The pride of a woman who is practically poor and completely free in her poverty, in her irony, in the strength of her character. Is there anything equal to such pride?

The prejudice of a woman almost incapable of answering a blow to blow, to believe in the sincerity of a man’s feelings and to stop thinking about it. This is Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. A book without which there would probably be no “psychological” novel, no “feminist” literature, and – simply – no “elite” prose as such!