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mmcirvinThis was the other free novel included with the Android Kindle reader. I remember it being one of the pieces of required college reading I liked the most, but I didn't really remember that much about it.
I think I saw more in it this time around. I don't have a lot to say about it that isn't already covered well on its TVTropes page. But when I first read it, I remember mostly liking the characters of Elizabeth Bennet and her father: the clever, cynical, wisecracking ones. This time around, I think I was more able to see the faults Austen portrays in both of them and how they eventually start to recognize those faults and mitigate or work around them. Also, the chafing against the social system they're in that all of these characters do, though Austen never makes it completely explicit. Mr. Darcy is a subtly written, complicated character too: a gentleman with excessive class-consciousness but also real nobility of character, combined with a kind of introverted social ineptitude.
But what really struck me this time is Austen's skill at writing all the various types of completely horrible people: the backstabbing social saboteur; the moralizing prig without a speck of empathy; the charming, self-justifying, sociopathic cad; the loaded high-class tyrant and the people who suck up to her. As well as those who, without being outright nasty, perpetuate the nastiness through lack of perspective or simply to survive.
I think I saw more in it this time around. I don't have a lot to say about it that isn't already covered well on its TVTropes page. But when I first read it, I remember mostly liking the characters of Elizabeth Bennet and her father: the clever, cynical, wisecracking ones. This time around, I think I was more able to see the faults Austen portrays in both of them and how they eventually start to recognize those faults and mitigate or work around them. Also, the chafing against the social system they're in that all of these characters do, though Austen never makes it completely explicit. Mr. Darcy is a subtly written, complicated character too: a gentleman with excessive class-consciousness but also real nobility of character, combined with a kind of introverted social ineptitude.
But what really struck me this time is Austen's skill at writing all the various types of completely horrible people: the backstabbing social saboteur; the moralizing prig without a speck of empathy; the charming, self-justifying, sociopathic cad; the loaded high-class tyrant and the people who suck up to her. As well as those who, without being outright nasty, perpetuate the nastiness through lack of perspective or simply to survive.