Jane Austen’s critically-acclaimed Pride and Prejudice follows the Bennetts, a middle-class British family whose sole obsession is marriage. Each of the five daughters live and breathe for the day they’ll have their own respective husbands, and even their parents’ marriage seems to revolve around those of their daughters. Whenever a man visits, the Bennetts strive for a very superficial piety, but when he goes home, they all seem to put their dignity away with the good silverware.
The story seems more popular among women, presumably because the main character, a young woman, is more relatable in her downfalls than the young man is in his vindication. As the title entails, Elizabeth Bennett struggles with her own pride, rejecting two proposals without reason, and the prejudices with which she judges men prove to be obstacles when it comes to falling in love. Every girl can relate to having been disappointed in a man at some point, and to be proven wrong in their prejudices would be a relief. Within the plot’s final relief lies a hope for female readers that maybe they were were wrong about men. Maybe one day, they’ll find a Mr Darcy.
Young men don’t seem to be as fond of the story, though, because there is nothing relatable about perfection. As a young man, I found that I had very little common ground with Darcy, which made it difficult to relate to his situation. Halfway through the book, some male readers might find they have more in common with Elizabeth’s tinted perception of Mr Darcy and his alleged character flaws. By the time he’s able to explain himself and is proven to be perfect, though, it’s clear that this is a story written by a woman, for a woman. Good and evil become stereotypes, and if a man isn’t perfect, he must be hiding something.
Written over two centuries ago and still popular, with eight film adaptations between the years of 1940 and 2005, Pride and Prejudice does carry some very valuable lessons about emotions and the way that our hearts relate to each other. I do think, however, that if Jane Austen were to go back and make one tweak to the final manuscript, she might have written the role of Mr Darcy to be a little less perfect out of compassion for men everywhere.
