Pride
The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor known as Netherfield Park causes a great stir in the neighboring village of Longbourn, especially in the Bennet household. The Bennets have five unmarried daughters, and their mother, a foolish and fussy gossip, recognizes that "it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." She sees Bingley's arrival as an opportunity for one of the girls to obtain a wealthy spouse, and therefore insists that her husband call on the new arrival immediately.Mr. Bennet does so, after tormenting his family by pretending to refuse, and Mr. Bingley returns the visit. The Bennets invite him to dinner shortly afterward, but he is called away to London. Soon, however, he returns to Netherfield Park with his two sisters, his brother-in-law, and a friend named Darcy, and all five come to a ball in the nearby town of Meryton.The Bennet sisters attend the ball with their mother, and the eldest, Jane, dances twice with Bingley, who declares her to be "the most beautiful creature" he ever beheld. Meanwhile, Elizabeth is snubbed by Darcy: both sit out a dance, and when Bingley suggests tha
In the next chapter, we learn that Mr. One night, while the Bennets are discussing the soldiers at dinner, a note arrives inviting Jane to Netherfield Park for a day. As critic Robert Polhemus puts it, the author "makes conversation the means and opportunity for her intelligent figures to touch and move one another. Austen's original title for the work was First Impressions, and the first impressions at the ball reflect the patterning of the two principle male-female relationships. Bingley, an event that sets the plot in motion; second, by its implication that the real truth is that a single woman must also be in want of a husband. Bingley, cheerful and sociable, has an excellent time and is taken with Jane; Darcy, more clever but less tactful, finds the people dull and even criticizes Jane for smiling too often. After Elizabeth returns to the room, the discussion turns to Darcy's library at his ancestral home of Pemberley, and then to Darcy's opinions on what constitutes an "accomplished woman. Bennet regales her husband with stories from the evening until he insists that she be silent. She discusses this with Charlotte Lucas, who comments that if Jane conceals it too well, Bingley may lose interest. It immediately establishes the centrality of marriage to the novel: first, by introducing the arrival of Mr. t his friend dance with Elizabeth, Darcy says that "she is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me," and goes on to declare that he has no interest in women who are "slighted by other men. Both girls agree that Bingley's sisters are not well-mannered, but Jane insists that they are charming in close conversation, while Eliza continues to harbor a dislike for the two.
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