Pride and Prejudice gets the Page 99 Test
Joining Persuasion, Donald J. Gray, editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Pride and Prejudice, gives the novel the Page 99 Test: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.”
Interestingly, Professor Gray writes about both his own edition of the book AND the 1813 second edition of the novel.
Either passage will prepare a reader for a novel about the tactics of courtship – the schemes and hopes of mother and sisters, the apparatus of social events (calls and balls) in which young people meet one another, or (in the Norton edition) fail to meet, the play of forwardness (in the 1813 edition) and socially enforced passivity (in the Norton passage) in the game of courtship. Things look more promising in 1813 – there will be a ball, at which the couple in the courtship will meet. In the passage of the Norton edition the dark and risky aspects of the game come forward: Jane (and Elizabeth) can do nothing but wait, the sister of one family schemes against the courtship while the sister of the other family is at this moment at least distant and helpless, and can offer only affection to solace the “painful thought” of disappointment. A novel, then, about romance and courtship, played out within the complications and comforts of family, and the provisions of social custom. In 1813 the reader wonders: what is going to happen at the ball? After reading the passage in the Norton edition, the reader thinks: This is a hard way to conduct romance; is it all going to be ok?
We like the way he compares and contrasts the two editions–and love that he consulted an almost-first edition!
