Values from Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)

Part of a Novel Analysis
By Denice Sharina P. Lao

“Marriage can never be called a marriage unless it is done with love, sacrifice and sincerity.”

This occurred to me as I finished the book with mild satisfaction as it ticked my mind to the what ifs of the novel. What if Elizabeth have agreed to marry Collins and realize her affection for Darcy, would there be an affair? What if Darcy Never interfered with Bingley and Jane, would they have an early happily ever after? These questions kept on bugging me until I realized that these odd situations didn’t happened cause of one thing, love. Maybe this realization is already given and too common but I stick to what had most occurred to me, that real love is not measured by the butterflies in your stomach and tingling electricity through your veins, it is the feeling of being incomplete without that person. People misunderstand the “I cannot live without you” cliché; they treat it as love already. Yes, I said love is being incomplete without the other person but love doesn’t mean anything if it just words, it must be seen through actions. Love fulfills us, completes us and inspires us. If we fail our quizzes or got our lives miserable because of love then I dare day love isn’t enough, because in love you do not let yourself get destructed but instead lift yourself up to prove you are worthy of the person.

Elizabeth, following her thoughts and finding her own direction without the command of others helped her find true love and happiness to Jane. She did not let love eat the other parts of her life and forget her love for her family. Like marriage, love is never called love if there is doubt, if there is self-destruction and greed and if there are only words to it. People do not find true love by chance, it a study, a study that should take long to master and to realize. Loving at first sight or realizing love in just a minute is mere infatuation. Like a master’s degree, it is sort out carefully, not over-thinking but internalizing every detail, not memorizing but understanding, not ordered by other people but a feedback from our own bodies. Love, is already a cliché itself but what people do not know is that love is not simple, love can never be, that love is very strong that it can give life or kill, and with this, Jane Austen had displayed her heroine in the right respect for love, learning from the mistake, sorting out the truth and being true to oneself.