Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen's most popular novel Pride and Prejudice is an inversion of the love-at-first-sight motif: Fitzwilliam Darcy sees Elisabeth Bennet at a ball and is at first only moderately impressed - which is a mutual feeling since she can't stand the man at all. Only after countless misunderstandings - and victory over pride and prejudice, hence the title - do the two find their way to each other. Austen's novel paints a detailed and candor social portrait of her time. With wit and irony, Austen takes aim at the hypocrisy and parochialism of her time. And she very sensitively describes the desperate lot of women whose only chance back then was to marry well. Gröls-Classics - English Edition