Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Pride and Prejudice: 51% Complete

First of all, I want to wish all my American readers a very safe and happy Thanksgiving.  This year I'm thankful that I had the opportunity to learn how to read, that I learned to love reading from an early age, and that I have the time and resources available to read through some of the most amazing books every written.

I'm past the halfway point in Pride and Prejudice! I have a pretty low-key Thanksgiving weekend coming up, so I think I might finish this book by Monday next week.  I still have not decided what I'm going to read next.  If you have any thoughts on that subject, feel free to leave a comment!
 
The vocabulary word of the day is "palings" which is "a fence made from pointed wooden or metal stakes." (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary)

As I've been reading through this, I find myself inevitably comparing the book to the film versions that I have seen.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, so far the 1995 BBC version has been very accurate, but one difference I've noticed is that Lizzy's character in the book is a little more outspoken or even impudent at times.  Although she's often right, and usually entertaining, sometimes she seems almost too concerned with talking back to people, which I didn't feel like from her character in the movie.  One of my favorite rants of hers is a well-deserved talking-to that she gives Mr. Darcy, after his first, disastrous proposal of marriage.   She says,
 
"From the very beginning--from the first moment, I may almost say--of my acquaintance with you, your manners,  impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry."

2 comments:

  1. You choice of word is interesting. Back in the day, the "palings", or "the pale", set off and protected those inside from the "barbarians" on the outside. This was especially true in the northern fringes of the Roman Empire (Scotland) and English settlements in Ireland. Things that were "beyond the pale" were barbaric,and that's where we get this term for someone's atrocious actions from.

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