罗晗 07级科技英语（3）班

Jane Austen was born in Hampshire, England, of a country clergyman’s family. She received a good education at home, and lived an uneventful life amid the provincial surroundings of the South. She never married throughout her life.

Maybe because of the simple and peaceful life, and also because of the place she lived was secluded from the outside world, Jane Austen never touched upon the class conflicts of her time, and in her works we can not see the extremes of wealth and poverty. She restricted her subject matter to a narrow range of society and events: a quiet, prosperous, middle-class circle in provincial surroundings. However, she treated this material with subtle observation, deep psychological penetration and delicate description. Her works show a wealth of character studies, and abound in wit, humor and charm. In her masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, we can appreciate the facts.

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen focused on characters of her own social class: the ladies and gentleman of the landed gentry. The plot of the novel evolves around the Bennet family, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters. The marriage prospects of the girls are Mrs. Bennet’s chief concern in life, and marriage is also the theme of the novel. No class conflicts, no social problem, all the descriptions in Pride and Prejudice are about ladies and gentleman of the landed gentry, their love and life.

The opening sentence has been “universally acknowledged” to be very well as the first sentence in fiction. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It sets the tone and theme for the entire novel, in that the whole work is full of humor and irony, and the theme is marriage. The detailed description and analysis of Elizabeth’s prejudice and Darcy’s pride, and the twists and turns between themselves shows us that the author took the character as herself. She brought the characters to life.

I appreciate Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice very much. It is not without reason that she and the book are credited with having brought the English novel to its maturity.