Pride and Prejudice

[Illustration:

GEORGE ALLEN
PUBLISHER

156 CHARING CROSS ROAD
LONDON

RUSKIN HOUSE
]

[Illustration:

_Reading Jane's Letters._ _Chap 34._
]

PRIDE
and
PREJUDICE

by
Jane Austen,

with a Preface by
George Saintsbury
and
Illustrations by
Hugh Thomson

[Illustration: 1894]

Ruskin 156. Charing
House. Cross Road.

London
George Allen.

CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

[Illustration:

_To J. Comyns Carr
in acknowledgment of all I
owe to his friendship and
advice, these illustrations are
gratefully inscribed_

_Hugh Thomson_
]

PREFACE.

[Illustration]

The poet Walt Whitman once drew a sharp and true distinction between "loving by allowance"—that is, loving something because convention says you should—and "loving with personal love," a real and individual attachment. This idea applies just as well to books as to people. And when it comes to the small but devoted group of authors who inspire that kind of personal love, something curious happens: readers disagree far more sharply about which of that author's works is best than they do about writers they merely admire out of habit or duty.

Among the "Janites"—the devoted fans of Jane Austen, of which there are not many, but who are unusually discerning—you would likely find someone arguing that almost every one of her six novels deserves the top spot. Some readers love Northanger Abbey for its freshness, humor, tight construction, and energy (entrain is the French word for this lively drive), even though, if we're honest, its scale is small and it's really a parody, a genre that rarely reaches the very top rank. Persuasion, quieter in tone and less gripping, has fans who prize its exquisite delicacy and consistency above everything else. The ending of Mansfield Park is admittedly melodramatic, its hero and heroine a bit bland, and Austen almost mischievously kills off any romance by admitting outright that Edmund only chose Fanny because Mary shocked him, and that Fanny would probably have accepted Crawford if he'd tried a little harder—yet the brilliant rehearsal scenes and the unforgettable Mrs. Norris have won that novel plenty of defenders. Sense and Sensibility has perhaps the fewest die-hard admirers, though it certainly isn't without them.

Still, I suspect that most well-informed readers, all things considered, would split their vote between Emma and the novel in front of you. And the more popular choice—if loving Jane Austen doesn't already prove you're above "popular" taste—would probably be Emma. It's bigger, more varied, more accessible. By the time she wrote it, Austen had seen more of the world, and her general dialogue (though not her most distinctive and personal touches) had improved. Characters like Miss Bates and the Eltons win over just about everyone. But I, for my part, choose Pride and Prejudice without hesitation. To me it is the most perfect, the most characteristic, the most purely Austen of all her books—and I'll try to explain why, in the space I have here.

First, a reminder: the novel was originally written very early, around 1796, when Austen was barely twenty-one. She revised and finished it at Chawton about fifteen years later, and it wasn't published until 1813—only four years before her death. I can't say for certain whether this blend of youthful energy and mature, careful revision explains what I see as its clear advantage over her other novels: its construction. The plot, while not elaborate, is built almost as solidly as one of Henry Fielding's; you could hardly cut a single character or event without damaging the story. Lydia and Wickham's elopement isn't a coup de théâtre—a shocking, dramatic twist thrown in for effect, like Crawford and Mrs. Rushworth's scandal in Mansfield Park. Instead, it connects tightly to everything set up earlier and brings about the ending with complete logical fairness. Every smaller thread—Jane and Bingley's romance, Mr. Collins's arrival, the visit to Hunsford, the tour of Derbyshire—fits together with the same quiet skill. There's none of the back-and-forth guessing games that, in Emma, complicate the secret relationship between Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax—entertaining as that subplot is, I don't think it's the best part of that otherwise wonderful book. Austen always enjoyed a good misunderstanding, since it let her show off a rare talent I'll discuss shortly. But here she relies only on situations that arise naturally: Wickham's false account of Darcy's character, and the very believable awkwardness of Elizabeth's feelings slowly shifting from outright dislike to genuine love. I don't know whether any playwright has ever adapted Pride and Prejudice for the stage. If one did, I suspect the scenes would seem too subtle for a mass audience craving spectacle, and the characters too finely drawn for the cheap seats. But whatever the result, the play would not be hurt by the kind of loose, patched-together plotting that sometimes hides comfortably in a novel but shows up instantly once you try to stage it.

Even so, I don't believe construction is a novelist's highest gift. It shows off an author's other talents to a sharp-eyed critic, and its absence can quietly dull those talents even for readers who aren't paying close critical attention. But a poorly built novel with brilliant humor, moving characters, or masterful dialogue—perhaps the rarest skill of all—would still be far better than a flawlessly plotted story acted out by lifeless puppets. Despite how skillfully Austen constructed this story, I would rank Pride and Prejudice much lower if it didn't also contain what I consider her greatest achievements in humor and character-creation—achievements that stand alongside John Thorpe, the Eltons, and Mrs. Norris from her other books, and in at least one case, I'd argue, surpass them.

Austen's humor is so subtle and restrained that it's easier to feel than to explain, and different readers are likely to describe it differently. To me, it resembles Joseph Addison's humor—found in his essays for The Spectator—more than any other type of British wit. Of course, the two writers differ in period, subject, and style, and the difference in sex probably matters less than you'd think, since Addison's persona ("Mr. Spectator") had a distinctly feminine gentleness to it, while Austen's genius, though never masculine in a crude sense, had plenty of what we might call masculine sharpness. What truly links them is a shared set of qualities: reserve, extremely fine attention to small detail, and a refusal to go for loud or obvious effects. Both also share something else—a kind of cruelty that isn't unkind or inhuman, exactly, but is still relentless. People who judge crudely like to contrast Addison's good nature with Jonathan Swift's savagery, or Austen's gentleness with the rowdiness of novelists like Fielding and Smollett, or even the harsh practical jokes her predecessor Fanny