08一班  易俊

    Last summer I saw the film named "Pride and Prejudice" and it was the first time that I knew of  this story.But at that time, I didn't understand the true meaning of that. Later, on Mr Ou's class we saw this movie again and this time, I found I had made some sense of it. At the same time, Mr Wu required us to read widely, so I decided to buy this book and wanted to have a good study of it.

    When I read the first sentence " It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." I knew it must be about money and marriage. Many people think that the sentence shows the foundation of the marriage at that time is not emotion  but possession, but I just simply believed that this book was about romantic and realistic love.Though the love maybe not the pure love but the emotion with the consideration of money,it was still love.The author perfectly reflected the relation between money and marriage at her time and gave the people in her works vivid characters. The characters have their own personalities. After finished this book, I have formed my own understanding of those dramatis personae. To be honest, I disliked Mrs Bennet very much at first, even hated her. I though she was a Babbitt,she cared nothing but money, and the only thing she wanted to do was finding five wealth gentlemen to marry her five daughters.In a word,she is a woman who makes great efforts to marry off her daughters.

     So  when Mrs.Bennet hear Bingley, a rich young bachelor, has taken Netherfield, a house near her’s. She is so happy and arranged one of her five daughters marriage with him. At a ball, luckly, Bingley and Jane fall in love at the first sight.To make them be more closely,she made Jane ride a horse to Netherfield for a party. she knew it's going to rain and Jane would get a cold. But just to let Jane could stay there longer,she still did that. What's worse, when she heard Jane was ill, she actually felt very happy, and flashed her foolish idea away. She said no words about Jane's illness, just happy for she had a chance to stay with Mr. Bingley. When Elizabeth said she wants to see her poor sister, she just thought she was fussy without any thought. Do you see such a mother in any place? How could a mother not care about her daughter just care about money? Don't she know that many gentlemen don't want marry her daughters just because they had such a mother? She spent all of her time on searching for gentlemen and just ignored to teach her daughters how to behave outside. May she thought it's just a small case, or it had no connect with a good marriage. What a failed mother she was!

      Later I realized that maybe because she came from a poor family, she knew how difficult life will be to a poor, and at that time in British, only the eldest son had the privilege of inheriting his father’s possessions. Younger sons and daughters who are used to luxurious lives have no choice but marry a man or woman in possession of a large fortune to continue their comfortable lives. Thus, getting married is a way to become wealthier, particularly for women without many possessions. So she tried her best to make her daughters to live in a better life.All she done was for her children！ So we shouldn't be hard on her.To her,a poor woman must be in need of a husband, a wealthy man. The idea maybe not right but realistic. So though I don't like her, I had no reasons to hate her.

      And Mr Bennet left a bad impression on me. He was a gentleman, and had his own value of the family, the world. He knew his wife's behavior was inglorious, knew his two youngest daughters ran short of  manner, but he just paid no attention to them. He locked himself at the study room instead of educating them. I thought, as a husband and a father, especially as the only man of the family, he should carry on his duty, his responsibility. Due to this reason, I don't agreed with his attitude to life.

      Jane was a beautiful and tender girl who had good manner and always be kind to everyone. So there was no wonder that Mr. Bingley fell love with him. But his sister strongly opposed his plan of marrying Jane because the Bennets don’t have many possessions and their social positions are much lower than them. From this, we can see there are a lot of obstacles for a not very rich woman to marry a wealthy husband. The society, the relatives would not allow them to get married.So I admired Mr Bingley's attitude to love  very much. Once found the lover, then got over any difficult to marry her. Although Jane's mother was boring, he understood the fact clearly that he would marry Jane, not her mother. The person who will accompany him all the life was Jane. Mr Dancy, his best friend, however, did a worse work on love. He was pride at the first, thought there was no nice girl in the country. But later, he found himself was falling love with Elizabeth, he tried to control the feeling, but failed. Luckily, Elizabeth understood him finally, and married with him.

  Elizabeth was a clever and sane beautiful girl.She loved her family a lot. And she is very fond of her elder sister Jane, and regards her as her superior in good nature. She is extremely loyal to Jane, and part of her extreme dislike for Mr. Darcy is because he wounded Jane. When heard Jane's ill, she walked through about four mile on a greasy rode alone to see Jane, regardless of her mother's objection. I think Jane must be the happiest woman in the world at that moment when she saw Elizabeth's coming. Compare to the others apathy, Elizabeth used her action to tell us there was still love of the family in the world.  

 Elizabeth was a inner-directed girl who has her own idea about everything. When she first meets Mr. Darcy, a wealthy, handsome but conceited gentleman in a ball. She felt that she was looked down upon by him. Her self-esteem was hurt and sh knew she does not like him and had a bias against him since then. This judgement is augmented when she overhears his conversation with Mr. Bingley in which he says she is not handsome enough to tempt him to dance – in fact, she is only tolerable! Mr Dancy's pride behavior at the ball left a bad impression on Elizabeth, she regarded him as a pride man. However, Mr Darcy found out that Elizabeth was an elegant girl who had a perfect personality and a great wisdom soon after the ball, he hopelessly fell in love with her. He didn’t confess his love toElizabeth, and on the contrary, he hid his feeling by keeping his conceited, cold look on his face. He liked his pride so much that he was unwillingly to confide his true feeling to the girl who had a not-so-good family. This made Elizabeth think that he always looked down upon everyone, including her whole family. At that time, Elizabeth is attracted to the dashing officer, Mr. Wickham, who charms her with his attention and good manners. And the words from Wickham,the dashing young militia officer of the unjust treatment he has met with at Darcy's hands, strengthen her opinion. Elizabeth Bennet considered herself to be a studier of character, but in fact, she is also a prejudice girl, as she gives way to her feelings in response to these first impressions, she prejudices her own good judgement, to both her own detriment, and ultimately, to the downfall of her sister. But she also was a kind girl, the consciousness of which mortifies her when she realises how dreadfully mistaken she has been in some of her judgements.

 At the beginning, Elizabeth thought well of Wickham before she knew what kind of person he was. But after her aunt said that she won't be happy if she marries with such a youth who had no property and didn't have a moderate income. Elizabeth took her suggestion and controlled her feeling. From this we can see Elizabeth was a reasonable being. She knew that unmixed love, loving someone without considered anything else, was just as the flower in the mirror or the moon in water. It was the nice fancy and pursuit in people's heart, couldn't last long in the realistic world. People always seeked for the balance between the love and the realism. Those details made a really Elizabeth, a girl lived around us not lived in the dream.

 When Darcy couldn’t control himself anymore and proposed to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was so mad at him and refused him with great anger. Realizing that his pride was so annoying, Darcy dicided to abandon this bad personality and send Elizabeth a letter, in which he justifies the separation of his friend Bingley and Jane and make it clear that Wickham is. When Elizabeth discovered that Darcy was not as conceited as before, and once made a real effort to help her sister Lydia, she changed her opinions and ideas toward him. Once when Elizabeth visited her uncle and aunt in the north of England, she met Darcy there and witnessed his changes through series of behaviors, no longer pride and become gentle and attentive, all these made their marriage arranged, and they also suitably provided for Bingley and Jane’s reunited and engaged. The story ends with both their happy marriages.

 This novel reflects the English human sentiment of the end of 18th century and the early of 19th century under the circumstance of conservative，and tells us the difference ways and attitudes to marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s five daughters’. Thereby reveal the author herself attitude towards marriage, that is love and marriage based on money, property and social status is not perfect, but it is also stupid Without considering all of these. There, the author emphasize the importance of ideal marriage, meanwhile, to be opposed to love & marriage based on money or property and to be opposed to people’s laugh love & marriage off.

Today, although the marriages of economic needs have decreased rapidly, the concept of “money determines everything” is still rooted in some people’s mind. A lot of parents try hard to interfere their children’s marriages. Education background, possessions, jobs remains the main reason that may influence one’s marriage. Marry for money is still a big problem in our society. We can’t help thinking: can money determine everything? In such a materialistic society, how many people have chose money instead of love? It's not my contention that money must not be considered. I do contend that love is a nice thing, we should not make a rash decision, we should decide the eudaemonia of our whole life with careful consideration. We should have our own principia, not just considered of money. Stick to our bottom line, never baulk even under a relentless pressure. In this way, we can harvest a true love.