Pride and Prejudice

by Jane Austen

I’ve been wanting to read this for a while. We listened to it while driving to Lubbock and back. Having seen several adaptations of it, I was impressed with how generally faithful they all are. Some of the characters (Lady Catherine, Mr. Bennet) felt different in the book, but not in big ways. For example, in movie versions I usually see Mr. Bennet as a sensible man with a silly wife. In the book, you begin to appreciate that he is silly in his own way (basically slothful, not taking the trouble to deal with problems or to keep his household in order). And Lady Catherine seems even more ridiculous in the book.

Vocab

• sennight - a week (sen = s’en = seven, so “a seven-night”). This is related to “fortnight”.
• complacent - I would use this to mean “satisfied with the way things are” in a kind of lazy way. But Austin uses it in the sense of approval or satisfaction. “Self-complacency” means “satisfied with one’s self”.

Examples:

• There are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency [pride, self-satisfaction] on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary…
• Their brother [Bingley], indeed, was the only one of the party whom she could regard with any complacency [approval, satisfaction].
• Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some complacency… [approval]
• Jane met her with a smile of such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression