Perfectly worn and tattered

Summary 

One of my tattered
old paper editions

Pride and Prejudice, by Jana Austen, tells the story of how the desperate search for husbands dominates the lives of the five daughters and their mother, in addition to their untalkative but concerned father, of the Bennet family in late 18th century England. In the end, both Jane and Lizzie marry rich men they truly love, thereby saving their upper-middle-class family from poverty at a time when daughters could not normally inherit family wealth. Along the way, the proud Lizzie discovers that she was not insightful but foolishly prejudiced when she first mocked the extremely rich, also proud and prejudiced,  Mr. Darcy, with whom she is surprised to find herself deeply in love, which is a happy accident for all.

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Response 

After I began buying books in high school, I had collected a few thousand, and they took up a lot of space on bookshelves on my home in Sydney and they in Australia. This began to change when I started buying digital books, which all fit comfortably on all of my devices. My first Kindle from Amazon was very simple compared to the devices I use today, but it was cool to have so many books available on such a convenient tool. I don't think I've bought a single paper book for more than five years now, and a few years ago, I decided to get rid of most of my paper books. I gave most of the paperbacks away to friends in Bangkok, and the more impressive looking ones I shipped back to my brother in Australia. He doesn't read them, but they look great on the shelves in his home, and I have a lot more space in my small home here in Bangkok. But I kept a few that have sentimental value for me, and this includes four copies of Jane Austen's brilliant novel Pride and Prejudice. I've got four copies because after reading and rereading them multiple times, they become so worn that the pages fall out and generally get very tattered. My first edition goes back to the 1970s, more than 40 years ago, and the others are spaced at about ten year intervals since then. I'm not sure how many times I've read this novel, but every time I read it, I like it even more than before. I think that's a good sign that it's a truly great story, and Austen tells it in language that is clear, fun and thrilling from the first sentence to the very last some 400 pages later. 

As usual, it was very difficult for me to stay within the 120 word limit for the summary. The one above took me four revisions to get right, and I know the story extremely well, as will become apparent when I write the rest of my response. You must know your chosen piece of work well before you can summarize it. My summary paragraph above is exactly 120 words as counted by Google, which counts words exactly the same way that IELTS does: every set of one or more letters or numbers surrounded by spaces is a word. 

From my summary, you might have got the idea that the story is a bit boring, and I agree: the story of an upper-middle-class family desperate to marry off its five daughters doesn't sound that dramatic, but Austen's genius turns this story of ordinary life in an English village into a gripping analysis of human nature and social norms. She never says it directly, but her characters show how difficult life was for women and the poor in England 200 years ago, when men were in charge of everything because everyone thought, and religion taught, that that was natural. And in the most polite language, Austen talks about prostitution, lies, fraud, teenage rebellion, and learning to be a more mature human being. And it's fun. Even the most shocking events, such as Lizzie running away with the wicked Mr. Wickham, mix the serious with humour. I can't think of any work, fictional or non-fictional, that has taught me so much about life in England a couple of centuries ago, and how awful it was in those bad old days of much worse personal and social morals than today. 

I have a digital edition now that will never get tattered, torn or lost, but I still like to see my paper copies and remember how my own life has changed over the decades that I've been enjoying this great story again and again and again.  
 

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Question

Is your culture morally better or worse than it was 200 years ago?