Pride and Prejudice is this week's Jane Austen film show at the Bluffton Public Library. The show is at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, March 22. The film showing is part of Bluffton University' Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR) and the Friends of the Library.A discussion of the film will follow its showing.
A brief plot of the story:
Pride and Prejudice, sometimes called "a comedy of manners," treats us to the world of the five Bennet sisters, their parents and relatives, their small society, and their romantic interests.
At the outset, we are introduced to the major themes by witnessing the proud arrogance of Fitwilliam Darcy, and the prejudice of Elizabeth Bennet in her assumption that Mr. Darcy is "last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."
The stories of two major (and two minor) courtships unfold in the course of the novel. Elizabeth and her sister, Jane, cope with the obstacles placed before their ultimate marriages to Darcy and his friend, Charles Bingley.
Meanwhile Elizabeth's friend, Charlotte, accepts the hand of the comic Mr. Collins, and in the end must struggle with the pain of divorce, a shameful state of affairs in Regency times.
The other minor relationship, that of Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister, and Elizabeth's former suitor, Mr. Wickham, ends in similarly humiliating circumstances, with Wickham taking the life o f Mr. Collins in a duel that need never have taken place.
Along the path to the eventual happy outcomes for Elizabeth and Jane, we meet Lady Catherine De Bourgh, the proud descendent of Sir Isaac Newton (a fact she never fails to point out), and the means by which Jane becomes privvy to the knowledge that the whole of the Netherfield property must someday be forfeited to Cambridge University.
It is only through Jane's canny grasp of England's political system that she manages to change the law and replace the estate in the rightful hands of the Bingleys.
Elizabeth, not without political acumen herself, must seek and be granted religious dispensation from the Prince Regent and Cardinal Woolsey himself before she is finally declared a fit and proper wife for the noble Fitzwilliam Darcy.
Jane Austen fans are invited to participate in a weekly series of movies at the Bluffton Public Library in March and early April.
Future films on the series
^aEUR"March 29 - Emma
^aEUR"April 5 - Persuasion
