romantic relationships. The restrictions surrounding the women of Hertfordshire, especially the economically-pressed Bennet family, lend a sense of urgency to their romantic pursuits, but the pressure to marry well isn’t so bad. Not when there is dancing, conversation, and complicated interpersonal relationships to study! Not only do comedic figures like Mr. Collins and Mary Bennet reflect the moral failings of the nominally-enlightened aristocracy, the principal couple. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, are deeply-relatable and deeply-entertaining figures. It’s very refreshing to see two characters who are both wrong apologize to one another. That’s growth. That’s love. And that’s why we still read Pride and Prejudice.

Perhaps there is more to Jane Austen than the magic of those characters. Maybe people just want to escape to another age, to fall in love, to go to a dance or to laugh at fools, who have existed forever. But thousands of books were written in the 1810s, and none of them are as famous or as enduring as Pride and Prejudice. The temporal trappings of the story are not what I find interesting, and perhaps if I did I would fall head-over-heels for Austen’s stories.

As it is, I am ambivalent to them. If I am assigned to return to Austen’s society, I will probably enjoy my visit. But reading Pride and Prejudice felt a little like taking a diagnostic test: would I turn out to be a ‘Janeite?’ But I did not, and I do not think that is an awful lack.