O p e n i n g s2 1rhythmical pattern; so we are probably anticipating another such
phrase to balance them – say, ‘and the Word shone forth in truth’.
Instead, we get the abrupt ‘and the Word was God’. It is as though the
line sacrifices its rhythmical poise to the power of this revelation.
The first two flowing phrases build up to a terse, flat, emphatic
announcement, one which sounds as though it is not to be argued
with. Syntactically speaking, the sentence ends with a kind of let-
down, undercutting our expectation of some final rhetorical flourish.
Semantically speaking, however (semantics being concerned with
questions of meaning), its conclusion packs a formidable punch.
One of the most renowned opening sentences in English litera-
ture reads as follows: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a
single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a
wife.’ This, the first sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, is
generally regarded as a small masterpiece of irony, though the irony
does not exactly leap from the page. It lies in the difference between
what is said – that everyone agrees that rich men need wives – and
what is plainly meant, which is that this assumption is mostly to be
found among unmarried women in search of a well- heeled husband.
In an ironic reversal, the desire which the sentence ascribes to
wealthy bachelors is actually one felt by needy spinsters.
A rich man’s need for a wife is presented as a universal truth,
which makes it sound as unarguable as a geometrical theorem. It is
presented almost as a fact of Nature. If it is indeed a fact of Nature,
then unmarried women are not to be blamed for thrusting them-
selves forward as these men’s prospective partners. It is simply
the way of the world. They are merely responding to what pros-
perous bachelors want. Austen’s scrupulously diplomatic words
thus exonerate young unmarried woman and their pushy mothers
from the charge of greed or social climbing. They draw a veil of