Shabbat Reading: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

#whatireadovershabbat Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, edited by Tony Tanner (1813; Penguin Classics, 1985)

I’m reminded why some books are regarded as classics: they frustrate the thousandfold alienations of time. Austen is lighter, funnier, more sparkling by far than any novelist today. Removed from us by time and circumstance, she is somehow, nonetheless, utterly contemporary. In Pride and Prejudice her comic wit is graceful yet incisive, and the social world of the British semi-gentry splendidly observed. The dialogue sparkles. An almost perfect book. I'm reduced to wondering: Why did I wait so long to read it?

Maybe there’s one advantage of coming to Pride and Prejudice so late. I don’t know that I would have asked myself before whether Mrs. Bennett is the real villain or if Lizzy gives too much credence to stultifying convention. A younger me would’ve blamed all the plot’s troubles on the older generation.