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The Immortality of Love in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

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Love is a word that cannot be given one simple definition. Love is a different thing to different people. Love has extreme powers. It has started great wars, and it can cause people to do unbelievable things. Jane Austen has a very clear opinion on love and personal relationships, and she makes various statements about these personal relationships throughout her novel Pride and Prejudice. In Pride and Prejudice, two sisters who come from a somewhat disrespected family embark on separate journeys where they find true love. Jane, the eldest sister of the Bennet family, develops a romance with a charming rich man named Bingley. Elizabeth, the main character of the story develops feelings of hatred toward a rich snobbish man named Darcy, a man she ends up marrying. Additionally, Austen adds side romances to the novel, depicting very different relationships. While relationships are quite different today, Austen’s theme that love trumps all still exists.

It is truly impossible to believe that relationships have not changed at all since Austen’s time. Pride and Prejudice took place in a setting where the male had complete authority over the female, and primogeniture decided who received the family fortune. However, most of Austen’s main points about personal relationships still ring true today. For instance, Austen begins her novel by saying, “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen 1). People in

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