Review of Review by Dorothy Van Ghent

            In her review of Pride and Prejudice, Dorothy Van Ghent attempts to clarify what a reader’s expectations for a Jane Austen novel should be. She explains that many modern readers find the book to be “limited to the manners of a small section of English country gentry,” and while this observation is true, Ghent believes that the true value of Austen’s novel is in the way that she explores and masters the limits of her world.

            Ghent gives light to Austen’s background and the civilization that she writes for, in which “there is time only for a sufficiently complicated business of getting wived and husbanded and of adapting oneself to civilization and civilization to oneself.” Austen is writing for people who live in this society and are stifled by it. She is limited to this world, but according to Ghent, she is able to “illuminate the difficult and delicate reconciliation of the sensitively developed individual with the terms of his social existence.” By working within the language and conventions of her time, Austen was able to further explore and define the intricacies of her world in her own person style.

            Ghent points out that this style of Austen’s includes wit and double meaning, especially in the very first sentence of the novel, which tells us that “”a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’”. Ghent reads this as “a single woman must be in want of a man with a good fortune” and therefore, as a perfect summary of the novel’s plot, and of Austen’s society. Ghent further describes Austen’s language by stating that it has a “syntactical modesty conveying a very daft and energetic mental dance.” It is remarkable in its timelessness, despite the limitations that Austen was working with.

Ghent’s review is eye-opening in that it allows readers of Pride and Prejudice to delve deeper into the style of the author. It helps us to remember whom Austen was writing for, and that she wasn’t writing for us. Ghent describes the novel perfectly when she says it is “two inches of ivory”. It is a piece of work to be admired for what it does describe, not to be criticized for what it doesn’t.