Pride and Prejudice .. and much Boredom
Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2018 12:18 am
Just watched Keira Knightley in one of the better film versions of the novel. Since I have never tried the book, I thought I should further my education and then maybe read the book later ..
What a ghastly waste of two hours! I hated it, an intensely boring period drama about five spoilt, vacuous young daughters of well-off middle-class parents trying to chase wealthy husbands (looks and intelligence coming second to whether he was well-heeled).
That was the plot. Nothing else. No mention of the world beyond their privileged, sheltered and trivial lives, nor of the traumatic Napoleonic War crashing across Europe.
The quality of writing and the dry wit was of course good but I am very gratified to find that numerous other people thought the novel over-rated. Mark Twain hated it, Churchill was sarcastic about it and Charlotte Bronte effectively said that it contained no real-life people with real emotions. There was indeed a world beyond the characters' cosy existence - which was ugly, full of poverty and hardship. Life for all classes was hard and mortality rates were high. That is why more relevant novels like Les Miserables and Bleak House are truly great, but I don't see myself ever reading Pride and Prejudice!
What a ghastly waste of two hours! I hated it, an intensely boring period drama about five spoilt, vacuous young daughters of well-off middle-class parents trying to chase wealthy husbands (looks and intelligence coming second to whether he was well-heeled).
That was the plot. Nothing else. No mention of the world beyond their privileged, sheltered and trivial lives, nor of the traumatic Napoleonic War crashing across Europe.
The quality of writing and the dry wit was of course good but I am very gratified to find that numerous other people thought the novel over-rated. Mark Twain hated it, Churchill was sarcastic about it and Charlotte Bronte effectively said that it contained no real-life people with real emotions. There was indeed a world beyond the characters' cosy existence - which was ugly, full of poverty and hardship. Life for all classes was hard and mortality rates were high. That is why more relevant novels like Les Miserables and Bleak House are truly great, but I don't see myself ever reading Pride and Prejudice!