Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

"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). Thus penning some of the most famous words in English literature, Jane Austen began Pride and Prejudice, chick-flick sans pareil. Beyond the love games and petty jealousies, however, Austen explores and expounds on reason, relationships, and class distinctions, weaving a tapestry of story and theme. Concerning her work, Mark Schorer of the University of California, Berkeley, observed:

It is, in the first place, comic, which is another way of saying that it is rational: it throws
the light of unshuttered reason upon all the unreasonable activities of its people, and most
of all upon those multiple discrepancies between what their shuttered reason professes
and what their wilful emotions in fact impel them to do. It is, in the second place, social,
which is another way of saying that it is concerned with human beings who exist within
class and institutional relationships and whose interest largely derives from these
relationships, rather than with characters whose chief interest is in their "inner" lives, in
introspective states of mind or in the anarchic grip of tumultuous emotions. (Austen xi)

Considering such a rich content matter, translating the book to the silver screen presents a daunting challenge. Such an endeavor by the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1995 brought each of Schorer's items into stark relief, highlighting certain elements while never disregarding others.