“Pride and Prejudice” just about sums up News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch’s wooing of the Bancroft family, which controls Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. Inc., to clinch his $5 billion bid, according to writer David Carr’s account in the New York Times on Monday.

Carr’s glib take of today’s first meeting between the two sides has Murdoch playing the role of Fitzwilliam Darcy. It would seem Murdoch is courting the Bancrofts as Darcy did Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s 19th Century comedy of manners.

From NYT:
“The familys first reaction to Mr. Murdochs $5 billion offer was all pursed lips and tut-tuts. Unthinkable, really, for such a man to be offered custody of the familys most precious asset. He is, after all, a bit of a brute, a man of enormous capital, but very sketchy provenance.

‘The last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry,’ Elizabeth called the well-situated Mr. Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ But Mr. Darcy wore her down, erasing her doubts and easing her suspicions by gradually revealing his character and suggesting that the stories she had heard about him were just that.”

Few doubt Dow Jones will face the same fate.

(Photo (Reuters): Actors Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen at a press conference discussing their film “Pride and Prejudice”)