BOOK TALK 47: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, with Wendy Lee

Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice delights, charms and entrances readers since its anonymous publication in 1813. The Bennett sisters need to marry rich, for otherwise they'll fall into poverty and social disgrace. Will arrogant Mr. Darcy be the solution, and will the fiercely proud, intelligent and also charming Elizabeth settle for this socially imposed scheme for women's happiness? Or does Austen put a twist on the hackneyed romance plot that made this book into the blueprint for countless re-tellings but keeps it separate from them - whether they are written by Charlotte Brontë or in the season episode of The Bachelor, any Hollywood rom-com, or Love is Blind?

I talked with one of the great Austen experts of our time (Austen fanatics are called "Janeites," I learned), Professor Wendy Lee of New York University. Wendy explains why readers like Winston Churchill have turned to Austen in times of crisis, how Pride and Prejudice transcends the hackneyed dead-end storyline of romance as every woman's goal and fulfillment, and why Austen's novel rewards re-reading like few other books. How does Elizabeth get over Darcy's cruel snub at the first ball, and is Mrs. Bennett correct that the country has as many interesting people as one would ever need to meet for one's happiness? Find out in this episode on one of the greatest novels of all time, now also available in a newly edited version by Warbler Press with an Afterword by me, Ulrich Baer.

Wendy Lee is the author of Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel, and also runs some reading groups that are open to the public.