A Reason To Read Pride And Prejudice

After two hundred thousand years of human existence, love stories have become very predictable. We've heard them all before. The faked pregnancy to keep a marriage from falling apart, the impossible love between the rich girl and the poor man, the young couple separated by their parents. Even the close-to-original stories, where a girl finds herself in Italy looking for the long lost love of an old lady are fairly predictable.

We can all anticipate what will happen in Pride and Prejudice. There's nothing exciting about a wealthy man looking for a wife while his "unworthy and proud" friend falls in love with the man's potential wife's sister. If the story's so predictable, then what makes this novel such a favorite?

Words.

It is much agreeable to read "gone with such celerity", than to read "gone with such quickness." "Gallantry" is much more magical than "courageous," "laconic" is more picturesque than "brief". Why confine ourselves to the specific list of adjectives we were given in third grade? Austen may not bring suspense to the table, but she does bring the most tasteful of desserts: the enchanting world of words.