Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy misjudge each other and spend a novel correcting the record. Underneath the comedy is a hard economic fact: the Bennet estate is entailed away from five daughters, so marriage is the only instrument of security any of them has, and Austen makes the reader watch characters choose between security and judgment.

In a curriculum meant to form citizens it works as training in evidence — almost every plot turn follows from someone believing a confident account before checking it.

Context: Jane Austen (1775-1817) published six novels, all anonymously in her lifetime. Pride and Prejudice was the second, written in an earlier draft titled First Impressions.

Connections

• Jane Austen — the author.
• Sense and Sensibility — her first published novel, also on this list.
• Marriage — the economic instrument the plot turns on.
• Literature