“Pride and Prejudice”, as well as the other Jane Austen novels, can be appreciated for  their sparkling dialogue and their vivid characters and the clear narrative lines that manage to balance off multiple characters, as well as for the very detailed portrayal of the world of the country gentry in Regency England. The truth, however, is that Jane Austen accomplishes much more than that. She provides an objective appraisal of the human condition that you will find nowhere else except in Shakespeare and in some of the books of the Old Testament, notably in “Genesis” and the story of David as told in “Samuel I and II”. Among other things, Austen takes a perfectly objective approach to her characters, explaining what they are with utmost clarity, warts and all, while most novelists, including Dickens, take sides, preferring their heroes to their villains, while Jane Austen is beyond that, and that in itself is very liberating as it calls forth in a reader the ability also to be beyond judgment. People are what they are. Deal with it. Emma, for one, is less talented, and more superficial, than others in the Jane Austen repertoire. Elizabeth Bennet, for example, must have been an insufferably awkward and outspoken young woman at the beginning of "Pride and Prejudice", just as Darcy thought her to be, but she also has appeal as an extremely intelligent and firm and deeply moral person, which also appealed to Darcy, who has to be given credit for seeing her as a diamond in the rough. All of Jane Austen's heroines as flawed but not unworthy just because of that. Their flaws could have made them into tragic heroines, as in Ibsen, but instead Austen gives life to each of them so that they become precious souls instead of doomed creatures.