The arrival of a young, well-off, eligible man named Mr. Bingley sends the Bennet household--with five girls of a marrying age--into a tizzy. But it's the introduction of Mr. Bingley's friend, Mr. Darcy, that sets in motion the fate of Elizabeth Bennet, resolved only after a labyrinth of social and personal complexities.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
"To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone. what could she mean by it?"
"Mr. Collins, you must marry. Choose properly, choose a gentlewoman for my sake, and for your own, let her be an active useful sort of person."
"I have come to offer myself to you against the dictates of my will, and reason."
He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, in this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance.
The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family connections or fortune. Is this to be endured?