2. Characters: The main character in the novel is Elizabeth Bennet, the wittiest of her sisters and second eldest of five. Elizabeth is the least sociable of her sisters in that she is too smart and sarcastic to fit well with society of the time and as such doesn’t always try to. Mr. Darcy is the love interest. He’s the pride to Elizabeth’s prejudice, and the money to Mrs. Bennet’s greed. Mr. Darcy appreciates Elziabeth’s rebellious nature and sparkling repartee. Elizabeth’s sister Jane and Darcy’s friend Mr. Bingley also play prominent roles in the novel.
3. Plot: The Bennet’s go to ball at their new neighbor, Mr. Bingley’s, house and it shapes the rest of their lives. Here Jane meets Mr. Bingley and they seem to get closer and closer to marriage, the next step in Victorian society, with every passing day. This ball is also where Elizabeth meets Mr. Darcy, a man she thoroughly detests because he is too proud and narrow minded to dance with anyone. Eventually Mr. Bingely leaves and all of the Bennets are sad, for they had been hoping to see wedding soon. Right before they leave an officer named Wickham comes around and he and Elizabeth hit it off. Elizabeth goes traveling and happens to run into Darcy who proposes to her, admitting to his affections for her. Elizabeth says no because she had just found out that Bingley left because Darcy told him not to marry Jane. Lydia runs off with Wickham a bit later in the novel, and Darcy helps to find them. When the chaos is over we learn that Bingley and Jane are to be married and so are Elizabeth and Darcy.
4. Narrative Voice: The narrator is in third person and omniscient, though things are mostly told through the perspective of Elizabeth. Again we’re in the past tense. The main imagery in Pride and Prejudice is through Mr. Darcy and Pemberley. Mr. Darcy symbolizes pride, and the upper class. Pemberley symbolizes the life Elizabeth could have led, and the foreshadowing of her happiness. When Elizabeth first sees the Pemberley estate she realizes that she could’ve been happy there, and that leads to her later realization that she could be happy married to Darcy.
5. Quotes: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” This quote is the first sentence of the novel, which makes it even more significant than it already is. This quote shows a lot about the novel and its themes. It illustrates how ridiculously stereotypical the novel and the characters are, and how very concerned with money the characters are. “Till this moment I never knew myself.” - Elizabeth Bennet. This is right after Elizabeth finds out that Wickham is not a very nice man, and she is realizing that she may be too quick to judge people. If Elizabeth had never uttered these words she may never have understood herself well enough to later realize that she had fallen in love with Mr. Darcy, which is a rather important part of the novel.
6. Theme Sentence: The main theme of this novel is that to get enough love and wealth to be happy, you must be who you are. Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia are all very out-going girls, if only in that none of them seem to project a very different image in public than they do at home. We also see this in the exaggeration of the character traits in the novel. The symbolism in Mary's piano playing skills is a place where we see an example of unhappiness due to her not being true to herself.
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