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Sadie Stein on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Episode 2

Tote-Bag Austen

Featuring Sadie Stein

Audio episode · 19 min

Sadie Stein on Pride and Prejudice

There is a sentence from this book on a tote bag near you, and on the bag it means romance. Sadie Stein returns it to the first page, where a whole town is keeping score, and watches the meaning change. Chapters one through three: a marriage summed up in two ruthless sentences, a ball where the richest man in the room refuses to dance, and a surprisingly charitable theory of that refusal, with Lord Byron in it. Then the turn I didn't see coming. Stein rereads Mr. Bennet, the funny father she liked for years, and this time the jokes look different. She used to be on his side.

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I Couldn't Have Given You Up to Anyone Less

Sadie Stein weeps at Mr. Bennet's half-sentence goodbye. Garth Greenwell reads a whole novel about a father who can't say it, so the daughter must.

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Why Darcy Falls for Elizabeth in Spite of Himself

Darcy falls for Elizabeth because she alone does not perform for him, Stein argues — her wit is character, not strategy, and he falls in spite of himself.

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Was Charlotte Lucas Right to Marry Mr. Collins?

Stein reads Charlotte Lucas's marriage as clear-eyed and defensible: in Austen's marriage market, Elizabeth's freedom to refuse was the exception, not the rule.

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Marriage, Money, and the Village Religion of Pride and Prejudice

Stein argues the romance sits on hard economics: a village credo of marriage, too few men, and a good match as the difference between security and ruin.

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