See, the problem I always had with classics
was, it took forever to get to the plot. When I read a book, I want to keep
reading it for its plot, and no matter how much imagery or what vocabulary the
author uses, I don’t generally enjoy the book if it doesn’t have a good plot. Pride and Prejudice had a plot that
slowly reeled me in, and at the end, BOOM. It was full of surprises, and it
completely met the reader’s expectations.
SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON.
First “surprise” was Mr. Darcy’s proposal
to Elizabeth. Darcy was a man Elizabeth loathed from the moment she met him.
Although Elizabeth doesn’t, the reader is aware of Darcy’s fondness towards
her. The proposal itself isn’t a surprise, but rather how it happens. He
proposes when Elizabeth isn’t physically well, and it happened to be the day
after she met a colonel who appealed to her. Before she met the colonel, the
reader was given numerous chapters to ponder what Elizabeth will do with the
many men she met who could have formed relationships with her. The colonel
seems ideal to both the readers and Elizabeth, but at the same time Darcy’s
affection towards Elizabeth is still at the back of the reader’s mind. The
readers didn’t really expect him to propose that exact moment. Darcy, by
proposing, completely erased the colonel off of Elizabeth and everyone else’s
minds. The climax that everyone was waiting for happened when we were
anticipating something else. It was a complete flip – a man that seems likeable
comes in the book, but suddenly a man that seems evil comes in and steals the
game.
Second “surprise” was when Elizabeth finds
about the truth about Mr. Darcy. She had hated him because of his pride and
evil acts toward a man that Elizabeth found as a gentleman. After Darcy was
rejected by Elizabeth, he wrote a letter to Elizabeth explaining every move
that seemed hateful to Elizabeth. It turned out the gentleman that was harmed
by Darcy had actually eloped with Darcy’s brother because of their money. When
they ended up not marrying, the “gentleman” spread vicious rumors about Darcy
to cover up his acts. Elizabeth had stubborn prejudices against Darcy because
of the pride he had of his class, and now she was proved wrong. When she read
the letter, the author says she “put it hastily away, protesting that she would
not regard it, that she would never look in it again. In this perturbed state
of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would
not do; in half a minute the letter was unfolded again” (Austen 202). She must
have thought, “My life is a lie!” She was very stubborn about it because Darcy,
even while proposing, had emphasized his upper class-ness and Elizabeth’s class
that was lower than his. Elizabeth thought that it was purely out of pride and
not sincerity. What Darcy said was basically “You’re lower class and I should
consider you disgusting but will you marry me?” If the reader looks at its deep
roots, he’s saying “Society tells me that I should care about your wealth. But
I love you too much to even care about your class.” Even more condensed, “I
love you even if you’re poor.”
At the end basically everyone ends up
happily marrying, except for one couple, who married out of wealth and not pure
love. People who married with true love ended up enjoying their lives together,
overcoming pride and prejudice. (I can just imagine all the happy couples
standing in a line, clapping to “All you Need is Love” by the Beatles) The last
words on the book was “THE END.” I felt like I just read a happy fairy tale
that overcame villains of true life.
Remedies? You don’t need, that. You need
LOVE, LLOOVVEE, LOVE. LOVE, LLOOVVEE, LOVE. All you need is love…(bop-bah
bah-dah-boo) All you need is love…(bop-bah bah-dah-boo) All you need is love,
love. Love is all you need…
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