What I’m Listening To: Pride and Prejudice

I’ve spent my many hours in traffic over the last week delightfully entertained with Audible’s version of Pride and Prejudice performed by Rosamund Pike.

If you are a Jane Austen lover, I would definitely recommend it—or even if you’ve only watched a version of Pride and Prejudice on film (this 2005 version is my favorite) and liked it, I would give this a try because there is always so much more to glean from the text.

Every time I revisit this book, which has been a favorite of mine since around the age of 13 or 14, I see the story and characters with fresh, older eyes. At every age in my life, something different stands out to me. When I first read it, of course I was most taken with the love story—the romance, the happily-ever-after—and looking back on my interpretation, I certainly magnified the love story in my mind with much help from youthful naiveté.

Now, so many years later, I can imagine more fully what it must have been like for women like Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters: being young and vibrant, having so many feelings and dreams, wanting to spread your wings and experience the world, but being so limited and trapped by the reality of your situation. Watching young men carry out their ambitions and longing for the same kind of agency to act on your own desires, but being totally dependent on your family and a (cross your fingers) financially beneficial marriage for security and survival. Having to play the card you were dealt in life, but adding the handicap of needing to adhere to society’s strict expectations for women and hoping for the best.

I used to think that living in a time like the Regency Era would have been as delightful as the experience of reading an Austen novel: elegant, charming, full of beauty and excitement. But now I find myself reading between the lines more than I ever used to… What was Austen thinking and feeling when she created these characters? What would Austen have let her heroines do, see, feel if she had written about them today? What would Austen have let herself do if she could be alive today? What do you think?

Let me know if you have any must-listens that I can add to my growing list of audio books and podcasts!

Happy listening,

– L