Hello.
Welcome to Sleep Stories with Steph,
Your go-to romantic podcast that guarantees you a calm and entertaining transition into a great night's sleep.
Come with me as we immerse ourselves in a romantic journey to a time long since forgotten.
But before we begin,
Let's take a moment to focus on where we are now.
Take a deep breath in through your nose and let it out with a long sigh.
Now close your eyes and feel yourself sink deeper into the support beneath you.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now and nowhere you need to go.
Happy listening.
Pride and Prejudice A Discussion Chapter One It is a truth,
Universally acknowledged,
That a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Such is the lively sentence with which Pride and Prejudice begins.
Then the author proceeds to illustrate the statement in her own admirable way.
Mr Bingley,
A young bachelor,
Well-born,
Wealthy,
Good-looking,
Agreeable,
Kindly disposed,
Even sensible,
While not too clever for his company,
Suddenly sets the whole country gentry of a quiet neighbourhood into a pleasant ferment by taking lease of Netherfield Park and coming to occupy the house.
My readers must remember it's nearly a century ago since this happened,
For it actually happened.
The charm of Jane Austen's situations is that they must have happened thousands of times.
Her people all lived,
Are living still,
Since human nature never dies.
We may correctly think and talk of Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and their father and mother,
Of Bingley and his sisters,
Of Darcy and his sister,
As if they were real men and women.
They were and are the very men and women whom our grandfathers knew,
Whom we know and visit,
Like and dislike,
Marry and refuse to marry.
A few customs have changed.
Greater breathing spaces come into everyday intercourse,
With better education.
Increased facilities of helping ourselves,
Moving about and knowing our neighbours.
Not only in the next parsonage and country house,
Or at most in a popular watering place,
But in the busy,
Endless streets of London,
Or up in the romantic glens of the Scotch Highlands,
Or still further away,
In nooks of the Appennines or recesses of the Black Forest.
Such revolutions on revolutions have occurred in dress,
That we have come back from the antipodes of one fashion to the same fashion again,
Looking new and fresh once more on the lithe figures and about the blooming faces of our nineteenth-century girls.
Still,
We do not see a young lady,
Her hair in turret curls,
Wearing a low-necked gown long before even her early dinner hour,
And holding above her head,
As a much-needed protection,
One of the first specimens of the original large,
Green,
Tent-shaped parasols,
Such as I remember,
In a representation of Elizabeth Bennet,
When she accompanied Lady Catherine de Bourgh to their memorable interview in the wilderness,
On one side of the lawn at Longbourn.
Wildernesses,
In their turn,
Have disappeared.
Certain phrases have grown obsolete.
But the men and women who led that kind of life,
Dressed in a style which,
When we do not chance to be familiar with,
We insist on regarding as outré,
And spoke in a manner half-racy,
Half-precise,
Are among us still,
And will always be among us,
With merely slight superficial differences.
But I wish to recall at this moment the distant date of Pride and Prejudice,
In order to say that the arrival of a young man like Charles Bingley,
Or Bingley,
As he is called,
In the old use of surnames in conversation,
Was a much greater event to a country circle then than it could be now.
About a hundred years ago,
To paint tables,
Cover screens and net purses,
Formed the general standard of girls' accomplishments,
A standard which did not furnish many topics of conversation.
It is the girls' own fault if they have not wider interest today.
Therefore,
Those among them who are in a fever of curiosity when a newcomer crosses their path,
Are decidedly lower in the scale in every respect than the gossips were in the time of Jane Austen.
We are first introduced to the Bennets of Longbourn in their animated discussion of the welcome event in their quiet lives.
Soon we know the family intimately.
We find shallow,
Vulgar Mrs.
Bennet assailing her husband with unvarnished arguments that he ought to be one of the first to call on their new neighbour for the sake of his daughters.
We listen with much amusement to eccentric,
Witty Mr.
Bennet,
Who has married his wife for her beauty and seeks compensation for her silliness in laughing at it on all occasions in those mocking,
Terse little speeches in which he responds to her profuse my dears with an answering flow of my dears while he takes her off to her broad,
Overblown face unsuspected by her at every word.
The two elder daughters are the cream of the family.
Jane is lovely and lovable.
Her good understanding is so well balanced by her gentle,
Tolerant temper that she is able to bear patiently and tenderly with her mother's foibles,
Including her vain glory in Jane's beauty.
Jane is so fair,
Sweet and reasonable in the most unassuming fashion she cannot help winning,
Without any effort at popularity,
Good opinions on all sides,
Even from the most unlikely quarters.
Elizabeth,
With her fine eyes,
Brown skin,
Light,
Graceful figure,
Nimble feet in dancing,
Nimble tongue in talking,
Is a warm-hearted,
Softened,
Womanly edition of the father whose favourite she is.
In answer to the covert reproach once addressed to her that the wisest and best of men,
Nay,
The wisest and best of their actions may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke,
She defends herself frankly,
Yet earnestly and we feel it is Jane Austen speaking for herself by the lips of Elizabeth Bennet.
Certainly there are such people,
But I hope I am not one of them.
I hope I never ridicule what it is wise and good.
Follies and nonsense,
Whims and inconsistencies do divert me,
I own,
And I laugh at them whenever I can.
With all,
This laughter-loving girl,
In spite of her naturally hasty conclusions and rash judgements,
Struggles so faithfully to be fair,
Is so candid in confessing her mistakes and submitting to pay the penalty when they are brought home to her,
She is at once so frank and fearless,
Yet so dutiful and reverent in the middle of her innocent daring,
So unselfish and devoted in her sisterly attachment,
So true a woman,
So thorough a lady,
That while we willingly respect and like the more faultless Jane,
We do more,
We love the more tempted and tried Elizabeth.
It is good for young readers of the present day to look at Elizabeth Bennet and learn to discriminate between the sparkling intelligence and gay-sweet temper of the good,
Kind young girl in her lawful attractiveness and the miserable travesty of her in many modern heroines,
In whom profanity and levity do duty for wit,
Audacious ignorance for originality,
And coarse license for nobility of nature.
