When my daughter had cancer and our family went through two years of hell trying to save her life (and succeeding), I read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (London: T. Egerton, 1813). When my husband was ill with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis--also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), I read Pride and Prejudice. I read it after I was widowed, and look forward to starting it again this hot summer evening.
I confess that, until lately, I have been thrown by Elizabeth's answer to her sister's question, "How long have you loved him?" It sounds so flip.
Elizabeth says, " . . . I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley." (Notice that in most of the recent mini-series and movie adaptations, script writers rarely change Austen's dialogue, because each bit of dialogue is so perfect for the person who says it. And this is so perfect for Elizabeth.)
She makes a sly allusion to the theme of the novel, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Our Elizabeth cannot resist a little humor, even though she takes the joke seriously. But, without pride or prejudice, and now having seen Darcy's estate, she knows what kind of man he truly is. The fields and forests and lakes are well-managed and productive, the people who serve him admire their master for his kindness and fairness, and the house itself, without being showy, shows off his handsome demeanor and his well-ordered and cultivated mind.
Elizabeth sees a union for herself not with a self-important nitwit like Mr. Collins, not with a thoughtless wastrel like Wickham, not with a man who long ago lost his common sense to beauty alone, like her father, but a marriage that truly contributes to the society in which it flourishes.
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