传承八中“悦读”优良传统，在2015-2016年度期末寒假期间，八中国际部高二全体学生进行了“读一本英文小说，写一篇小说评论‘的活动。开学以来，在Allan外教及全体高二英语教师历时一个多月的认真审稿，公正评定和学生电子档的修订之后，国际部高二组团的李睿璇，潘昊辰和张诗嘉等12位学生的阅读评论作品脱颖而出。

   附：高二（四）班张诗嘉作品（一等奖）

      During this winter vocation, I have read a well-known book called Pride and Prejudice. This book mainly talks about desires for love and marriage of five sisters including Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia Bennet. And the two most important protagonists are Miss Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Miss Elizabeth is beautiful, charming and a woman of characters. Mr. Darcy is handsome, loyal and it seems that he tends to ignore any other people owing to his cool face, but I like this role very much because I admire his attitude to his friend Mr. Bingley and his true love to Miss Elizabeth.

    At the beginning of this book, these five girls’ mother compelled her daughters to go to every social party in order to attract some rich men and make them fall in love with them, and she hoped her five daughters can get married as soon as possible. And she always emphasized that they would have no house and no money after their father died if they were still not married. Maybe the reason why she wanted to get rid of their daughters so fast and paid so much attention to money and power was the custom of entire country in such a period.

     One day, when two rich men, Mr. Bingley and his friend Mr. Darcy, came to the countryside and rented a big house to spend their vocation. Bonnet lived in the same town as well, and they decided to go to the dancing party in order to meet these two rich gentlemen. In these people’s opinion, the most important factor to select a man for marriage was how much money they earn, and that’s why they wanted to meet and get close to Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy. During that party, Mr. Bingley was very friendly and hospital and he was helplessly attracted by the eldest daughter, Miss Jane, because of her beautiful and charming looking. And Miss Jane had the same feeling to Mr. Bingley because she took him as an example of good young man as well. And she didn’t take money more important than happiness. After the dancing party, their mother began to recommend her daughters to Mr. Bingley and even exaggerated their advantages and merits. However, Mr. Darcy just kept calm while Miss. Elizabeth invited him for a dance, and surprisingly he even refused her at last, which was one of the factors that made Elizabeth had a bad impression and judgment about Mr. Darcy. One of them represented Pride, and the other one represented Prejudice.

    When Miss. Bingley, Mr. Bingley’s little sister invited Jane to have a dinner together. And at the same time, her mother encouraged Jane to ride a horse to Mr. Bingley’s big house, because her mother knew that it would be a rainy day. And her expectation has come true; Jane was ill after being rushed by heavy rain and stayed in Mr. Bingley’s. Their mother even didn’t care about Jane’s health since she was overwhelmed by the desire to let her daughter get married. Finally, they went to the big house to have a look at Jane and picked her up, which made Miss. Bingley unhappy and she felt disgusting about what these poor people have done in countryside. Of course, she believed that a normal woman should have knowledge of music, singing, painting and dancing. I consider it implied that she thinks only such woman deserved to marry the same level of people like her brother and Mr. Darcy.

   After these women returned back to their old house from the big villa, their cousin Colins came because he had to select one of Mr. Bennet’ s daughters to be his wife. And Colins decided to make a proposal to Elizabeth, but Elizabeth refused him because she had no feeling about him. But her mother felt so angry when Elizabeth denied this engagement. From that we can see, the happiness of daughters was the last thing in their mothers mind, as long as their marriage could guarantee a prosperous future.

    However, things had changed, Mr. Bingley bid farewell to Jane and never mentioned the engagement owing to Jane’ s silence about her strong feeling with Mr. Bingley. And Mr. Darcy showed his love to Elizabeth and he contributed a lot power to help Elizabeth even to help her wild little sister Lydia who eloped with Wayne. However, there were misunderstandings between Elizabeth and Darcy. One of them was a lie from Wayne, which caused Elizabeth to regard Mr. Darcy as an inhospitable man. Then other was that Mr. Darcy advised Mr. Bingley that he should not pay all his attention to Jane because of the behavior of her mother, and he thought maybe they just wanted to have a rich husband instead of true love. Actually, the truth was that Jane was too shy to show her emotion clearly. Based on previous reading, we can learn that we cannot have a conclusion or judgment if we have not sufficient and convincing evidence, and we should be altered about the risk of bias. And of course, we should be brave to show our own feeling and should never begin to treasure matters until we miss the most valuable opportunity to hold them.

    In the end, the Mr. Darcy’s aunt, a rich women, came to Elizabeth and criticized that she did not deserved to marry her nephew because of her failing birth. Although it seemed that all rich men were respected and admired by poor men, Elizabeth told her true feeling and treated these kinds of men as ordinary. That’s why Elizabeth was so different from others and made herself more attractive than others. But the next day, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth encountered. Finally they confessed that they fell in love with each other. And Mr. Bingley proposed to Jane. How happy the ending was! And we should know that no matter how tough the process is, there will be a successful and satisfied result as long as people insist on trying to make their dream come true and never change their initial mind.