Friday, November 23, 2012

Pride and Prejudice: 71% Complete

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving! I got a lot of reading done on football commercial breaks yesterday so I'm up to 71% now.  I'm still hoping to be done by Monday, but we'll see how that goes.
 
The vocabulary word for today is "obeisance" which means "differential respect." (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary)
 
Today's quote is funny and it serves a very useful purpose in the book.  Lizzy Bennet has three younger sisters, two of whom: Lydia and Kitty, are very vain and flirtatious and are constantly making a spectacle of themselves.  At the beginning of the book, even though their actions are mentioned, Jane Austen doesn't put a lot of focus on the negativity of those actions.  But by this point in the story, Lizzy has just gotten a letter from Mr. Darcy which, in part, gave a scathing review of her sisters' behavior.  And now, it seems, Lizzy is finally noticing their impropriety and it becomes more of a focus.  This passage is the first meeting that Lizzy has with Kitty and Lydia after receiving Mr. Darcy's letter.  Lizzy and her sister Jane are traveling home and they stop for the night.   Austen writes:
 
"...As they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Bennet's carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman's punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia looking out of a dining room upstairs.  These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed in visiting an opposite milliner, watching a sentinel on guard, and dressing a salad and cucumber.  After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming, 'Is not this nice? Is not this an agreeable surprise?'  'And we mean to treat you all,' added Lydia, 'but you must lend us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there.'  Then, showing her purchases--'Look here, I have bought this bonnet.  I do not think it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not.  I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any better.'"

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