Friday 21 December 2012

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Having it be the first ever Austen book that I read, I found it a little difficult to actually become swept into the story because it took me some time getting used to Austen's writing style which at first overwhelmed me a little after being used to reading work by the Brontes. There are huge long paragraphs in the book which have absolutely no significance and are utterly uninformative; these kept leaving me unsatisfied and wanting for action, character dialogue and expecting some event to soon take place which didn't. I also found myself slogging through it without really being able to enjoy it; I'm not sure if this was due to me being in a hurry to finish it for my Eng Lit course and couldn't fully digest it's content.
Also, I found that there were far too many different characters that none of them were really that well developed, relevant or had much personality or purpose. Especially Mary! *yaaaawn* what a goddamn boring pointless character. Instead, most of the content in the book, unlike work by Dickens, seemed to be about pompous shallow and naive aristocratic nonsense.

 On the contrary, Austen was definitely an exception for women and writers of her time, and I would definitely like to read this book and other Austen books like Persuasion in the future when I will be able to fully take them in without having to rush to finish them.

Conclusively, I would not recommend the book but the film adaptation by Joe Wright- it is far more enjoyable. I am usually the opposite and much prefer the book to its motion picture, however Matthew Macfayden makes the dreamy Mr Darcy easy on the eye.

*Update*
Guys, fear not the Austen, embrace the Austen. This is P&P for dummies! 


And now you don't have to waste time reading it. Sorry for the spoilers ;)

~Alisha

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I actually loved this book when I read it! but I agree that it takes a while to get into it.

Unknown said...

Really? The lord only knows how many times I had to try and pick it back up, I nearly lost patience with it to be honest, but i'm glad you enjoyed it.