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Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Using a novel's ability to be enjoyed upon being reread as a barometer, Harold Bloom states that Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice "can rival any novel ever written." Along with a collection of some of the best criticism available on her work, this text includes a brief biography of the author, structural and thematic analysis, an index of themes and ideas, and more. This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts are the ideal aid for all students of literature, presenting concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work. Also provided are multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters.
71 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1987
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About the author
Harold Bloom
1,717 books2,027 followersHarold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world." After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
Bloom was a defender of the traditional Western canon at a time when literature departments were focusing on what he derided as the "school of resentment" (multiculturalists, feminists, Marxists, and others). He was educated at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
December 16, 2009
Just some notes to myself.
Lionel Trilling: JA "was committed to the ideal of 'intelligent love,' according to which the deepest and truest relationship that can exist between human beings is pedagogic. This relationship consists in the giving and receiving of knowledge about right conduct, in the formation of one person's character by another, the acceptance of another's guidance in one's own growth."
Julia Prewitt Brown: "The narrative voice [in contrast to the dialogue:], then, possesses the essential perspective of the novel. Although Austen's style has been compared to that of Henry James, her use of a vigorous and daunting narrative voice distinguishes them. This voice has more in common with that of the George Eliot narrator, whose all-inclusive compassion envelops the divisions and decay of the story, or that of the Fielding narrator, whose humor is equally tolerant."
Ha ha! "Darcy's meeting with the excellent Gardiners, whose gentility is not diminished by the fact that they live within sight of their warehouses..." (David Monaghan)
Lionel Trilling: JA "was committed to the ideal of 'intelligent love,' according to which the deepest and truest relationship that can exist between human beings is pedagogic. This relationship consists in the giving and receiving of knowledge about right conduct, in the formation of one person's character by another, the acceptance of another's guidance in one's own growth."
Julia Prewitt Brown: "The narrative voice [in contrast to the dialogue:], then, possesses the essential perspective of the novel. Although Austen's style has been compared to that of Henry James, her use of a vigorous and daunting narrative voice distinguishes them. This voice has more in common with that of the George Eliot narrator, whose all-inclusive compassion envelops the divisions and decay of the story, or that of the Fielding narrator, whose humor is equally tolerant."
Ha ha! "Darcy's meeting with the excellent Gardiners, whose gentility is not diminished by the fact that they live within sight of their warehouses..." (David Monaghan)
March 19, 2013
Too many of these articles are chapters from other books for my taste -- the chapters may focus on Pride and Prejudice, but I still feel like I'm coming into an ongoing conversation and want more background to various comments. I don't mind the occasional essay that makes me feel that way, but when all of them have that feeling, I get annoyed.
Likely works better as a reference for someone writing a paper than as a cover-to-cover read.
Likely works better as a reference for someone writing a paper than as a cover-to-cover read.
December 6, 2025
Harold Bloom: Introduction:
I am suggesting that Ralph Waldo Emerson (who to me is sacred) was mistaken when he rejected Austen as a ‘ sterile’ upholder of social conformities and social ironies, as an author who could not celebrate the soul’s freedom from societal conventions. Austen’s ultimate irony is that Elizabeth Bennett is inwardly so free that convention performs for her the ideal function it cannot perform for us: it liberates her will without tending to stifle her high individuality
Christopher Brooke: Pride and Prejudice:
The book takes its title from Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice*; and so far we have dwell on aspects of their relationship alone— and on some of the deeper more somber colors of the book, but Jane herself claimed to think ‘ the work… rather too light and bright and sparkling’— though she revelled in it too— and it is also the wittiest of her novels.
[*somewhere along the way, I know I’ve read other essays that talk about both Darcie and Elizabeth each having their pride and their prejudices]
It is about three or four marriage, not one.
The Bennett’s cousin, the reverend Mr. Collins has come to stay: a pompous, obsequious clergymen of grand eloquent, verbosity
The visit to Pemberley reveals to Elizabeth— which she had hardly imagined possible before— that Darcy has conquered her.
The deus, or dea, ex machina take the improbable form of Lady Catherine de Borough
Mary Jane Curry Not a Day Went by Without a Solitary Walk.
Of all the Austen heroines, Elizabeth Bennett thinks most about that part of nature that is unbounded; where boundaries exist she crosses them a 3 mile walk from Longbourne to Nether field is ‘nothing.’
Elizabeth’s walks— solitary or in the company with Mr. Darcy and the Gardiners— figure a gradual change in her. Austen places this change in the context of what I argue is her Proto-feminist version of the pastoral novel. What makes pride and prejudice and the other five Austin novels incipiently feminist is the heroine‘s ideology of serious pastoral as a context for establishing her identity. Serious pastoral implies that country life if enriched by intellectual and aesthetic pursuits is better than city life.; Austin‘s novels imply that such a country life is better for young women than city life. For her main character characters nature is a source of comfort and freedom as well as beauty.
Metaphorically, the gate that separates Elizabeth from Mr. Darcy as he hands her his letter may signal her exclusion from the de Bourgh-Darcy family because of her family‘s faux pas as well as her relatives in trade. And it might also suggest Mr. Dawson’s self imposed imprisonment in excessive family pride. However, Austin places emphasis on Elizabeth choice to remain outside Lady Catherine’s domain and away from the place. She has walked with Mr. Darcy.
*** Darryl Jones Pride and Prejudice: ***
The first thing to say about Pride and Prejudice is that it is a fairytale. The fact that it is set in the village of Meryton, or ‘Merry Town’, provides the first clue to this. Setting the novel here is akin to setting it in Happy Valley or Pleasantville, an untroubled community reflective of a larger idealized polity: all is well with the world. We are ostensibly at least, in Little (conceivably even in ‘Merrie’) England, where the famous aphorism with which the novel opens, however ironically presented it may be, is nevertheless vindicated by its close…. It’s fairytale narrative economy in which Opposites Attract, and in which a feisty, intelligent, heroine in financially straighten circumstances, overcomes the opposition of a backward-looking tradition and authority, as well as the preconceptions about class and money to which her own skeptical intelligence has initially predisposed her to win the hand of a man who is effectively the richest man in England, provides the template for numerous subsequent redactions upon the same theme. It is, I would suggest, the major source for the most subsequent romantic comedies, particularly movies in the Hollywood tradition
I am suggesting that Ralph Waldo Emerson (who to me is sacred) was mistaken when he rejected Austen as a ‘ sterile’ upholder of social conformities and social ironies, as an author who could not celebrate the soul’s freedom from societal conventions. Austen’s ultimate irony is that Elizabeth Bennett is inwardly so free that convention performs for her the ideal function it cannot perform for us: it liberates her will without tending to stifle her high individuality
Christopher Brooke: Pride and Prejudice:
The book takes its title from Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice*; and so far we have dwell on aspects of their relationship alone— and on some of the deeper more somber colors of the book, but Jane herself claimed to think ‘ the work… rather too light and bright and sparkling’— though she revelled in it too— and it is also the wittiest of her novels.
[*somewhere along the way, I know I’ve read other essays that talk about both Darcie and Elizabeth each having their pride and their prejudices]
It is about three or four marriage, not one.
The Bennett’s cousin, the reverend Mr. Collins has come to stay: a pompous, obsequious clergymen of grand eloquent, verbosity
The visit to Pemberley reveals to Elizabeth— which she had hardly imagined possible before— that Darcy has conquered her.
The deus, or dea, ex machina take the improbable form of Lady Catherine de Borough
Mary Jane Curry Not a Day Went by Without a Solitary Walk.
Of all the Austen heroines, Elizabeth Bennett thinks most about that part of nature that is unbounded; where boundaries exist she crosses them a 3 mile walk from Longbourne to Nether field is ‘nothing.’
Elizabeth’s walks— solitary or in the company with Mr. Darcy and the Gardiners— figure a gradual change in her. Austen places this change in the context of what I argue is her Proto-feminist version of the pastoral novel. What makes pride and prejudice and the other five Austin novels incipiently feminist is the heroine‘s ideology of serious pastoral as a context for establishing her identity. Serious pastoral implies that country life if enriched by intellectual and aesthetic pursuits is better than city life.; Austin‘s novels imply that such a country life is better for young women than city life. For her main character characters nature is a source of comfort and freedom as well as beauty.
Metaphorically, the gate that separates Elizabeth from Mr. Darcy as he hands her his letter may signal her exclusion from the de Bourgh-Darcy family because of her family‘s faux pas as well as her relatives in trade. And it might also suggest Mr. Dawson’s self imposed imprisonment in excessive family pride. However, Austin places emphasis on Elizabeth choice to remain outside Lady Catherine’s domain and away from the place. She has walked with Mr. Darcy.
*** Darryl Jones Pride and Prejudice: ***
The first thing to say about Pride and Prejudice is that it is a fairytale. The fact that it is set in the village of Meryton, or ‘Merry Town’, provides the first clue to this. Setting the novel here is akin to setting it in Happy Valley or Pleasantville, an untroubled community reflective of a larger idealized polity: all is well with the world. We are ostensibly at least, in Little (conceivably even in ‘Merrie’) England, where the famous aphorism with which the novel opens, however ironically presented it may be, is nevertheless vindicated by its close…. It’s fairytale narrative economy in which Opposites Attract, and in which a feisty, intelligent, heroine in financially straighten circumstances, overcomes the opposition of a backward-looking tradition and authority, as well as the preconceptions about class and money to which her own skeptical intelligence has initially predisposed her to win the hand of a man who is effectively the richest man in England, provides the template for numerous subsequent redactions upon the same theme. It is, I would suggest, the major source for the most subsequent romantic comedies, particularly movies in the Hollywood tradition
November 28, 2018
Great
April 16, 2014
I will forever be in love with this book! This is a timeless classic that I will always make sute to suggest. The love between Jane and Lizzie is so kind, and even better is the love between Darcy and Lizzie!
February 23, 2008
A classic; always good for a re-read if I can't find anything else good.
September 6, 2008
I would probably say this is my favorite book or at least one of my favorites.
May 12, 2009
A classic. I had more fun reading it than I did watching the movie, especially the current shortened version of the movie. In the book you get all the great details of the story!
Read
June 28, 2009Well, learned a lot about land ownership in 19th century England . . .
February 9, 2010
A classic, I have read it 3 times and love it more every time I pick it up!
Read
September 1, 2010Just as good the second time
July 23, 2014
Pride and Prejudice is a slow novel... It explains a lot about different characters.... it is a very straight tale with no unexpected twists. It is a nice work by Jane Austen.
July 31, 2014
What a writer, what a book!
September 8, 2014
brings a smile on my face everytime i read it!
Read
August 10, 2018very like this book.....
Read
August 10, 2018very good book!
Want to read
November 28, 2018Great
Read
April 15, 2019reviews reviews
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews