Books - Pride and Prejudice; Decline and Fall; Science, Politics and Gnosticism; Of Popes and Unicorns
I finished Pride and Prejudice earlier in the month. It is instantly my favourite Jane Austen novel. And how foolish I was for imaging that I didn’t really need to read it because I’d seen a couple of adaptations. Jane Austen does that thing which so many great geniuses do: she makes it all look so easy. Almost as if she really had no idea how brilliant she was. This book is really all about the inability of human beings to perceive themselves and the people around them correctly and our need to repent of our mistakes.
(Spoiler alert, skip this paragraph if you don’t want to learn how it ends.) Above all, it about the power of love to humble and change us. For example, after he and Elizabeth Bennet are finally engaged, Mr Darcy explains how his love for Elizabeth subverted the erroneous habits of mind and thought he was taught by his family - notably his contempt for those outside of …
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