Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is the second published novel of Jane Austen and the most popular of all her works — one of the most widely read novels in English and the model for two centuries of romantic comedy. It tells the story of Elizabeth Bennet, the lively, intelligent second daughter of a country gentleman with five daughters, no son and an estate that will pass by law to a male cousin; and of Fitzwilliam Darcy, a rich, proud, reserved aristocrat whose first words about her — that she is “tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me” — set them at odds. Both misjudge the other. Through a series of encounters, a disastrous proposal, a letter, a visit to his great house and a family scandal, each learns to see the other — and themselves — truly.

It is a love story, but its real drama is intellectual and moral: the education of judgement. Austen’s original title was First Impressions.

At a glance

Written	1796–97 as First Impressions; revised 1811–12
Published	28 January 1813, anonymously (“By the Author of Sense and Sensibility”), in three volumes
Setting	Hertfordshire (the fictional village of Longbourn and town of Meryton), Kent, Derbyshire and London, c. 1811–12
Narration	Third person, largely through Elizabeth’s consciousness, in free indirect style
Austen’s verdict	“Rather too light & bright & sparkling; — it wants shade”

The story

The novel opens with one of the most famous sentences in literature:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

The irony is immediate: the “truth” is really that the neighbourhood’s mothers want a rich husband for their daughters. Mrs Bennet — foolish, nervous, vulgar, obsessed with marrying off her girls — is excited by the news that Netherfield Park, a nearby estate, has been let to Mr Bingley, a young man with four or five thousand a year. Mr Bennet, a clever, detached, sardonic father who long ago retreated from his silly wife into his library, teases her. Their daughters are the beautiful, gentle Jane; witty Elizabeth (Lizzy), her father’s favourite; plain, bookish Mary; and the silly, flirtatious Kitty and Lydia, fifteen, the youngest and wildest. Because the Longbourn estate is entailed — legally bound to pass to the nearest male heir — the girls will be poor when their father dies, and the heir is a cousin they have never met.

At the Meryton assembly ball, Bingley — amiable, open, eager to please — is charmed by Jane and dances with her twice. His friend Mr Darcy, richer still (ten thousand a year and a great estate, Pemberley, in Derbyshire), handsome and proud, refuses to dance with anyone outside his party and, overheard by Elizabeth, says she is “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me”. Everyone decides he is “the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world”. Elizabeth laughs it off — but does not forget.

Darcy soon finds himself attracted by “the beautiful expression of her dark eyes” and her playful wit. When Jane, invited to Netherfield, falls ill in the rain (her mother having sent her on horseback in hope of exactly this), Elizabeth walks three miles through the mud to nurse her, scandalising Bingley’s snobbish sisters, Caroline Bingley and Mrs Hurst; Darcy admires her “fine eyes” brightened by exercise. In the drawing room, Elizabeth and Darcy spar over pride, vanity and character. Caroline Bingley, who wants Darcy for herself, mocks Elizabeth in vain.

Then the heir arrives: Mr Collins, the Bennets’ cousin, a clergyman, pompous, servile and absurd, who owes his living to the great Lady Catherine de Bourgh and talks of her endlessly. He has come, magnanimously, to choose a wife among the daughters. Told that Jane is nearly engaged, he switches to Elizabeth within a quarter of an hour.

In Meryton the girls meet the officers of a militia regiment, and among them Mr Wickham, a charming, handsome young man. Wickham tells Elizabeth a sad story: he was the son of old Mr Darcy’s steward, the late Mr Darcy’s godson, promised a valuable church living; but the present Mr Darcy, out of jealousy, denied it to him and left him poor. Elizabeth, already prejudiced against Darcy, believes him completely.

At the Netherfield ball, Elizabeth expects Wickham, who does not come; she dances with Darcy and taunts him about Wickham; her family disgraces itself — her mother loudly predicts Jane’s marriage to Bingley, Mary sings badly at length, Mr Collins introduces himself to Darcy without an introduction. Darcy watches.

The next day Mr Collins proposes to Elizabeth in a speech of comic magnificence, listing his reasons for marrying (it is the duty of a clergyman; it will add to his happiness; Lady Catherine advised it) and assuring her that her refusal is only the custom of elegant females. She refuses firmly. Mrs Bennet is frantic; Mr Bennet tells his daughter: “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.” Three days later, Collins proposes to Elizabeth’s sensible friend Charlotte Lucas, 27 and plain, who accepts him: “I am not romantic, you know… I ask only a comfortable home.” Elizabeth is shocked by her friend’s choice.

The Netherfield party leaves suddenly for London. Caroline writes to Jane that they will not return, and hints that Bingley will marry Darcy’s young sister Georgiana. Jane, heartbroken, goes to London to stay with her aunt and uncle Gardiner — Mrs Bennet’s sensible brother, a merchant — and is coldly received by Caroline.

In the spring Elizabeth visits Charlotte, now Mrs Collins, at the parsonage at Hunsford in Kent, beside Rosings, the mansion of Lady Catherine de Bourgh — an overbearing, interfering grande dame who tells everyone how to live. Lady Catherine’s nephews, Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam, arrive. Darcy keeps calling at the parsonage and meeting Elizabeth “by chance” on her walks. Colonel Fitzwilliam innocently reveals that Darcy recently saved a friend — Bingley — from “a most imprudent marriage”. Elizabeth is furious.

That evening Darcy calls and makes the most famous bad proposal in fiction:

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

But he goes on to dwell on her “inferiority”, the degradation of the connection, the family obstacles his judgement had fought against. Elizabeth refuses him with fury: he has separated Jane and Bingley, he has ruined Wickham, and from the first his “arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others” convinced her that “you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.” His manner, she says, spared her any concern she might have felt “had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.” Darcy leaves.

The next morning he gives her a letter. He explains, coldly and in detail, that he separated Bingley from Jane because Jane seemed indifferent — her calm hid her feelings — and because of the improper behaviour of her family. As for Wickham: old Mr Darcy had indeed promised him a living, but Wickham chose instead £3,000 to study law, squandered it, and then demanded the living; refused, he tried to elope with Darcy’s fifteen-year-old sister Georgiana for her £30,000 fortune, and was stopped only just in time.

Elizabeth reads the letter again and again. Its truth slowly overwhelms her. She sees that Wickham’s story was improper to tell a stranger, that his behaviour has been inconsistent, that she believed him because he flattered her and Darcy had slighted her:

“How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment!… Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly… Till this moment I never knew myself.”

This moment — not the final proposal — is the novel’s true climax.

Back at Longbourn, the militia moves to Brighton; Lydia is invited there by a colonel’s young wife, and Mr Bennet, against Elizabeth’s warning, lets her go to keep the peace. In the summer Elizabeth tours Derbyshire with the Gardiners, and, assured that the family is away, they visit Pemberley, Darcy’s estate. The great house, set among natural, unaffected grounds, impresses her: “and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” The housekeeper, Mrs Reynolds, praises Darcy as the best master and kindest brother. Suddenly Darcy himself appears, a day early. He is transformed — courteous, warm, attentive to her uncle and aunt (whom he had despised as connections in trade), eager to introduce her to his shy sister.

Then a letter from Jane brings disaster: Lydia has eloped with Wickham from Brighton, and they are not married. A family disgrace of this kind could ruin the marriage prospects of all the sisters. Elizabeth tells Darcy, sure that this ends everything between them. The Gardiners rush her home. Mr Bennet goes to London to search and returns empty-handed. Then Mr Gardiner writes that Lydia and Wickham have been found and will be married, on terms that are surprisingly cheap; the family assumes Mr Gardiner has paid Wickham’s debts. Lydia returns as Mrs Wickham, shameless and delighted, and lets slip that Darcy was at her wedding. Elizabeth’s aunt reveals the truth: it was Darcy who found the couple in London, paid Wickham’s debts, bought his commission and bribed him to marry Lydia — and insisted it be kept secret.

Bingley returns to Netherfield with Darcy and proposes to Jane, who accepts — “I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!” Then Lady Catherine sweeps into Longbourn, having heard a rumour that Elizabeth is to marry her nephew, whom she intends for her own sickly daughter. She demands that Elizabeth promise never to accept him. Elizabeth refuses to promise anything: “I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you.” Lady Catherine reports the conversation to Darcy — which gives him hope. Walking with Elizabeth, he renews his proposal; she accepts. They admit their faults: his pride, her prejudice. “By you,” Darcy says, “I was properly humbled.”

Mr Bennet, astonished, asks whether she really loves the man she had called odious. She convinces him, and he tells her he would give her to no one less worthy. Mrs Bennet is ecstatic: “Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! ‘Tis as good as a Lord!” The novel ends with the marriages and a brief account of everyone’s future: Kitty improved by time with her elder sisters, Mary kept at home, Lydia and Wickham drifting and in debt, and the Darcys united with the Gardiners, “the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”

Characters

Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most admired heroines in literature — witty, independent, quick to laugh and quick to judge. Austen wrote to her sister: “I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print.” Her fault is that she trusts her own intelligence too much.

Mr Darcy is the prototype of the romantic hero who seems cold and arrogant and proves deep and honourable. His pride is partly justified by real merit and partly a vice of rank; he changes not in character but in manners, learning to treat others as equals.

Mr Bennet is witty and sympathetic but a failed father — “a man of sense and education” who mocks his family instead of guiding it. Mrs Bennet, ridiculous as she is, is the only one who takes the daughters’ economic danger seriously. Mr Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh are comic monsters of servility and arrogance. Charlotte Lucas embodies the cold realism of a woman’s position. Wickham is the charming deceiver; Lydia the self-absorbed girl who could have ruined them all.

Themes

First impressions. Both Elizabeth and Darcy judge on first sight and are wrong; Wickham’s charm deceives because first impressions please. The novel is an education in looking again.

Pride and prejudice. The title’s two faults are not assigned one to each lover. Darcy’s pride (of rank) leads him to prejudice against Elizabeth’s family; Elizabeth’s pride (in her own discernment) feeds her prejudice against him. Both must be humbled.

Marriage. The novel shows a spectrum of marriages: the Bennets’ (attraction without respect, ending in mutual contempt), the Collinses’ (prudence without love), the Wickhams’ (passion without principle), the Gardiners’ and, at last, the Darcys’ and Bingleys’ (affection grounded in esteem and fortune). Elizabeth’s refusals of Collins and of Darcy’s first proposal — though both offered security — were bold acts for a woman without fortune.

Class and money. The novel is full of exact incomes and fortunes; social mobility (the Bingleys’ money came from trade, the Gardiners are in trade, Sir William Lucas was knighted after making money as a merchant) is everywhere. Darcy’s reconciliation with the Gardiners suggests that character, not rank, is the true measure of a gentleman.

Interpretation

Readers have long debated how far the novel is a romantic fantasy (the poor girl marries the richest man) and how far a sharp critique of a society that leaves women dependent on marriage. Some feminist critics see Elizabeth as subordinated in the end; others celebrate her independence and her refusal to be bullied by Lady Catherine. Marxist readings emphasise property and the entail; others read Pemberley as a utopian image of the well-run estate. All agree on the brilliance of its dialogue and the perfection of its structure.

Afterlife

Pride and Prejudice has sold over twenty million copies and been adapted countless times — the 1940 MGM film with Laurence Olivier, the 1995 BBC serial with Colin Firth (and its famous wet-shirt scene, which is not in the book), Joe Wright’s 2005 film with Keira Knightley, the Bollywood Bride and Prejudice (2004), Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (with a Mark Darcy), Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, P. D. James’s murder-mystery sequel Death Comes to Pemberley and Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible.

In conversation

• “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” — the template for every ironic generalisation.
• A Mr Collins — a pompous, servile bore; a Lady Catherine — an overbearing busybody of rank.
• “Till this moment I never knew myself” — the moment of self-recognition after being proved wrong.