And after all, whose opinions are being presented here? The more one reads of what follows in the novel, the more it looks as if a chapter that closes with a putdown of Mrs Bennet might also begin with a sentence that channels her thoughts. Reread the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand, and matters begin to seem far less clear cut. Take that famous opening sentence, for example: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Readers have long noted that, as a statement, it's far from 'universal' rather, it's a prime example of the technique, with which Austen experiments from the later parts of Sense and Sensibility onwards, of 'free indirect style', in which characters' subjective opinions are presented as if they were external judgments. The business of her life was to get her daughters married its solace was visiting and news.' Indeed, had this been Austen's previous novel, Sense and Sensibility, there probably wouldn't be anything more to be said, since that story, at least in its early sections, is reassuringly direct and decided in its narratorial judgments. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. After all, Austen's narrator signs off her beautifully pitched dramatic exposition of Elizabeth's parents with something that sounds like a categorical declaration: 'Her mind was less difficult to develope.

Read the opening chapter of Pride and Prejudice, and you might feel that there's nothing more to be said about Mrs Bennet.

Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen