Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five sisters, belongs to a family of minor English gentry where marriage decides a daughter's future. The arrival of a wealthy neighbour and of his friend Darcy, thought haughty, unsettles the whole neighbourhood. Between gossip and hasty judgements, Elizabeth faces a man she believes she already knows. The novel examines social prejudice, pride of rank and the place of women in early nineteenth-century England. Austen's exact irony turns a comedy of manners into a study of feeling and convention.