Jane Austen was able to investigate and tell the most varied nuances of the human soul to the point that her novel is engaging and well today in 203 years away. Her books can be viewed most simply as eerily good romance novels, more broadly as sharp critiques of nineteenth-century vanity, cruelty and folly, and–broadest of all–as an indictment of a social system and economic system dedicated to the marginalization and commodification of a full half of the human experience. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” So begins Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s witty comedy of manners–one of the most popular novels of all time–that features splendidly civilized sparring between the proud Mr. Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet as they play out their spirited courtship in a series of eighteenth-century drawing-room intrigues.
