Three pink stepping stones cross a shallow blue bowl of water beneath a small white paper bird.

Original artwork, not a still

Pride and Prejudice  ·  1813

Jane Austen

A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The speaker observes that a lady's imagination moves at astonishing speed, leaping from admiring someone straight to love and then to marriage in a single moment. It's a wry point about how quickly feelings can be daydreamed forward, skipping every step in between.

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