d conversation. The words they use reveal their social background and more vitally the social customs and ideas they hold dear. This is seen both in their conversation and the language they use in letters.
The comedy of Pride and Prejudice is understated and emanates from the language, that of Austen as author as well as that of her characters, and the first line of the novel shows how this technique works in practice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" (Austen 1). Mr. Bennett's failure to perceive the significance of this immediately evokes a comic exchange between husband and wife as he shows the bewilderment of the uninitiated and she speaks to him as if he were a child and she had to explain the simplest things to him. Austen's use of language is pointed, direct, and cogent, with no excess verbiage,
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