Explain the first line of Pride and Prejudice that starts, "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."

The first line of “Pride and Prejudice” is a brilliant satire, that sets the mood of the novel and is kind of a prelude hinting to the tone and style of the narrative mode Jane Austen is going to adopt. It has the pompous tone of a Johnsonian essayist, remarking on such universal truths or knowledge that are often quoted but rarely ratified by general following. As in here, “acknowledged” truth is not that wealthy single men are intent on marriage, but rather, as will be borne out by the story too, that the young spinsters and their mothers are intent on assuming the marriage motives of such young men.

As a satirical statement this leads on to several doubts in the mind of the reader about the notoriety and contrariness of the sentence. Gradually, the plot discloses that this is far from the case in the neighborhood of Meryton, particularly, with Mrs. Bennet who exuberantly impresses on her children and suitors alike, that a ‘not so rich girl’ must bear successfully upon such “single men” the necessity of getting into the matrimonial contract. So, in actuality it is less the ‘want’ of a man of fortune and more the ‘want’ of a girl, with no dowry. The irony extends further hinting that the Mrs. Bennets of Meryton and such small towns, may be well aware and pretending to ‘acknowledge’ this want of the rich men, and thus conniving only to hide the reality that women may be mere commodity and not otherwise, as hinted in the opening statement.

The opening sentence sounds like a proverb or a saying, Similar moralistic sayings are uttered later also in the novel, by Mary when her sister Lydia elopes with Wickham- such as “her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful”. But the story later proves even such didactic exclamations wrong as Lydia and Wickham come off quite nicely in the end. This humorous epigrammatic opening sentence is also a critical retort of Jane Austen to the ‘epigrammatic’ abstract and philosophical writings as compared to simple and joyful writings by women on life and mundane living.