Pride and Prejudice

General Observations -

1. The story is set in 1800s even though Jane Austen tries creating Elizabeth as a character of her own judgement and perspective she still sees all the daughters and general females in the book to be dependent on men.
2. While I do not think it is failure of the book but more like representation of her times and how society, current generation and time shapes our world view even though we might think we are challenging it.
3. Yearning - I went to read this book because on one of my dates the girl suggested this book and specifically mentioned that the yearning of love is beautiful in this book and she was saying that specifically from the male character's perspective, which honestly I still fail to understand

On the characters -

1. When you start reading the book one immediate thing that happens is explosion of characters which I found it hard to keep up with. I had to go back to ChatGPT and internet to explain me the relationships, but eventually the book does not introduce any new characters which makes it easier to read.
2. Mr. Collins is a very peculiar character and almost like opposite of Mr. Darcy. In my view he had no pride of his own, he had no personality of his own, and was almost at the mercy of Miss de Bourgh which is why it was almost impossible for Elizabeth to even like him for Elizabeth being the only other character with Independent identity of her own along with Mr.Darcy in the book.
3. All of the characters keeps assuming things about each other in the book, the root cause of it according to me lies in the mannerisms of the time and in general avoiding of not speaking things which might be unpleasant.
4. Characters also reflects the time and era the story is taking place. While reading the backstory of Jane Austen, I found out she could only earn from her books because she was not married otherwise all of her earnings would be owned by her husband. In similar reflection of time no female character has any identity of their own, either they are known by the father they are born to or the husband they will marry.
5. Mrs Bennet - While she is always striving for her daughters to get married at times I found her character to be frustrating to read as she was happy with an ill-married daughter than an unmarried one. While this is true, upon introspection I realize that as a modern reader the frustration often comes from a 21st century mind expecting an author in 18th century to have vocabulary and understand of rights of women. While the literal book "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was written by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792. So you cannot expect Jane Austen to create a modern woman in her stories.
6. On other hand though Jane Austen seems to be doing satirical take on woman's identity attached to marrying rich.

On General Plot -

1. While at first the general plot of the book seems very similar to countless romance books written which is Frenemies to Lovers, I had to understand that this book is the foundational book of the genre.
2. The plot also takes a side loop to cover the story of Mr.Collins which seems to be an exact opposite character of Mr.Darcy as I mentioned already but while this arc seems unnecessary in the story it indirectly makes us as a reader grow liking towards Mr.Darcy.