pride and prejudice, part iv

Alas, we have come to the end of it all...

There was a point that I was just going to give up on the book, but I kept with it. I thought it did get exciting after Wickham kidnapped Lydia. That was totally out of the blue for me, and kept my interest enough to finish the book.

I just don't get why Mrs. Bennet would still want Lydia to marry Wickham. This doesn't make sense to me at all. He basically kidnaps her and holds her for ransom. Yet Mrs. Bennet thinks the best idea is to marry the two. I guess it goes to show how Mrs. Bennet views marriage as the ultimate goal in life, but still. That bothered me a lot. If I were Mr. Bennet, I would have punched Wickham squarely in the face. (While I was reading this, I told Chris that this is why our daughters will not date until they are 30.) I really got annoyed with Mrs. Bennet after this whole ordeal.

So, Jane and Bingley end up together. And Elizabeth and Darcy do, of course.

In the end, I think I liked Elizabeth after Lady Catherine tried to get her to swear not to marry her nephew Darcy. Elizabeth just seemed like a smart and strong woman who knew what she wanted, or at the very least, wasn't going to submit to some old lady who had designs of her own.

Now, Chris and I can watch the BBC version. Maybe it will show me why all women love Oscar-winner Colin Firth.

pride and prejudice, part III

I'm working my way through this book, and more often than not, I end up falling asleep on Elizabeth Bennet and company. Again, I say that I don't think that 19th Century English women are my cup of tea. (Rather, something piqued my interest the other day: a sci-fi series called Old Man's War.)

I got past the part where Darcy professes his love for her and explains why Wickham is so bad and why Jane doesn't deserve Bingham. So, I guess I'm headed to the third act where Darcy eventually wins over Elizabeth, they fall in love, and get married, which I seem to gather is the point of the book.

If only there were a way to make the story more interesting... perhaps by adding zombies and making Elizabeth a zombie hunter...

pride and prejudice, part II

What I've gathered so far:

I figure I'm not supposed to trust Wickham. I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation why Darcy hates him. We've all seen this before: Hugh Grant/Colin Firth/Zelwegger; Pacey/Dawson/Joey; Vampire/Werewolf/Human.

It seems Collins will marry anything that moves, including his cousins. From Jane to Elizabeth to Charlotte. I guess if the benefactor says to get married, you're gonna do so. Gotta keep the funders happy. [Sidenote: reading about entails just took me back to property class in law school. I hated property.]

Charlotte Lucas was just dying to get married, too, apparently. I don't know many women that would be cool with their close friends marrying the guy who just proposed to her. I guess I just can't get inside the mind of a 19th Century English woman.

We don't like Caroline Bingley. (Is that her first name?) Maybe she'll end up with Wickham instead of Darcy. It seems like it's the goal of every character to get married by the end of this book. And if Elizabeth and Darcy are star-crossed lovers, then doesn't that leave Miss Bingley and Wickham? I say, since she figuratively stabbed Jane in the back, Jane should literally stabb Miss Bingley in the back. Pride and Prejudice and Justice!

pride and prejudice, part I

C has wanted to watch the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice with me for a while. In preparation, I'm gonna read the actual book. In the meantime, I've decided I'm going to have an ongoing review of what I've read thus far.

The first thing that really frustrates me is that I don't know who's talking half the time. There are five Miss Bennets and a Mrs. Bennet, so I never know to which Bennet one is ever referring. It doesn't help that I don't know people's full names. So, when a character refers to someone else by her first name, sometimes I'm not so sure who it is.  Also, for a few pages, I thought "Lizzy" and "Eliza" were two different people.  To be honest, I'm not 100% sure that they are the same person right now.

To be fair, this isn't a Jane Austen thing.  This happened when I was reading The Brothers Karamazov.  With all the different Russian nicknames, I never knew who was who.

Second, I'm only ten chapters in, and I'm already annoyed by the women in this book. All they do is gossip and talk about which men they want to marry or which men they should marry or when they want to marry.  If this goes on for another 300 pages, I might throw this book off a bridge.

Finally, Darcy is very Colin Firth-y.  Or is Colin Firth very Darcy-y?