Pride and Prejudice

The Bennet family lives at Longbourn with five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia. The father, Mr. Bennet, has a modest income; the mother, Mrs. Bennet, is obsessed with marrying off her daughters as soon as possible, and the reason isn't just vanity.

There's a legal problem behind this hurry: the Longbourn estate follows a system called entail, which only allows a male heir. When Mr. Bennet dies, the whole house goes to a distant cousin, Mr. Collins, and none of the five daughters has an automatic right to anything.

It's as if the family's lease said the property passes to a third-degree nephew as soon as the leaseholder dies, and the widow had to fend for herself. Marrying well, here, isn't a romantic dream: it's the only insurance against being left without a home.

This financial backdrop explains almost every marriage decision in the book. Before judging any character for choosing security over passion, it's worth remembering that the choice not to marry carried a real price.

A rich young man named Mr. Bingley rents the neighboring estate, Netherfield, and arrives at a ball in Meryton with his sisters and an even richer friend, Mr. Darcy. Bingley dances cheerfully with Jane, the eldest Bennet, and the two like each other right away.

Darcy, on the other hand, spends the night sulking, dances very little and remarks, loud enough for Elizabeth to hear, that she isn't pretty enough to tempt him. Elizabeth tells the story later, laughing, but her pride is bruised, and that first impression sticks.

From then on, everything Darcy does goes through the filter of that comment: a neutral gesture becomes arrogance, a silence becomes contempt. Elizabeth formed a complete opinion of his character in a single night, and it will take her the whole book to realize how skewed she was.

Mrs. Bennet sends Jane to visit Bingley's sisters on horseback, on purpose, hoping it will rain on the way and Jane will have to stay the night. It rains, Jane catches a bad fever, and Elizabeth walks alone to Netherfield, the hem of her dress caked in mud, to take care of her sister.

Caroline Bingley and her sister mock the muddy dress and remark to each other that the Bennet family is too provincial to be welcome in that house. The book's social hierarchy shows up bare there: good breeding doesn't prevent class rudeness.

Meanwhile, Darcy watches Elizabeth devotedly caring for her sister and begins, against his own will, to admire her intelligence and loyalty. The tension between his family's public contempt and Darcy's private interest starts to grow, even though no one admits anything.