Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice was an odd book for me. I'd never read it before now, mostly because I'm not all that into romance, but also because my English and Literature teacher in my junior year of high school ruined me on classics for a long, long time. A month-long study of Benjamin Franklin's diary entries about his gout will do that to a person. But I realized that I'm missing out on a lot of good stories, so I got over it and picked P&P as my first book to get back on the horse. That's not what made the experience strange to me, though. It's that I didn't care for the story but I really liked the book anyway. Figure that one out.
I think part of my dislike for the story is that I'm just not into romantic comedy. It's always so Mad Libs, for lack of a better description. When I read or watch a romantic comedy, I've never felt like I was experiencing anything new - even when it was my first time with the genre. It's kind of like the White Album by The Beatles - it's been talked about and rehashed so much that even if it's your first time hearing it, you feel like you've heard it before. That's not to say that I'm ignorant to the fact that Pride and Prejudice was one of the first romantic comedies, and probably the most popular one of all time. Actually, that's probably why I both liked and disliked it. I liked it because it's the original source of all the gooey fluff forced onto the world (and therefore the best for obvious reasons), but irritating because of the metric ton of shit that has been derived from it. I would even go so far as to say the lion's share of romantic comedies are just Pride and Prejudice in a different outfit. Why try improving the genre when it was done so well out the gate?
Enough whining! I want to talk about the characters, which were a big part of why I ultimately enjoyed the book so much. The Bennets are obviously all kickass in their own way, with Lydia as my favorite. I'm a sucker for high drama and the ruckus she caused was pure gold. I also enjoyed the interplay between Mr.and Mrs. Bennet. It reminded me a lot of the stereotypical husband and wife interplay in 1950s sitcoms (you can almost envision Mr. Bennet breaking the fourth wall and shrugging at us with an, "oh, that Mrs. Bennet! Teehee!" expression on his face in the opening scene of the novel), something that both surprised and delighted me (though I doubt I should be enjoying a loveless marriage so much). I'm actually not all that enamored with Elizabeth or Mr. Darcy, but I think that's more a dislike of the plot tarnishing them than not liking the characters themselves. I liked both of them a lot for the first two-thirds (do I even need to discuss Elizabeth's fabulous sass and how she and Darcy flirted?), but when she went to Pemberley and became more concerned with materialism than she had ever displayed at any point in the story before, I couldn't help but roll my eyes. My annoyance with Elizabeth evened out once she sassed Lady Catherine back to Rosings, but I can't help but still be completely over Mr. Darcy. Nobody can go from sarcastic ass to cuddly warm fuzzies that quickly and not be crazy or a fake. Sure, his change was explained convincingly enough, but I can't help but feel like it was more than a little deus ex in order to not make it look like Elizabeth had lost her damn mind.
I think I might get more out of it if I read it a second or third time (which I wouldn't be against despite my earlier whining). I was a little surprised with how engaging it was the first time through and happy that I "got" so much of it. That's probably a retarded thing to say - a writer from any era can be a pretentious windbag, most definitely, but reading things from previous centuries can be daunting. And why I was afraid of classics after reading about Ben Franklin's medical woes. So I'm glad Austen was an engaging writer - she helped me get over my hangups and make me look forward to reading more challenging material in the future.
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