Chapter I — Pride and Prejudice

Marriage, in the world Austen opens, is not romance: it is a financial system, and the families surrounding any wealthy newcomer have already decided he needs a wife before he has unpacked.

News arrives via Mrs. Long: Netherfield Park has been let to a Mr. Bingley, single, north-of-England money, worth four or five thousand a year, who drove down in a chaise and four and agreed terms on the spot. Mrs. Bennet is immediately in motion, urging Mr. Bennet to call on him before anyone else can. He deflects with sarcasm she keeps missing, suggesting she go herself since she is still handsome enough to attract Bingley's attention, then casually announcing he will put in a good word for Lizzy.

Mrs. Bennet objects: Jane is prettier, Lydia better-humored. Mr. Bennet tells his wife he has had high respect for her nerves these twenty years; she warns him that twenty wealthy men could move to the neighborhood and it would mean nothing if he refuses to visit. He ends the conversation by promising, with perfect pleasantness, to visit all twenty. The chapter closes on the narrator's verdict: Mr. Bennet is too quick and too sarcastic for his wife to read after twenty-three years of trying; Mrs. Bennet is a woman of mean understanding whose life's business is her daughters' marriages and whose solace is gossip.