At our meeting several members admitted to not having read this novel for March. Fortunately, they still came along to the meeting and we had an interesting conversation as to why they did not read this book which is still considered by many people as a 'must read', 'most loved book', 'one of the classics', 'one you ought to read', etc. etc.

We talked about what it is that makes a classic novel that still appears on school reading lists two hundred and nine years later (Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813) and what other books we thought of as classics - and whether we had actually read them or if the term 'classic' and 'you ought to read it' puts people off.

For at least one member who did read the novel, it was for the first time. They saw the plot rather like Mills and Boon material dressed up in English Regency finery but found the prose amazing. They thought the book should still be on school lists to show young people how restrictive the manners, customs, classes and way of life in England were then.

For several of us, we had read it again, having read it first as a teenager. We may have read the book back then because we had to for English at school, or just for the romance - or after seeing actor Colin Firth as the handsome Mr Darcy coming out of the lake in a clinging white shirt on the telly (sorry, this incident is not in the book). Most of us, if we hadn't read the book, had seen one of the 17 film or television adaptations that have been made from it.

We found descriptions of people and surroundings in the book are generally quite sparse. The women dress in 'finery' for a ball and the word 'lace' might be used but that's about all you get. A man might be tall and dark but the rest is up to your imagination. However, his manners and range of conversation are carefully described. The livery of the servants is the word that provides clues as to who is arriving at the front door (without further description) and cucumber salad may have been on the menu for lunch but you don't find out how it was served or with what. The characters may have gone for a long walk but you don't see the countryside they walk through.

Nevertheless, we get a sense that the narrow range of activities considered appropriate for women was stultifying.

Accomplishments might include dancing, singing and piano playing, or making embroidered screens. Walking at a dignified pace and travelling by carriage were approved of, whereby walking at speed or vigorous horse riding, less so.

Austen makes it clear that marriage for gentrified women who had no money, little education nor any likelihood of inheritance was the only dignified pathway society allotted for them. If you should happen to find true affection for your partner in marriage, so much the better, but Austen shows us that some women were prepared to put up with a lot for the security of a home.

Regarding the plot, we know in just a few paragraphs, after the famous comic opening of the book - 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a food fortune must be in want of a wife' - that the tale to be told will revolve around the single young man, Mr Bingley, who has a fortune of '4-5,000 pounds a year' (about A$700,000 today), and who has let an estate, Netherfield Park, and that the district's families are hoping he will marry one of their daughters.

By sentence three, the book has already turned to conversation between the characters - initially Mr and Mrs Bennett about Mr Bingley's arrival - and it is through the conversation, and the contents of the written letters between the characters, that the plot is largely developed. The plot thickens when the families find out that Mr Bingley has an even richer single friend, Mr Darcy, (who earns nearly $1 million a year from 'trade') who comes to stay with him and his sisters, but his conversation and behaviour proves to be arrogant and ill mannered.

The Bennetts have five daughters. They have failed to produce a male heir and their estate will be inherited by a male cousin. Therefore, a financially secure marriage is needed for each of the girls. It is the relationships of the eldest daughter, Jane, with Mr Bingley, and more particularly of the second eldest, Elizabeth, with Mr Darcy, which are at the heart of the book.

The conversations, the fabrications, the news and gossip from the narrow range of people within the story lead to grievous misunderstandings - amplified of course by the pride and prejudice of some of the characters.

While there is a happy ending, the reader may be left pondering the future family life for those who have revealed their noble characters during the course of the book and who have resolved their differences and won in love, with those far less noble family members they must continue to contend with. Moving to town (London) might be the best option.

The book clearly draws on Austen's understanding of her own village life in the late 1700s/early 1800s. Members found out she had grown up with a clergyman father with a modest 'living', a mother from a well known family, and numerous siblings.

She critiques her society and makes fun of some of the snobbish characters no doubt she knew in her own life. Social discourse and what constitutes 'civility' - the word is mentioned 78 times in the text - are the canvas for the brush strokes of the plot. Bookclub members thought about what career Austen might have today and we decided journalist or psychologist for the way she understood the characters in her book and the pressures caused by the limits on their lives.

Who was Jane Austen?

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817) was an English novelist who grew up in Hampshire, the youngest of seven children. Her father was a rector and her mother came from a prominent family but the family income was modest. Nevertheless Jane grew up in an atmosphere of intellectual inquiry and discussion where opposing opinions could be aired freely.

Today she is known for her six major novels which critique the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th Century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. She achieved only modest success in her own lifetime as her most famous books were published anonymously.

They were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (18116) and have rarely been out of print. She wrote two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion which were published after her death, in 1818, and began another called eventually Sanditon but died before its completion (it was made into a television series which was seen on ABC-TV recently). She also left behind three volumes of juvenile writings in manuscript, the short novel, Lady Susan, and another unfinished novel, The Watsons.

Her posthumous reputation grew after 1833 when her six most famous novels were republished as a set and gradually gained wide acclaim and popular readership.