Pride & Prejudice

About this curriculum

Sample "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Like many other great first lines in literature, the opening sentence of Pride & Prejudice contains in microcosm what is to come. It lets us know immediately, of course, the novel's central concern: marriage—the finding of a husband or a wife. This is, we suspect, going to be a love story. But the obvious irony of the statement complicates the picture.