Welcome to the Closely Reading book club: a space where we closely read classic literature together and discuss assigned chapters each week.
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Welcome to week 1 of our Pride & Prejudice read-a-long!
This week, we’re reading chapter 1. It’s just two-and-a-half pages in most copies of the novel, and I urge you not to read ahead.
Start slow and take your time
This is a week for soaking in the closest read you can muster of those two-and-a-half pages. You might read the chapter two or three times. You might read it without any writing tools at first, then get your ruler and highlighter ready for a first pass of annotations. You might read it aloud to yourself or your dog or your kids. You might even try transcribing your favorite bits into a reading journal.
This is a week to start gently, albeit with focus, into a new reading experience. If you participated in the “become a close(r) reader” series earlier this month, you might even decide to revisit your goal list and annotation ideas as you get started in the novel.
Be intentional. Move slowly. And find the joy in it.
When you’ve completed the reading, come back to this post. Under the line break, you’ll find a summary, analysis, and series of exercises to get you excited and focused for diving into more pages next week.
Off we go…!
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In the first two-and-a-half pages of Pride and Prejudice, we learn a lot about the world the Bennet family inhabits.
“Netherfield Park is let at last,” — meaning that a nearby estate has become inhabited after a long period of emptiness; in other words, there’s a new man arriving on the marriage market.
Mrs. Bennet is keen to introduce her daughters to this new arrival.
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet banter—their teasing, their impatience with one another; we witness the dynamic of their marriage. What a lovely and funny dynamic: “You take delight in vexing me!” (An excellent way to start a novel about marriage, no?)
Mr. Bennet likes to play dumb, or coy, to the universal law of the land (more on that below) and that Mrs. Bennet likes to remind him of that law every chance she gets.
We learn that “Lizzy” is the darling of Mr. Bennet — the daughter, of his five, he’d most quickly recommend into marriage.
We learn that Mrs. Bennet doesn’t necessarily hold Lizzy in the same esteem; she prizes the family beauty, Jane, over the others.
Finally, we learn some key character traits about Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet
This is an excellent place to annotate or take notes. What keywords or descriptors are associated with Mrs. Bennet? Mr. Bennet? What do those keywords reveal or anticipate about their character development?
Young Girl Reading, c. 1769 by Jean Honoré Fragonard
This week’s short chapter is chock-full of details and worldbuilding (a great term to familiarize yourself with during this experience!).
Worldbuilding is the process of creating a fictional world for a story, often for science fiction or fantasy. It involves developing the world's history, geography, culture, and other detail—like marriage practices, social beliefs, political situation, economics (including things like unique value or monetary systems).
While it’s most often used by fantasy and sci-fi writers who are creating unknown worlds—like the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, or the vast Middle Earth of Tolkien’s famous trilogy, or even the dystopic landscapes of Panem in The Hunger Games—I find that worldbuilding is also a helpful concept as we dive into novels from the past.
Just as we would pay keen attention to the unexpected marriage customs of dragons in Shrek (lol) or the social violence in in a world like Panem, we too can train ourselves to pay attention to the curious artifacts of another time in history — and the way an author moves us into and through that world so that we might experience it and understand it.
The Age of Innocence readers will remember well how Edith Wharton becomes something of an anthropologist in the dining room as she writes exquisitely detailed scenes of social custom and strife on the backdrop of Old New York. She is indebted to Austen for setting the bar so high—so that she might raise it even higher!
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen brings us into the story—and into the world of the story— by introducing its central rule: a “universal truth” that we must understand well if we are to understand our characters at all. I would argue this is why the novel opens with this law, and does not tack it onto a bulky paragraph halfway into the story.
Notice how Austen creates a hierarchy from the start of this story. What is the most important thing she wants us to know about this world?
From chapter one, we might say Austen wants us to notice:
The universal law that governs the Bennet family and their daughters’ futures
The dynamic between husband and wife
The “business” of Mrs. Bennet’s life: “to get her daughters married”
Indeed, the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice is blunt statement of a social law—the universal truth—around which the entire rest of the story circulates.
So let’s closely read it.
Here we’ve arrived at an excellent place for you to test your annotation skills.
You might try using a different color for different themes you notice in the sentence; or write out the sentence on a separate piece of paper to “dissect” its meaning(s).
Whatever you notice, the noticing is good and it is getting you into the mode of closely reading.
I notice three key things:
The truth is “universally acknowledged,” — this makes me wonder about the nature of truth in this story. Is “truth” created by a society knowing about it and collectively acknowledging it? What happens to unacknowledged truths? (Is there such a thing?)
The idea of “possession” — a wife, like a fortune, is something a “single man” can “possess” in this world. Are women considered human beings? Are they objects to be possessed? What would it feel like to be a young woman, of marriageable age, and to be considered a possession? What anxieties or resentments or confusions would this cause?
The double play on the word “want” — “want” is operating on several levels in this sentence, which makes a great first sentence even greater.
“Want” refers to a lack (the single man is “in want”) of a missing possession, and also to desire a wife. Lack and desire are twin forces here that drive a “single young man” who has the fortune he needs to recognize his lack of wife, to desire a wife, and therefore go get himself a wife. I’m grabbing my Lacan off the shelf!
So, now that I’ve closely read the sentence, I can take what I have noticed and think about how I might extend each of these items into a deeper reading as we continue forward with more chapters next week. My themes to read for might become:
Truth: I want to read for signs of “truth” or “social truth” and “universally acknowledged” concepts or ideas, because it feels significant to me that Austen opens the novel this way.
Possessions: I want to watch for the tension between subjectivity and objectivity — or this basic idea of personhood or thingness. Is a wife a person or a possession? (Is Mrs. Bennet the possession of Mr. Bennet?)
Wants: I want to watch for more lacks and desires. Of course, the two are so related: a lack can often create a desire; a desire can disappear once a lack has been fulfilled. And so I wonder: where is desire coming from in this novel? Who feels desire? Who is desired? What does desire feel like when you’re a person? When you’re a possession? When you’re a wife?
Now, it’s your turn.
Your exercise(s) this week are many and varied. You can do all of them, some of them, one of them, none of them. (There will be no pop quiz!)
Here are your options.
Write the first sentence of the novel on a separate piece of paper and have at it. Annotate it. Poke at it. Rip the words apart and read and inspect each one individually. Puzzle over the curious craft of the sentence—notice the punctuation, how it creates or disrupts a rhythm, the way the words feel in that order as they tumble out of your mouth. Play with the material of the sentence.
Adopt a “voice” in your head for the Mr. Bennet character and the Mrs. Bennet character. Notice the types of decisions you make as you do this. Does Mr. Bennet have a deeper voice? A sarcastic voice? A tired voice? Why? Does Mrs. Bennet have urgency in her tone? Wildness in her timbre? Exhaustion, in her own way? Why. Look at the tones and movements of the dialogue between the two characters and examine the way their unique “voices” come to life in your mind.
Take a sheet of paper and rip it into three pieces. On each of the three pieces, write a prediction of something that will happen in the novel, based on what you saw in chapter 1. Fold these pieces of paper up, stick them in a drawer or a jar, and save them to unfold in ten weeks. See if your predictions come true. (If you know the story, but don’t know the novel, see if you can’t make some wildly niche predictions!)
Look back over chapter one and notice which annotations you’ve made that feel particularly useful, interesting, or beautiful to you. Are there patterns you’d like to repeat next week? Are there things (certain pens or colors) you now know you want to avoid?
Want to take things even further? Paid subscribers will receive a bonus post later this week!
Every week, I like to share my favorite quote from our week’s assignment. My favorite quote this week was:
The first sentence.
I just can’t get over it. There’s a reason it’s on all the lists of best first-lines ever.
It’s just so damn smart and does so much work, so quickly, to build the world and set our expectations.
(And it’ll only feel smarter and stronger with every chapter we read!)
Austen’s stinging style
On this note: I want to share something magnificent I learned in graduate school, when I read this novel for the first time.
I read the novel with a Victorian scholar and all-around genius literature professor who was delighted—had a true sparkle in her eye—when I told her I’d never read a single Austen novel as I enrolled in her class.
On the first day of reading the novel, she read us a few sentences. Then a few more. And she asked what if we had noticed anything about the rhythm of the sentences.
Jumpscare! For illustrative purposes, I promise.
And then she said it:
Austen writes scorpion-shaped sentences.
That is, Austen writes sentences that don’t just come to a point. They come to a stinging point. They have an intention and a hard landing; they bring the truth and they bring it in hot.
The first sentence is an excellent example. Look at it again!
“Wife” has an arrival to it—doesn’t it? We read that sentence wondering what the social truth rests on. And it lands, with an undeniable force of energy, on the word “wife.”
The sentence builds and builds and builds. And then there’s that little energetic zap, that unexpected sting, of meaning that swooped in at the end. Almost epiphanic; borderline zippy.
This is a novel about wives: wanting them, possessing them, perhaps even being one.
Read the sentence again. Try it aloud. Does it feel “scorpion” shaped to you?
For next week, read volume 1, chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9! The chapters are quite short, so as you read, remind yourself to slow down and savor the experience as you go.
(The novel may resist you, when it comes to pacing for slow reading. There are some scenes you’re just aching to race through! I encourage you to find and ride the pace—but then pause and slow yourself down again, so you can closely read. Go back and re-read parts you flew through; go back and wonder how did Austen pick up the pace like that? Notice, as you feel tugged by the prose, how Austen creates that movement in you.)
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Now, let’s get into the comments and discuss chapter 1!
Use these prompts in your own reading journal to explore your thoughts more deeply, or use them to formulate a comment for this week. (Or, you know, just share whatever has been on your mind during this week’s reading experience—we love it all around here!)
What was your favorite part?
What was your favorite quote?
What was something you didn’t expect or were surprised to find as you closely read?
Did you learn anything about annotation or the themes you want to track this week?
“I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.” Mr. Bennet! That passage was a delight.
Pride and Prejudice is often approached through the lens of romance due to its place in the cultural zeitgeist, but a closer reading reveals the opening line firmly establishes the novel as commentary on money and social power, rather than romantic love. It’s brilliant!
“I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.” Mr. Bennet! That passage was a delight.
Pride and Prejudice is often approached through the lens of romance due to its place in the cultural zeitgeist, but a closer reading reveals the opening line firmly establishes the novel as commentary on money and social power, rather than romantic love. It’s brilliant!