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Pride and Prejudice is without doubt the most popular of Jane Austen’s novels and probably the most popular classic novel in English literature.’ Discuss this statement.’

It is no doubt that Pride and Prejudice’ is the most popular classical novel in English literature. We have William Somerset, Maugham’s Testomony and authority. He considers this novel one of the ten great novels of the world. He says that “It is not difficult to believe and understand that this is a great novel. It is the first one of Jane Austen. She wrote it when she was only twenty one years old. It a was her most favourite novel. Ever since its publication in 1813 and sixteen years after publication, its readership have grown.”

The reasons for the increasing popularity of this great novel are not difficult to understand. It has two supreme comic fools, in form of Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins. These are super most comic figure of English literature. It must be said to the credit of the novelist that though both are foolish, yet they are vastly different from each other and they provide endless mirth and amusement to the readers. In their own ways they are incorrigible. The instant in which, Mr. Collins, so effortlessly transfers his affections from Jane Bennet to her younger sister Elizabeth is one of the superme moments of comic absurdity. Jane Austen writes that “and it was soon done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire.”

Some critics call Jane Austen ‘Prose Shakespeare’. The reasons for their such opinions are the vivid humour and humanity which Shakespearean characteristic. Shakespearean art in the portrait of heroine can be observed in character of Elizabeth Bennet. She is the wittiest, and most brilliant of all the heroines of Jane Austen. It is Shakespearean in Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy. Above all in their launting, testing, challenging exchanges-those duels in which they sharpen their wits on one another, discover themselves, at first, to be fit opponents and eventually, fit partners in marriage.

Pride and Prejudice’ is purely a love story. But it is less love revealed than love arrived at and it is love reached along and unexpected route: not the path of romantic attachment but the more difficult and unpredictable path of self-discovery involving complex human personalities. It is a remarkable story of love, too in being set so tightly in a structure of irony and social satire, where the tone is so often detached, amused and analytical. Jane Austen shows Elizabeth and Darcy attached to one another emotionally and sexually. But their closest contact is the contact of minds.

Pride and Prejudice’ is considered remarkable for the wit and brillianace of its style. Jane Austen feared, just after its publication in January 1813, that the novel was rather too “light and bright and sparkling” and needed the weight and contrast “here and there” of “a long chapter of sense”…to “bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style. Jane Austen was also self deprecating about her own work. There is no doubts that “Pride and Prejudice” is the most decisively “light”, “bright” and “sparkling” of all her works in diction and phrasing, in the theatrialism of its scenes, in the clarity and definition of the characters, most of all in the figure of its heronine.

The congruence of its style and character gives ‘Pride and Prejudice’ its distinctive energy and definition. Elizabeth, like Jane Austen, is herself a satirist, “a studier of character”. Irony on Jane Austen is another factor contributing to its abiding popularity. The irony is all pervasive, and the novelist makes a very comprehensive use of it. Jane Austen play with “first impressions”. She turns them upside, down side, inside and out side. Elizabeth has powerful first impression of Darcy at the Meryton Ball. But, her reactions are negative, critical and offended. Elizabeth’s qualities of gaiety, wit and intelligence are altogether unsentimental and unromantic and so is Darcy. But she discovers that she has misjudged and misunderstood Darcy as she finds his judgement about Elizabeth completely neversed.

Summing up, it may be said the Pride and Prejudice’ is popular because of the factors discussed above and also because of the amusement provided by the duels between Elizabeth and Darcy, cynical comments of Mr. Bennet, vulgarity, perversity and foolishness of Mrs. Bennet, pomposity, formality and servility of Collins, haughtiness and hollowness of Lady Catherine etc. All these elements make the novel unique of its kind and probability the most popular classic novel in the English literature.