Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The perfect novel for Valentine’s Day. I first read this novel when I was 14; Celia Bannerman was Elizabeth Bennet and Vivian Pickles her overbearing mother in a black and white BBC adaptation. Every time I watch another adaptation, and there have been several, I go back to the novel; there is so much to re-read and savour. ‘The course of true love’ never did run smoothly but all ends happily. Mr. Darcy is redeemed as a true hero and gentleman; Elizabeth has found true happiness at last. This story is so well constructed, so satisfying in its conclusion that most contemporary romantic fiction pales into insignificance.
They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought, and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects.
I love the way Jane Austen constructs happy endings; all her heroines eventually find true love to last them a lifetime, like Emma and Mr. Knightley ‘in the perfect happiness of the union’. And that is how it should be, especially on Valentine’s Day. Life is too short and much too complicated to settle for less.