Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 1

Jane Austen · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married: its solace was visiting and news.

Read both passages aloud. Both are the narrator speaking, once at the start of the chapter and once at the end. Which of the two do you believe more?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences, both in the narrator’s own voice: the chapter’s first sentence and its last paragraph. The first sentence is built to sound like a law. It opens on an empty subject, “It is a truth”, puts its weight on “universally acknowledged”, and hangs the claim after a comma: “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” “In want of” can mean wishing for or simply lacking, and the sentence leaves both open. The very next sentence (not copied) shrinks it: the truth is held by “the surrounding families”, who count the newcomer “the rightful property” of their daughters. The last paragraph balances the pair. Mr. Bennet gets one long sentence built on “so odd a mixture ... that”: four traits, the first two each an adjective and a noun (“quick parts, sarcastic humour”), the last two single words (“reserve, and caprice”), then the result, twenty-three years that have not been enough. His wife gets four short sentences. The edition sets “Her” in italic, so the second sentence turns hard from him to her. The third lists three faults, each an adjective and a noun: “mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper”. Here “mean” means narrow or poor, not unkind. The last turns on a colon, setting her life’s “business” beside its “solace”, the work and the comfort. The word understand runs through both portraits: he cannot be understood, and she has a “mean understanding”. Austen’s “develope” is an older spelling of develop, in its old sense of unfolding something hidden; the copy keeps the spelling. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who trusts the first passage because the whole chapter acts it out, and the second because it is so exact; and for one who trusts neither, because the first is a neighbourhood’s wish dressed as a law and the second sums up two people faster than they have ever summed up each other.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in a few sentences, from the first line to the narrator’s last word on the Bennets. Then choose the one sentence you think matters most, and say what it sets up.

The first sentence says a rich single man must be “in want of a wife.” By the end of the second sentence, who is really in want? Author's choice
Marriage is just what Mrs. Bennet has in mind, yet when her husband asks if it is Bingley’s “design,” she cries “Nonsense.” Why does that word bother her? Character
Mrs. Bennet answers almost everything her husband says, but she lets one line pass: “In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.” Why might she leave that one alone? Character
Mr. Bennet will not pay Bingley a visit, yet he offers to send a note of “hearty consent” to his marrying whichever girl he chooses. Why refuse the small thing and offer the big one? Character
To her mother, Lizzy is less handsome than Jane and less good-humoured than Lydia; to her father, she has more “quickness.” In the world of the first sentence, which way of judging would help a daughter more? Theme
Mr. Bennet calls his wife’s nerves “my old friends,” but she never laughs at anything he says. So who are his jokes for? Tone

Make a Connection Think of something the people around you say “everyone knows.” Who would it suit if that were true?

Vocabulary

caprice: Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. A sudden turn of mood or mind that follows no rule; a whim (the root of capricious). It is the last of the four things the narrator says Mr. Bennet is made of, after “quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve”. A man moved partly by caprice cannot be predicted, and the sentence goes straight on to say that his wife, after twenty-three years, still cannot read him.
fancied: When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. Imagined or persuaded oneself of something, without good grounds (from fancy, an old word for imagination). The narrator says that when Mrs. Bennet was discontented, she “fancied herself nervous”. The word puts the unhappiness first and the nerves second, as the name she gives it, and so takes a side on the nerves that her husband calls “my old friends”.

Critical thinking

At the end, the narrator steps out of the talk to sum up the pair, and gives her short, blunt lines: “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.” How close is that voice to Mr. Bennet’s own?
After three-and-twenty years Mrs. Bennet still does not understand her husband, and he seems to enjoy it. Is that failure more hers, or more his?