WARNING: In this review there will be spoilers. As far as you can spoil a 200-year-old book, though. Why has anyone NOT read this book? I also have to tell you that there also will be fair amounts of fangirling. Sorry about that.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a great fortune, must be in want of a wife.

And thus the most amazing love story in the world begins.

And we get to one of the things I absolutely adore about Pride and Prejudice: its narrator. Oh, the narrator. After Downton Abbey I can’t avoid thinking of this novel’s narrator as the ancestor of the Dowager Countess, so I’ll refer to it as a she. We all know the narrator is a sassy old lady, and she rocks.



Just in that first sentence, we get the tone of the book. Somewhat self-mocking, acid and critic of the society it is inserted. Of course young, single men have nothing better to with their time and money than get a bride. Basically, it is so because young ladies had nothing better to do than look for a husband.

Self-deprecation much?

Then we get to meet the family around which the story is centered: welcome to the the Bennet household, population: an overbearing mother, a somewhat disinterested father and five lovely daughters. Jane, practically perfect in every way; Lizzie, witty and cynic; Mary, pretentious; Kitty, silly; and Lydia, even sillier. I love how the dynamics play in the family.

Mrs. Bennet is crazy, and spoils her two youngest daughters. Mr. Bennet hides from his wife’s craziness and makes fun of her at every chance he’s got (seriously, his comments are the best!). Lizzy mocks everyone, but she kinds of loves them anyway, crazy and all. Mary tries to moralize, though nobody marks her. And Jane just is nice at everyone.



Of course, I identified with Lizzy. I’ve also have a big, crazy family. And I usually make fun of everyone and their own special brand of crazy, but I cannot help but love them anyway. Even if they annoy the heck out of me (they do pretty often), they’re still family.

The event that sets everything into motion is the arrival of a mysterious Mr. Bingley to a house in the neighborhood. He’s young, single and (most importantly) RICH. And Mrs. Bennet decides that he must have one of her five daughters, of course. No one cares what the rich dude wants.

So, anyway, they finally get to meet him and his sisters, one of them is married, the other one is a mean girl. Well, both of them are. And there’s also Darcy, Bingley’s friend. He’s dark, handsome and even richer than Mr. Bingley.

How did people at that time get all that financial information about people they meet at a party? My guess is as good as yours. But the important thing here is that we have not only one, but two young, single, and rich dudes hanging around the neighborhood.




Oh, and there’s also Mr. Hurst, Bingley’s brother-in-law. But he spends all his time slightly drunk or sleeping (okay, I’m kidding here. But I’ve always thought he was drunk most of the time).
And here is when the plot finally takes off.

You see, Lizzy Bennet and our rich and mysterious Mr. Darcy don’t like each other at first sight. Well, to be fair, he actually says that she is “tolerable”, which infuriates Lizzy. But the point is that they aren’t each other’s favorite person to hang around. At least from Lizzy’s side of the question.

You see, most of the book is narrated through Lizzy’s eyes. We get her impressions on Mr. Darcy’s behavior, and everyone’s attitude. It’s only in the second part where we get other people’s side of the story, as they explain their situations to Lizzie.

I almost forgot to mention dear Mr. Collins. He’s a cousin that (for some legal reason) is going to inherit the Bennet’s state. He’s a priest and decides to visit his long-stranded family because he wishes to show his parishioners a good example. That could be a good thing, except this dude is probably the most infuriating and pompous character ever. He sucks it up to people more powerful and rich than him (basically, he kisses Lady de Bourgh’s butt way too many times), he makes annoying compliments and… he wants to get married.

(I’ll admit Collins is one of my favorite characters, just because he makes me laugh too much.)

And the chosen one is none other than poor Lizzy. She gets to receive all these unwanted attentions from Mr. Collins, who is the perfect definition of “a pain in the ass”. But she’s very lucky, because she has a friend who has a lot more patience than her, and is a lot more desperate about her spinsterhood (Charlotte is said to be twenty-seven). So, after failing to snatch his cousin, Mr. Collins settles for an older and less pretty girl, but who is also willing to settle for him. In my opinion, that is a higher sacrifice than his. Lizzy is outraged because she thinks her friend is throwing her life away, as Mr. Collins is the worst husband a Regency girl can hope for. But Charlotte really wants to stop being a spinster, so she doesn’t really care that much about whom the lucky guy was.

The two friends stop talking to each other because of this, but they later make up and go back to being friends, though Lizzie notes that their relation appears to be somewhat changed. But Charlotte is a good sport and invites Lizzie to visit her and Collins in the countryside. There, Lizzie gets to meet Collin’s patroness, Lady Catherine Du Bourgh. Who is this illustrious woman? The owner of a huge house (Rosings), constant giver of never-asked-for advice, and Darcy’s aunt. And yes, he appears again.

And yes, Lizzie keeps finding him annoying and pompous. But things are beginning to get weird here, because he keeps popping up wherever she happens to be. She also becomes a good friend of Captain Fitzwilliam, Darcy’s cousin and second son of an Earl. He’s a nicer dude than his cousin, and tries to show her a different side of his cousin. However, he fails miserably when he is the one who tells her why Bingley left. Apparently, Darcy was trying to protect his friend of an unsuitable marriage, to Jane (though Captain Fitzwilliam didn’t know that part of the story). Of course it corroborates Lizzie’s idea of him: he’s mean and awful and hates her because she’s poorer than him.

But here you get one of the most brilliant points in Austen’s work: how information is presented to the readers throughout the whole novel. At first, you get one side of the affair and the whole story builds up to match Lizzy’s point of view. But then, you get a sudden revelation, and the story turns completely around.

Of course, I’m talking here about the famous declaration (which is a hundred times more awkward in the book than in the film, but the point gets across). Darcy surprised Lizzy by asking her to marry him (the reader is not as surprised, because we have read what he said about her eyes. The ship sails itself).

By that point, Lizzy is pretty much convinced that Darcy somehow managed to break up Jane and Bingley, who liked each other at the ball and appeared to be very close for some time afterwards. But then, Bingley & co. left without telling anybody, so Jane was (understandably) heartbroken. And Lizzy was sure that Darcy and Caroline Bingley had more to do in the affair than Bingley himself.

Oh, and there’s also another young and handsome (but no rich) man lurking around. George Wickham, a soldier in the militia that decides to spend a few months making young Meryton girls (namely, the two younger Bennet sisters) go crazy for their red coats. But Wickham takes a fancy to Lizzy, who is always playing it cool. But he finally gets to her by revealing that of course Darcy is the bastard Lizzy thought him to be. According to this charming soldier, Darcy’s father had promised him a handsome amount so he could join the clergy. He also omits to tell her a series of very unflattering things about himself, but that’s a later concern.

So, Darcy proposes to Lizzy, and she confronts him about Jane and Wickham. Of course, Darcy is shocked by Lizzy’s rejection (dude, you need to work on your social skills. They’re worse than mine), and they end up fighting.

Darcy leaves and writes her a letter explaining the whole situation. And Lizzy, after reading it, realizes that she might not be right about everything. In the letter (which is gorgeous)he explains that Wickham asked him for the money Darcy's father had promised him, but spend it all in not-very-studenty activities, and that he almos got Georgiana, Darcy's baby sister, to elope with him to get her money. So yeah, Wickham is very much not the charming young man he makes himself to be.

I really like this about this book. It’s not like Lizzy is an infallible character who can only do things and is always right. Not at all. She’s easily charmed by Wickham’s charms, she makes hasty (to put it mildly) judgments about everyone, and forgets to listen to other people’s opinion. And her attitude is not only destructive to herself, but she also endangers her own family.

And even if they annoy her to no end, they’re still family. She makes a point about that.

Lizzy’s uncle and aunt invite her to tag along as they travel north. More precisely, they go to the county where the Darcy family humongous mansion is. And yes, they meet him there. But he appears to be more relaxed in his own environment, and Lizzy finds herself discovering that the horrible dude who dared to call her “tolerable” is actually quite nice (that is, when you get to know him). He’s not even bitter about her earlier rejection and eventually introduces her to his own little sister, Georgiana.

But disaster strikes again. This time, it comes from Lizzie’s younger, fun-loving sister, Lydia. She elopes with Wickham. At first, everyone believes that they plan to cross to Scotland and get married there (due to the different laws for marriage in both countries). However, they soon realize that the couple of love birds are not going North, precisely. When Lizzie finds out, the first person she runs into is Darcy, and she ends up telling him the whole story. He’s nice enough to calm her down and call for her relatives, which decide that the logic step is to go home.

There, as you can imagine, Mrs. Bennet’s nerves are breaking havoc. Mr. Bennet and his brother-in-law go to London (they have evidence to believe Lydia and Wickham are there), but they cannot find her. Mr. Bennet returns defeated, and the whole family is shocked by what happened, when they get a letter from their relatives in London: Lydia has been found, with Wickham, and they are willing to get married ASAP.

But our brilliant Lizzie is smelling something rotten there. Nobody in their sane mind would marry Lydia for the little money their uncle says is being promised to the guy. So when Lydia makes a comment about Darcy being present at her wedding, Lizzie is utterly surprised. Didn’t this guy hate her?

So she asks her aunt about it, and she confirms what Lydia has said. It was Darcy the one who found Lydia and Wickham and that made him a huge offer for him to marry the foolish girl.
Talk about true love! I mean, that was a truly big gesture, and more meaningful for her than flowers or chocolates (I’m not sure whether chocolates were the thing in Regency England, but I think not, which is a shame). Ladies, when a man is willing to clean up after your little sister’s messes, it means he’s the right guy.

And then, Bingley comes back! (with Darcy, of course) He has learned Jane’s true feelings for him and he’s going to see if they remain the same (spoiler alert: they do). After a few visits (and Mrs. Bennet cunning plans to leave them alone), they become engaged.

At this point, Darcy’s lovely aunt appears. This time, she’s there to confront Lizzie about her engagement to Darcy. Lady de Bourgh is outraged at the idea that her nephew would ever think of marrying a girl from an inferior social class, as Lizzie. And she demands that Lizzie ceases the inexistent engagement at once. After a heated argument, Lizzie ends up telling her to go to hell (but very politely, of course).

But what has happened with Lizzie and our beloved Mr. Darcy? NOTHING. They share a few awkward moments, but they never get to talk to each other. I think I was so frustrated at this point of the book that I wanted to get into it and shove them both into a closet or something.

Thank goodness, Mrs. Bennet (who else?) did that for me. Well, she didn’t shove them into a closet (not very proper in Regency England, I guess), but she did force them to go walking to accompany Jane and Bingley. After losing Kitty (she felt awkward being around Darcy), Lizzie tries to tell Darcy how thankful she is for all what he has done for the family.

Darcy’s answer?

That he did it for her!

*Dies of pure fangirlish joy*



I’m sorry, but anyone who hasn’t lost their panties at this point for our hero, is probably missing the whole point of the business. I’m sorry, but a dude who’s capable to doing such a thing out of love and generosity is just… amazing. (Reason #1 why Mr. Darcy can kick Edward Cullen’s ass). He then asks her if she feels any differently about him and the rest is history.

This is one of my favorite books of all times (it’s in the top 5). And it is so because all that is in the novel, besides the amazing love story. It’s a novel that has imperfect characters that get better as the plot goes on, shows a real family (not an ideal one) and has one great hero to top it all. Darcy and Lizzie’s relationship throughout the book is based on respect, besides the obvious attraction between the parties (you’re not fooling anyone, guys). At no point does Darcy act as if Lizzie is silly and needs to be protected, but when he does help her he does it because he wants to, not because she’s weak and defenseless.

I don’t know, they are my favorite couple ever and I adore this book way more than I can actually explain.