Pride & Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. This is the story of Elizabeth Bennet as she learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. Including the depiction of manners, education, marriage and money in the British Regency.

Mr. Bennet of the Longbourn estate has five daughters, but his property is entailed, meaning that none of the girls can inherit it. His wife has no fortune, so it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well in order to support the others on his death. Jane Austen's opening line, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" is a sentence filled with irony and playfulness. The novel revolves around the necessity of marrying for love, not simply for monetary reasons, despite the social pressures to make a good [wealthy] match.