The re-write of Pride and Prejudice

Chapter one

‘It is a TRUTH universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’
Mrs Bennet said to her husband while he was sitting in the library trying to read one of his books, and hoping his lovely wife would forget about him fully. However, that seems to be impossible with Mrs Bennet, as she is constantly in the pursuit of husbands for her five daughters.
‘Why did you make this comment, my dear?’ said Mr Bennet.
‘Well, Mr Bennet, there are two young gentlemen in Netherfield who are originally from the North of England, with a large inheritance and in want of two wives; according to Mrs Long whom has just had a long conversation with Mr Morris, and is quite sure that the two young men are having a ball as soon as the place is ready for receiving the guests.’
‘Our two girls will be the best choice for these gentlemen. Well, we have been invited and we shall be there on Saturday, the 16th of June, 1813 when our Jane will become 21 years of age.’
Mr Bennet makes no comment about it because he does not agree with the manner in which Mrs Bennet always tries to marry their daughters, with fortune and not with love as he believes to be the best arrangement for marriage.
Days go by and the Bennets have a visit from Mr Collins who is Mr Bennets’ cousin and heir to Longbourn estate; although Mr Collins is to inherit the estate upon the death of Mr Bennet, he, Mr Collins, shows no interest whatsoever in taking possession of the property and leaving his cousins without a home.
The day for the ball draws closer, and all the eligible ladies are getting very excited with the possibility of finding a (rich) husband there.
‘Lizzy, what are you going to wear for the ball, dear sister?’
‘I am not so sure, Jane. I have that beautiful gown that father and mother bought me last year for my 19th birthday; I thought perhaps it would be good enough for the ball, don’t you think?’
‘All the ladies in the county are going to be looking their very best to impress the young gentlemen, Lizzy.’
‘Dear sister, with such a handsome face you should not have to worry one little bit about those ladies wearing expensive gowns; for you have what they have not, natural beauty.’
As soon as Jane comes into the dancing room she catches Mr Bingley’s attention with her graceful looks and delicate manners; Mr Bingley cannot resist Jane’s elegance and refined style. Despite the low connections of her family, he proposes to her on the same night: it is love at first sight.
‘Miss Bennet, I would like to have your hand in matrimony?
‘Mr Bingley, I am simply astounded. And it is yes. I accept to marry you, Mr Bingley.’
Elizabeth on the contrary, does not have as much luck as her beautiful sister: because she, Elizabeth, has a tendency to judge people.
Mr Darcy, after talking to Elizabeth for a little awhile, acknowledges that Elizabeth has an inner beauty that one cannot perceive by just looking at her, but above all by communicating - verbally.
Elizabeth has the gift of being able to speak well and easily about different subjects: she reads a lot and gets all her knowledge and ideas out of the books she treasures so much.
‘Miss Bennet, will you give me the pleasure of this dance?’
‘Yes, the pleasure is as yours as it is mine, Mr Darcy.’ And they dance and converse for a long time.
A few days later Mr Darcy visits Ms Bennet and asks her if she will marry him. Without doubt Ms Bennet says yes.
Mrs Bennet is so gay with her two eldest daughters being asked in matrimony, that she and Mr Bennet have a loving night which produces a male offspring: Jonathan Bennet, who is going to inherit the Longbourn estate and therefore, secure it once and for all within the Bennet family for another generation.
Mr and Mrs Bennet decide to send the three young girls to school to have a good education; money is not a problem anymore with the birth of Jonathan Bennet.
At the ball Mr Collins also meets Charlotte Lucas, and inevitably falls in love with her; Charlotte has a very good impression of Mr Collins and decides to ask him for a dance.
‘Mr Collins, would you give me the honour of this dance?’
‘Naturally, Miss Lucas; it is all my pleasure.
Mr Collins looks a little surprised but accepts it all the same, as he believes that men and women have the same rights: and he is happy with a lady taking the lead.
‘Ms Lucas, I am in love with you and I would like you to be my wife.’
‘Mr Collins, since I set eyes on you that is all what I have wanted to do; to be your wife; we shall marry immediately, Mr Collins.’
‘Of course, my beloved; anything you say. Your request is my command.’
‘Let us dance, Ms Lucas; for this is the best night in my life.’
‘Yes, Mr Collins.’

The wedding

The three couples get married on the 8th day of August 1814.
Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet go to live in the estate nearby, and raise a large family.
Mr Bingley and Jane Bennet go on a long journey overseas.
Mr Collins and Charlotte Lucas move to London where they have a very busy life with writing and printing poetry onto copper plate.

Chapter Two

Mr Collins is a poet, painter and printmaker; he is an intelligent, well educated man and very sensitive with matters regarding the political and economical situation in England at that time. Mr Collins dislikes the eighteenth and nineteenth century English society; he regards it repressive and authoritarian: where self-expression and power of imagination are not allowed. Also, Mr Collins does not approve of the English colonialism in the new world, America and the West Indies, and he uses his poems as a means of contesting against the possession of land and resources overseas, as well as the chaotic social situation that the poor class is made to live in.
Mr Collins does not accord of a society that believes that women should not be educated. He, Mr Collins, teaches his wife, Charlotte, to read and to write, and he trains her with the art of draftsman; later in life, his wife is the one to help him with the printing of his illuminated poetry – poetry which millions of scholars around the world are able to read and enjoy the freedom of expression, imagination and thoughts, that is so difficult to be seen in some societies.
Mr Collins “was concerned with the human imagination as a counter to the rise of science. The growing intellectual movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries placed scientific thought in the forefront of all knowledge, basing reality in material objects. He felt that imagination was essential to individual happiness because it allowed the individual to, as Wordsworth stated, ‘half-create’ the world. The individual shapes the reality he perceives because he brings certain a priori knowledge to every experience. The imagination also provides a common human bond; it provides a means of sympathy, of identification. However, the absence of imagination, he felt, would lead people to apathy and a false sense of being. As a Romantic poet, Mr Collins accepted the reality of the link between man and nature in the form of the human imagination as the basis of human understanding, rejecting the scientific world view of materialism.”
Mr and Mrs Collins live in London all their lives, just leaving the city a couple of times for a short period of two or three years; Mr Collins likes the city very much. They have no children, and live a life dedicated to writing a printing poetry onto copper plates. The couple live a poor life despite all the work they do; for the so imaginative and visionary poetry of Mr Collins’ does not raise any money at the time; the people’s level of understanding and discernment is not symmetrical with that of Mr Collins’ poetry: therefore, the poetry does not sell. The couple does share a special love and bond for each other; and Mr Collins reflects that special love in some of his, nowadays so popular, quotes: “I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love.”

Chapter Three

Jane and Mr Bingley leave England setting sail from Queen Mary’s Dock in London on a sea voyage in August, straight after the wedding festivities. The couple embark on their journey with all the blessings of their parents, families and friends whom attend the wedding. The voyage starts extremely well with the sea being calm and pleasant for the first-time travellers, as Jane puts it to her beloved Mr Bingley.
‘Mr Bingley, it is such a lovely day to leave on this journey: the sky is blue, the sea water is crystal clear, the wind is not blowing hard on my soft and pale skin, and we are here together.’
‘Indeed, my beloved Jane; we are together forever.’
However, the piece and quite does not last very long as the wind suddenly starts to blow excessively hard and a hurricane wrecks the ship in half, killing all the other passengers except Jane and Mr Bingley: they are extremely good swimmers. Mr Bingley and Jane have to swim for about two hours - they nearly do not make it - before they are rescued by the Captain of a Portuguese ship off the western coast of Africa; the ship is on the route to Brazil. Jane who is already pregnant nearly dies because she has complications due to such rough conditions; Jane survives the disturbance of this journey but she miscarries the two-month-old baby.
‘Mr Bingley, I have lost our baby. I am so sorry.’
‘I know all about it, my beloved. It is not your fault; the condition on the ship is too harsh for you to bear a baby.’
‘The Lord will give us more children once we are ready for them. We need to settle down somewhere to be able to start a family.’
‘Yes, you are correct, Mr Bingley. We need to have a proper place to live before we start a family.’
The Captain, seeing that tragic situation that takes over the young couple, decides to help Jane and Mr Bingley to become owners of a plantation. They settle in the north of Brazil - Bahia; there, they grow sugar cane in a massive piece of land. The piece of land is so vast that the eyes cannot see the boundary of the property; the land and the sky become one.
‘Mr Bingley, how are we going to be able to keep this property by ourselves?’
‘Jane my dear, we are going to have slaves to work for us.’
‘Mr Bingley, are we aloud to do such thing? We cannot make people work for us, can we?’
‘My dear Mrs Bingley, this is my land - my kingdom; I do as I please. I make the law; I am the law; and we all have to live by it.’
Mr Bingley changes a lot after he arrives in the new world; and forgets all the principles - on how to treat people - that he had learnt back home: it must have been due to the hot sun, the cause of so many changes in Mr Bingley’s attitude.
Mr Bingley becomes a very tough and nasty land owner, completely different from that kind and polite person back in England; he starts to import slaves from Africa to work on the sugar plantation that they possess now.
Mr Bingley builds a very big house for the family and keeps Jane and all their children in there. Jane has one baby nearly every year now; the family gets bigger and bigger. Janes’ duties are only with the family; she does not intervene with Mr Bingley’s management of the plantation and the slaves. Jane does not agree with the way the slaves are treated; however, Mr Bingley is the master and the law.
As their children grow big enough to travel, Mr and Mrs Bingley send them to England to have a proper education. With the departure of her children, Jane finds herself without much to do and decides that the slave children ought to be educated on the farm; she asks Mr Bingley to build a classroom for the slaves. Mr Bingley does not like the idea of having slaves who can read, write and are able to question their master upon everything he does.
‘Jane, I do not like this idea of yours about educating my slaves.’
‘Mr Bingley, they are your slaves indeed; however, sir, they are people. They deserve to learn to communicate in English; because we do not speak their African language, do we Mr Bingley? If I do not teach them the language, who will?’
‘Very well Madam; you win. I shall build a classroom for your little slaves to be educated.’
‘If the slaves become educated and knowledgeable they are going to rebel against us, Mrs Bingley.’
‘Mr Bingley, have no fear, sir; they are only children.’
‘Jane, you are just a woman; you do not understand the danger of having educated slaves. I am a man; I know better.’
‘Thank you so much for that comment, Mr Bingley; indeed, I am just a woman and a teacher as well. My duty is to teach what has been taught to me: and that gives me great pleasure, sir.’
Despite all the opposition from Mr Bingley, Jane starts educating the children. Of course, whatever Jane teaches the slaves is about the Anglo-Saxon culture of hers. Therefore, the children learn to speak English and learn all about the English culture. The children grow up speaking English and knowing it to good standard; in fact, as the children grow bigger they start teaching their own parents and the other adults. The adults are very keen to learn to read and to write, and in a few years basically all the slave population is literate. Jane is radiant to see that not only the children but the adults can read and write as well. That is the end of illiteracy amongst the slaves.
‘Jane, I have been having problems with the slaves on the plantation’.
‘What is the matter, Mr Bingley?’
‘Your slaves are demanding a salary to work on my plantation.’
‘They said:’ ‘We can read and write; we are literate people and we have the right to be paid wages for our labour; we cannot remain as slaves based on the colour of our skin. We are children of the ‘Lord’ as well.”
‘What am I to do, Jane?’
‘Pay them some money and also provide proper accommodation for them to live in, Mr Bingley.’
‘Oh, accommodation is necessary as well, is it?’
‘Jane, this is going to ruin us.’
‘That is nonsense; you possess so much money, Mr Bingley that our great grand-children will never need to work if they do not want to.’
‘Mr Bingley, you ought to pay these people wages for their hard work.’
‘You should be a democratic landowner, Husband.’
‘Jane, where did you get this idea from?’
‘I do not remember you talking about equality, literacy and about paying slaves for their work before.’
‘My dear husband, that is because we did not have any slaves in England.’
Jane verifies all the books and she is aware of how much their annual revenue is. Jane decides that enough is enough and she has to have a meeting with all the slaves and come to an agreement with them. Jane believes that the slaves are right: they work very hard and they should be paid wages and have proper houses to live in with their families. Jane sets a date to see all adult slaves and discuss the matter.
‘Jane, what have you done now, woman?’
‘What is right and what should have been done years ago, Mr Bingley. It is enough of this sending money and resources to the Mother Country while these people perish here in front of our eyes. They are human beings; they deserve better; and above all, this is their country now as well as ours, Mr Bingley. England is not our country any longer for we live here, do we not?’
‘Mr Bingley, I cannot think there is any intrinsic value in one colour more than another, that white is better than black; only we think it so, because we are so, and prone to judge favourably in our case.’
‘I shall follow William Wilberforce’s ideology and free these people from this disgraceful life.’

William Wilberforce (1759 – 1833)
“William Wilberforce was a deeply religious English member of parliament and social reformer who was very influential in the abolition of the slave trade and eventually slavery itself in the British Empire.
William was concerned with social reform, particularly the improvement of factory conditions in Britain.
The abolitionist Thomas Clarkson had an enormous influence on Wilberforce. He and others were campaigning for an end to the trade in which British ships were carrying black slaves from Africa, in terrible conditions, to the West Indies as goods to be bought and sold.
Wilberforce was persuaded to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade and for 18 years he regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in parliament. The campaign was supported by many members of the Clapham Sect and other abolitionists who raised public awareness of their cause with pamphlets, books, rallies and petitions. In 1807, the slave trade was finally abolished, but this did not free those who were already slaves. It was not until 1833 that an act was passed giving freedom to all slaves in the British Empire.”