The Cheeni Chronicles

I read Pride and Prejudice, and I have thoughts…

Fans of Jane Austen are totally going to hate me.

I don’t like Pride and Prejudice. I don’t like the experience of reading it. There, I said it, and I am willing to die on this hill. Or stoned by Austenian fans.

I remember as a child I read the abridged version, and I just couldn’t tolerate Mrs. Bennett. I think it’s funny though that I feel the need to talk about it. I think what made me hate it so much was the obsession of marriage in the story. It was also painfully slow to read. I abandoned it halfway because it was not required reading from my school. It was just a book that I bought because it was a classic – still is – and I wanted to build my own library.

Imagine my surprise when years later, my company, OLOMOPOLO had to organize a dramatic reading. Welp. I had to read it again. Except, I’d be honest, I only read the parts that were suggested. I couldn’t read about Mrs. Bennett again. No. No. No. Never. Or so I thought.

Here we are in 2025, and I finally finished reading Pride and Prejudice. I have grown to become impartial, but I still don’t like Mrs. Bennett. I think there is good character development but there’s too much of Elizabeth thinking, and less doing, but Mr. Darcy does everything in the background only to be told to us through dialogues and letters. Which is not criminal, and I do see the appeal of the book now, but I still don’t like it, and I still detest Mrs. Bennett.

I do not think I need to summarize the story, because I think many people already know the story too well. If not from books, people must have watched any one of the dozens of adaptations on television and film. In fact, I read a few days ago that there is an audio book in production right now.

I was thinking about why I hated it so much. It all boils down to the obsession of marriage. I’m not against it to be honest. I think that if one chooses it and is happy, then they should definitely go get married. But I think the overindulgence of it all in the story is what annoyed me, especially with Mrs. Bennett going off about finding a suitable husband for her daughters. Marriage is presented as a step on a social ladder. It felt like a barter, and when they talked about social connections etc. it just made me annoyed.

I KNOW, that’s what Austen subverts in the story. But by the time the subversion takes place, I’m already convinced that marriage is so important in this world that it is the only thing women talk or think about. And I think this is why context is important because this is where I reflected on this problem on why it annoys me.

Growing up in Pakistan, marriage is talked about like it’s the endgame for girls. To be married off early and to find a good husband, to have a family and give her parents grandchildren. On top of that, the number of marriage ceremonies that I have seen gives me marriage hangovers for years. When I was a student in middle school, if my classmates had a wedding in their family, you bet your bottom dollar they were not coming the next day if it was happening on a school night because these ceremonies would last the whole night. Now, it isn’t possible because of the law, which states they should end it by 10pm. But who is stopping an after party that’s happening privately at home? Nobody cares, it’s supposed to be the only fun three or four days that people get together to celebrate a union.

Oh, and not to mention, they used to never start on time. Ever.

Well, those are just memories from my childhood. But as I graduated from university, my friends were the ones who had started to get married. I was getting invitations to attend them, and I was always fearful of going to these weddings, even though I’d make sure to go to at least one ceremony to honor my friends. I love them, but this was out of my comfort zone to be very honest. I do not like weddings, and the atmosphere was always too loud and happening for me.

And it was not too long before the focus of searching for a suitor was falling towards me. I already know I am what is known as a “leftover woman”. I am thirty and six years old (that’s how Jane Austen writes the ages in her book). According to Chinese traditions – and those in many Asian countries – I should have married before twenty-seven, but now I am leftover. There’s a weird pressure from my family’s side. I also feel some emotional and personal pressure too. To be honest, who wants to be called left over? Nobody.

Does that make me obsessed with marriage also? I don’t think so. I still think if marriage is to happen for me it should happen because I feel loved and safe and respected, but does that mean I should constantly be on the lookout? I don’t know. Sometimes I enjoy the freedom that I have, and sometimes, it does feel lonely. But is this loneliness bad? Not sure.

Should marriage be the end all be all? No idea. Maybe not entirely. There’s more that we can do even if we get married, I think. I know my thoughts might change, though, I’m probably never going to stop hating Mrs. Bennett and her antics around marriage.  

Written by Vicky Zhuang Yi-Yin