For Friday: Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapters I-XIII, pp.41-90)

As always, answer TWO of the following, and get as far as you can in the novel before Friday's class, even if you don't finish all 13 chapters (but go further if you like!): 

Q1: Some of the most famous lines in English literature are the opening lines of this novel, which begin, "It is a truth generally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife..." (41). How might these lines immediately offer a commentary on the theme of the novel--marriage--and Austen's own views on the subject? Why might we go even further and claim that these opening lines offer a 'theory' that challenges common-sense beliefs and offers their own alternative? 

Q2: Culler reminds us that story and plot are two different things, and a story is how a writer tells the plot, from what perspective, and what narrator. Though the novel isn't a first-person account of English life in the country, the narration seems to borrow something from a first-person perspective. Discuss a passage where the narrator seems to be more of a character (whether first-person or not) than we would expect them to be today, and how this affects how we read the passage.

Q3: The first draft of Pride and Prejudice, written in the 1790’s, was entitled First Impressions (Austen changed the title when, a decade later, she learned another novelist had already used it). However, where might the idea behind the original shine through in the opening chapters? How do we know this is a book about the first appearance of things, when the “masks” of society can obscure the goodness—or deceitfulness—within?

Q4: In one of the most humorous passages in the novel, Miss Bingley lists all the accomplishments modern women are supposed to possess, to which Elizabeth Bennet responds, “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any” (27). What is Elizabeth—and behind her, Austen herself—satirizing here? Related to this, what kind of women does Elizabeth represent, and why does Darcy seemed intrigued by this new kind of woman?