入圍決選獎
姓  名 張馨元 學  校 國立中興大學附屬高級中學 年  級 二 年 十三 班

 

 

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a masterpiece written by Jane Austen, the 19th-century British novelist, known as one of the most influential women writers in the literary history. Pride and Prejudice tells the love story between Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. At the beginning of the story, Elizabeth was offended by Darcy’s proud attitude, and had the prejudice against him since then. There is no denying that Darcy’s social status and his fortune made him an arrogant man, who was too proud to care others’ feeling. Their shortcomings caused many conflicts between their relationships, but after they found out their own weaknesses, they re-knew each other, and fell in love with each other. At the end of the story, they got married. Many people may think it is just a romantic novel. However, in my opinion, the value of Pride and Prejudice does not only lie in the romantic storyline but also the two main issues in one’s life-marriage and self-reflection.

First of all, I’m going to discuss four different marriages in this story. Charlotte Lucas, Lydia Bennet, Jane Bennet and Elizabeth Bennet get married to men who were respectively meant for each of them. In the case of Charlotte, her marriage was a satisfactory transaction which could keep her from poverty; Lydia’s marriage was based on lies; Jane’s marriage was a wonderful fairy tale; Elizabeth and Darcy married each other with admiration after breaking each other's “pride” and “prejudice”. And I think the writer clearly gave the readers the hint that they will be the happiest. After comparing the four marriages, I think Jane Austin is trying to tell us that an ideal marriage should be based on passionate love, mutual understanding…and so on, which is far from the real situation in her living era. In the 19th-century British society, money played a key role in marriage. For all classes, getting married to one with a decent income was almost the only route to material security for women.

Secondly, I want to talk about self-reflection, another important issue in this book. At first, Darcy always acted like a condescending eagle, indifferent and do not care about others' feelings; Elizabeth had too much confidence in her own brilliant judgment. However, her first impression of Darcy made her misjudge him as a disagreeable and impolite man. Moreover, her prejudice even made her easily trust Wickham's slander against Darcy. Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice were the fog which covered their eyes so they couldn’t see each other’s real characters. Fortunately, at the end of the story, they all broke their own fog, and became the happiest couple in this book. Elizabeth and Darcy were not born to match each other. It was through their interactions and their criticism of each other that they recognized their own faults and worked hard to correct them. The courage of introspection and the importance of self-reflection are the most significant lessons that we should learn from Pride and Prejudice.

The glamour of this novel is that each character is unique and vivid. We can see the distinct disposition and unique personality of each character from the conversations, which make leading roles more lifelike. The humor and irony style, delicate descriptions of characters' inner feelings, the reflex of contemporary values and, last but not least, the lessons I mentioned above are what make Pride and Prejudice fascinating.