PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: THEMES

PRIDE
The two major themes of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice are summed up in the title. The first aspect can be traced in the actions and statements of all of the work's major and many of its minor characters. Pride is the character flaw that causes Elizabeth Bennet to dislike Fitzwilliam Darcy upon their first meeting. She perceives in him a cold aloofness that she attributes to his own inflated opinion of himself. Yet Elizabeth herself also suffers from the same flaw; her pride in her own ability to analyze character is such that she refuses to reevaluate Darcy in the face of evidence in his favor.



In some characters, Austen depicts pride overtly. Lady Charlotte de Bourgh is motivated by pride in her family's status to try to break up a potential match between Elizabeth and Darcy. Mrs. Louisa Hurst and Caroline Bingley try to achieve the same effect with the relationship between their brother Charles Bingley and Jane Bennet. In each case, however, Austen depicts the pride of these minor characters as ridiculous: "Austen treats pride," writes Robert B. Heilman in "E pluribus unum: Parts and Whole in Pride and Prejudice" "as if it were wholly unproblematic, a failing no less clear-cut than prejudice."



In the case of Elizabeth and Darcy, however, Austen treats pride less directly. On his first appearance in the novel, Darcy appears "above his company and above being pleased," reports Heilman, the "proudest, most disagreeable man in the world." The people who record these observations, the critic continues, "believe that they are seeing a sense of superiority, snobbishness, excessive self-approval." However, they do not take into consideration that some of the other behavior that Darcy exhibits, such as "reserve, an apparent unresponsiveness to overtures, a holding back from conventional intercourse, pleasantries, and small talk," may actually stem from a quiet personality. So what appears to be pride may be simple shyness or awkwardness. When Elizabeth and others consider Darcy full of pride, they are also condemning him, says Heilman, for not obeying the rules of the "neighborhood social ways." For Darcy and Elizabeth, at least, pride can be more than a simple negative quality.



In fact, pride serves several different functions in the novel. In addition to the misplaced pride of the minor characters, there are characters who negleet to honor their pride when they should protect it. Elizabeth's friend Charlotte Lucas decides to marry William Collins, the heir to Mr. Bennet's estate, out of a simple desire to make his estate her own. Elizabeth strongly objects to such a union; it offends her sense of pride for someone to enter into a loveless marriage for purely material purposes. The George Wickham-Lydia Bennet elopement is another example of an arrangement where pride should have been taken into consideration and was not. In this way, Heilman states, Austen defines pride as "the acceptance of responsibility. This indispensably fills out a story that has devoted a good deal of time to the view of pride as an easy and blind self-esteem." Gradually, even Darcy and Elizabeth herself come to a realization of the necessity not to reject pride, but to control it.



PREJUDICE AND TOLERANCE
The subject of prejudice is linked to pride in the title of Pride and Prejudice. It is also more directly linked to Elizabeth Bennet's character. From the beginning, states Marvin Mudrick in "Irony as Discrimination: Pride and Prejudice," "Elizabeth sets herself up as an ironic spectator, able and prepared to judge and classify, already making the first large division of the world into two sorts of people: the simple ones, those who give themselves away out of shallowness (as Bingley fears) or perhaps openness (as Elizabeth implies) or an excess of affection (as Mr. Collins will demonstrate); and the intricate ones, those who cannot be judged and classified so easily, who are 'the most amusing' to the ironic spectator because they offer the most formidable challenge to his powers of detection and analysis." EIizabeth is prepared to divide the entire world into one of these two categories—an extreme example of prejudice in the "pre-judging" sense of the term. It is most evident in her judgment of Darcy, so sure is she of her powers of observation that she refuses to reevaluate Darcy even when the weight of evidence begins to turn in favor of him.

It is not until Darcy overcomes his own prejudice against those of lower social station—by treating Elizabeth and the Gardiners graciously and considerately at Netherfield—that Elizabeth's opinion of him begins to change. "Not only do Elizabeth and Darcy . . . have the most serious problem of surmounting barriers of misconception and adverse feeling," Heilman declares, "but they are the most sensitive—both in susceptibility to injured feelings and in capacity for getting to the center of things—to matters of prejudice and pride." The ending "is a remarkable tracing of Elizabeth's coming around to a completely changed point of view," the critic concludes. "To Jane she acknowledges that she has cultivated her 'prejudices' and has been 'weak and vain and nonsensical.'" With this realization, Elizabeth begins the process of change that will eventually bring herself and Darcy together.

CHANGE AND TRANSFORMATION
The major characters of the novel suffer from a combination of the two title characteristics of Pride and Prejudice. What separates Elizabeth and Darcy from the silly minor characters, such as Wickham, Lydia, Mr. Collins, and Lady Catherine, and even from the good minor characters such as Mr. Bennet, Jane, and Charles Bingley, is their ability and willingness to learn and grow, to overcome their initial shortcomings. They mature and come to a better understanding of each other by the novel's end through a slow and painful growth process.



Darcy begins his process of transformation with Elizabeth's rejection of his suit. He makes his proposal to her clumsily, stressing his own wealth and position (and minimizing hers) and stating that he has tried to suppress his feelings because of the low position of her family. When Elizabeth indignantly rejects his hand,accusing him of arrogance and selfishness, Darcy begins a process of reevaluation of his behavior. When he next appears in the story—at the beginning of Volume 3—he is much friendlier and more attentive to Elizabeth. She begins to feel an attraction to him that is not fully realized until the Wickham-Lydia elopement is fully resolved. Darcy completes his transformation by swallowing his pride and proposing to Elizabeth again, in spite of the fact that her acceptance will make the silly Bennet girls his sisters-in-law and the detestable Wickham his brother-in-law.



Elizabeth's process of transformation begins later and takes longer. She realizes her own prejudices toward Darcy in Chapter 12 of Volume 2, when he gives her the letter in which he reveals the truth about Wickham and his role in the breakup of the Bingley-Jane relationship. She does not complete the change, however, until the end of Volume 3, when Lady Catherine de Bourgh demands assurances from her that she will not accept a proposal from him. Elizabeth refuses, and by doing so gives Darcy his first hint that his feelings for her are at last reciprocated. "By a slow revision of preconceptions," concludes Heilman, "Elizabeth and Darcy 'earn' the better insight and rapport that insight makes possible."



WEALTH AND CLASS
Wealth and class are correlated, but at the time of the novel's action, that correlation is beginning to break down. For centuries, England's economy depended on agriculture, and by and large wealth belonged to those who owned large country estates. With the industrial revolution, however, wealth has begun to concentrate in the cities, and members of the middle class can become rich through "trade." This new social mobility has forced the gentry into a defensive posture, and they are more sensitive to questions of class than ever. Mr. Collins warns Lizzy, for instance, that Lady Catherine "likes to have the distinction of rank preserved."



One of the Bennet girls' uncles is an attorney, and the other - Mr. Gardiner - is "in trade" in London; as Darcy points out, the girls' "low connections . . . must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world." When it appears, however, that Mr. Gardiner has bribed Wickham to marry Lydia, Mr. Bennet wonders how he will ever repay him. The tradesman Mr. Gardiner, that is, seems to have more liquid capital than the landed gentleman Mr. Bennet. "Men of consideration" would thus object, not to Mr. Gardiner's lack of money, nor to his manners, which are impeccable, but to his station in life - that he was not born to wealth and works for a living.



Bingley's father also made his fortune in trade. The size of that fortune, however, and the fact that Bingley inherited it instead of earning it himself, seem to cleanse it of its unpalatable associations. Nonetheless, Bingley's sisters are anxious that he should buy a large country estate, which will legitimize his wealth.



Austen clearly intends to undermine these class distinctions. The oldest Bennet girls do indeed marry men of consideration, and outside the two central couples, the Gardiners are the most admirable characters in the book - certainly more admirable than the titled Lady Catherine. Still, Austen cannot resist drawing her hero, Mr. Darcy, from the upper classes. Her social attitudes may be progressive, but they are not revolutionary.


MARRIAGE
Pride and Prejudice's famous first sentence declares the centrality of marriage to the storyline. In the course of the book - which spans a little less than a year - four marriages in fact take place: three of the Bennet girls' and Charlotte Lucas's. More are plotted: Lady Catherine schemes that Darcy should marry her daughter; Miss Bingley schemes to marry Darcy, and to get her brother married to Darcy's sister; Mr. Collins actually proposes to Lizzy; and Wickham fixes his attentions on Darcy's sister, Lizzy, and the fleetingly glimpsed Miss King before finally being persuaded to marry Lydia.In England in the late 18th and early 19th century, marriage among the wealthy was viewed as a kind of financial merger. When Darcy and Ann De Bourgh were infants, their mothers had already decided they would marry - and not, obviously, on the basis of personal affinity and sexual attraction. A little farther down the social ladder, Mrs. Bennet is furious when Lizzy refuses Mr. Collins's proposal: the thought of pawning her daughter off on a buffoon is negligible beside the prospect of keeping Mr. Bennet's estate - which Collins will inherit - in the family.



Austen is obviously unsympathetic to this view of marriage. Charlotte's decision to marry Mr. Collins damages her friendship with Lizzy, who repeatedly characterizes her motives as "mercenary," and when Lizzy visits the newlyweds at the Hunsford parsonage, she quickly deduces that Charlotte has arranged household affairs such that she spends as little time with her husband as possible.



But neither is Austen a romantic. Lydia loves Wickham wholeheartedly, but their marriage is a disaster. Mr. Bennet, too, married because he was "captivated by youth and beauty," but his wife's foolishness "had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her." The book's two successful marriages - Lizzy's and Jane's - follow long delays, reversals of opinion, and several tests of both character and commitment.



Toward the end of the book, moreover, Jane asks Lizzy how long she has loved Darcy. When Lizzy replies, "I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley," we suspect she is only half-joking. Austen seems to suggest that, while economic motives for marriage should not be decisive, neither should they be despised.



THE RIGHTS, STATUS, AND EDUCATION OF WOMEN
In Pride and Prejudice, the stakes of the marriage plots are high because Mr. Bennet's estate has been "entailed away from the female line" - a common legal provision of the period whereby only men may inherit property. If the Bennet girls do not marry well, they will be almost penniless when their father dies. The fact that the heir of the estate, Mr. Bennet's nephew Mr. Collins, is a buffoon who already has a comfortable living of his own, might suggest that Austen considers entailment unfair.



Critics have pointed out, however, that only two characters in the book - Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine - actually object to the entail, and that they are scarcely less ridiculous than Collins. It seems unlikely that Austen would make them the mouthpieces for her own opinions.



If Austen is equivocal about women's political equality, however, she insists on their intellectual equality. At the time of the novel, the education of gentlewomen was intended to equip them to be good wives, and it emphasized decorative arts and household management. Bingley mockingly describes the conventional "accomplishments" of women as "painting tables" and "netting purses"; his sister Caroline rejoins that a truly "accomplished" woman must also have "a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages."



By these standards, Lizzy is undistinguished: she has neither been to a women's boarding school nor had a governess; her musical performance is "pleasing, but by no means capital"; and she astonishes Lady Catherine with the admission that she cannot draw. Nonetheless, when she asks Darcy what attracted him to her, he responds, "the liveliness of your mind, I think."



When Lizzy rejects Collins's marriage proposal, he simply cannot believe she is serious, ascribing her refusal to the "wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females." In reply, she says, "Do not consider me now as an elegant female . . . but as a rational creature." Most critics agree that the phrase "rational creature" intentionally employs terminology Mary Wollstonecraft introduced in her seminal feminist tract A Vindication of the Rights of Women. The exchange would then explicitly reject the conventional view of women as nothing more than contestants in the marriage lottery, armed only with studied coquettishness and the ability to "knit purses."



PERSONAL AUTONOMY
A related but distinct theme is that of personal autonomy. In many ways, Lizzy is a champion of individualism. When Caroline Bingley derides her decision to walk three miles to Netherfield as showing "an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum," we cannot, given the source, be expected to agree. Similarly, during the climactic final confrontation in which Lady Catherine attempts to dissuade Lizzy from marrying Darcy by appealing to "the claims of duty, honor, and gratitude," Lizzy replies, "I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness." And while Lizzy's witticisms sometimes seem to test the bounds of propriety - as when she teases Bingley for the transparency of his character - it is her "liveliness of mind" that first attracts her fabulously eligible husband.



But just as Austen urges compromise on the questions of class, marriage, and women's rights, so does she point up the limits of personal autonomy. By withdrawing into his private world of contemplation and ironic distance, for example, Mr. Bennet has neglected his duties as parent and estate manager, leading to both Lydia's near-catastrophic unruliness and his daughters' vulnerability to the entail. Lydia, for that matter, is a monster of autonomy, whose unrestrained pursuit of personal satisfaction ruins her own future and nearly ruins her sisters'. Lizzy's dispositional similarity to her father, and the attraction to Wickham that she shares with Lydia, suggest that she could fall into the errors of both. It is precisely her determination to rely on - as she says to Lady Catherine - "her own opinion" that initially blinds her to Darcy's virtues. Critics have suggested that, according to the moral scheme of the novel, her subsequent recognition of the limits of her autonomy is what finally earns her the right to a happy ending.



IRONY AND SATIRE
Irony and satire are techniques that not only Austen but her characters - particularly Lizzy and her father - employ throughout the book. Lizzy, we are told, has "a lively, playful disposition, which delights in anything ridiculous," and Mr. Bennet later says to her, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?" Mr. Bennet invites Collins to visit purely in the hope of finding him absurd, and Lizzy subtly taunts Lady Catherine by flouting her expectation of deference.


The technical definition of "irony" is "the expression of meaning using language of a different or opposite tendency," as when Lizzy, refusing to dance with Darcy, tells Sir William that "Mr. Darcy is all politeness," or when, at the end of the book, Mr. Bennet says, "I admire all my three sons-in-law," but "Wickham perhaps is my favorite." Irony can be seen, however, as acknowledging a multiplicity of perspectives simultaneously; its prominence in a novel so concerned with the difference between real and perceived value is thus no accident. Before Wickham's true character had been exposed, for example, Lizzy told her aunt, in all seriousness, that "my father . . . is partial to Mr. Wickham." Mr. Bennet's later declaration of a favorite son-in-law is a joke, but it also illustrates the reorientation of the book's value system through the resolution of the marriage plot.