Pride and Prejudice Summary & ending explained

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

Mrs. Bennet certainly believed it, the morning she heard that Netherfield Park had been let.

"A rich young man from the north, Mr. Bennet! Four or five thousand a year, they say. Think of the girls!"

Mr. Bennet lowered his newspaper only far enough to look amused. "Why should I think of the girls? Did he take the house in order to marry one?"

"Don't be tiresome. Of course he may fall in love with one of them. You must call on him at once."

He had already called. He simply enjoyed letting her fret first.

The Bennets had five daughters and one serious problem. Their house, Longbourn, could pass only to a male heir, and there was no son. When Mr. Bennet died, it would go to a cousin none of them had met. A good marriage was not a romance in that house. It was a rescue.

So the whole family went to the assembly at Meryton to see Mr. Bingley. He was everything they had hoped: handsome, easy, ready to dance every dance. He danced twice with Jane, the eldest and the loveliest of the sisters, and could hardly look anywhere else.

His friend was another matter. Mr. Darcy was richer still, with a great estate in Derbyshire and ten thousand a year. The room admired him until it noticed that he danced only with Bingley's sisters, spoke to no one else, and looked at Meryton as if it smelled faintly of the stables.

Elizabeth Bennet, the second daughter, was sitting out a dance when Bingley came to coax his friend onto the floor.

"Your partner's sister is very pretty," Bingley said. "Let me introduce you."

Darcy glanced at Elizabeth, caught her eye, and looked away. "Passable, I suppose. Not enough to make me dance with a girl nobody else has asked. Go back to your angel, Bingley, and leave me in peace."

Elizabeth heard every word. By supper it was her best joke of the evening, and her friends laughed until they ached.

She had made up her mind about Mr. Darcy. What she didn't know was that he had not finished looking at her.