Deze inzending voor onze Pride and Prejudice schrijfwedstrijd is geschreven door Maria Jose Garcia Ferrer.
It was a Saturday evening like any other. Elizabeth and her husband had taken a turn in the garden and walked as far as the lake, but had returned home before it got dark as it was growing chilly.
Living in Pemberley was every bit as glorious as she had imagined when she first set eyes on the property while travelling with her uncle and aunt. That trip and every other detail of her past life seemed unimportant at present, like a distant memory.
Now they were both sitting in the parlour. Elizabeth was reading one of her favourite novels and her husband was writing a letter to his sister Georgiana who was in Italy, as part of a year abroad to further her education.
They were both opinionated and so different.
Elizabeth lifted her eyes from the thick volume and looked at Darcy. She was sure this happiness could not last. It was all too perfect. Because of her experience of life she had always been realistic. After all, she had been brought up by a wonderful father who despite his intelligence had married an inferior woman he despised.
She could understand the fact that her sister Jane was happy. Jane was uncomplaining and adaptable. But when it came to Fitzwilliam and her, it was a different matter. They were both opinionated and so different.
Her husband noticed the pensive look on her face and realized something was amiss.
“Can I ask you what is worrying you, my dear?”
Elizabeth was embarrassed. Her thoughts seemed too foolish to be put into words and even though she dearly loved this man, she was still afraid of his haughty manners and his rational outlook on all matters.
“I don’t really know”, she answered. “I was reading Cecilia and I got to a sentence that seemed to speak directly to me. It sounds like a premonition of our life story and it scares me. Sometimes I think that you are not real, that our home is not real. I fear that I will wake up and it will all be gone.”
Darcy seemed pensive for a while and then lovingly asked if she could read the sentence to him.
Elizabeth complied and in a loud voice recited: “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. … Yet this, however, remember: if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination…”
“Don’t you find it strange?”, she added almost immediately.
Darcy got up, walked towards her and took her hand.
A few miles away, in a much smaller house, a young round-faced woman looked sadly at the almost completed manuscript on her wooden table. On the first page it just said First Impressions.
“It is no good”, she thought to herself, and tearing the slightly yellowed sheets into pieces she threw them out of the window and into the garden below.
(c) Maria Jose Garcia Ferrer
Kan me Lizzie’s “angst” dat haar geluk niet echt lijkt best voorstellen.
Deze is ECHT leuk!
Ja Hetty, Jane was a groot fan van het boek Cecilia. Pride and Prejudice heette eerst First Impressions, maar de titel was inmiddels gebruikt door ene Margaret Holford. Zie hieronder:
The title “Pride and Prejudice” is very likely taken from a passage in Fanny Burney’s popular 1782 novel Cecilia, a novel Jane Austen is known to have admired:[14]
“The whole of this unfortunate business,” said Dr. Lyster, “has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. … Yet this, however, remember: if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination…”[
Het is een leuk verhaal, maar ook informatief! Het heeft mij nieuwsgierig gemaakt naar het boek ‘Cecilia’. Staat daar écht iets in over P&P! Ik heb wel eens iets gelezen dat Jane de titel ergens vandaag heeft!
Ook is het knap geschreven > Dit Engels was grotendeels goed te volgen. En de link naar Jane zelf vond ik ook verrassend! En … Deze keer geen zwangere Lizzy. 😉
Ik had het voorrecht om dit verhaal al eerder te mogen lezen. Maria Jose is een vriendin van mij uit Madrid en ik ken haar via de Oxford online cursussen, waaronder die van Jane Austen. Ik vind het een heel mooi geschreven verhaal, ook knap vind ik de connectie naar Jane zelf.