Pride and Prejudice
In one sentence: Jane Austen's 1813 novel opens with a line that sounds like a statement of fact — "a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife" — but it's actually a trap Austen sets for the reader on page one; the whole book is about how Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice each blind their own judgment, then get exposed to each other.
Overview
The novel follows Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters, with Mrs. Bennet single-mindedly focused on marrying them off. Two well-off young men arrive in the neighborhood — Bingley, who quickly takes to Elizabeth's older sister Jane, and Darcy, who snubs Elizabeth at a ball by declaring her not handsome enough to tempt him. The officer Wickham then tells Elizabeth a sob story about Darcy cheating him out of an inheritance, deepening her prejudice against him. When Darcy proposes, Elizabeth rejects him on the spot, accusing him of ruining Jane's chance with Bingley; Darcy responds with a letter explaining that Wickham actually tried to elope with his sister for her fortune, and that he separated Bingley from Jane only because he believed her indifferent. After Elizabeth's youngest sister Lydia runs off with Wickham, it's Darcy who secretly pays to fix the resulting scandal. Once the truth comes out, Elizabeth's opinion of Darcy is transformed; Bingley realizes Jane does love him and they become engaged, and Darcy proposes to Elizabeth a second time — this time she accepts.
Why It's Recommended
This book earns its place because the opening line — "a truth universally acknowledged" — is doing ironic work from the very first sentence: it reads like a settled social fact, but it's really Austen's first joke on the reader, and the template for the irony that runs through the whole novel. That irony cuts both ways. Elizabeth ends up marrying the wealthy Darcy, which on the surface looks like a win for the marriage market's rules about rank and fortune — but she spends the entire book refusing to defer to anyone, Darcy included. The same marriage proves the old rules right and shows they never actually controlled her. Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice work as a matched pair of self-deceptions: Darcy assumes his fortune alone should make Elizabeth thrilled to have him, while Elizabeth takes Wickham's word at face value and decides Darcy is simply a bad man — until one letter forces them both to see that what clouded their judgment was never the other person, but themselves. The book's real subject isn't romance at all — it's the distance between people: class, manners, money, all the things that keep two people apart, and what it actually takes to close that gap.
Source
Wisecrack's Thug Notes segment covers Pride and Prejudice in its 2013-07-09 episode, retelling the plot before landing on the novel's opening line — "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" — as the key to Austen's irony, and on how Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice blind each of them until the truth forces its way out. (First published anonymously in 1813, credited only as "By the Author of Sense and Sensibility," Austen's second published novel.)