Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a very special book for me. It changed me and my reading habits forever. Basically, there was me before Pride and Prejudice and me after Pride and Prejudice. Because of it, I quit my habit of reading cheesy web novels and immersed myself in the world of Jane Austen. Her sharp and witty style completely won me over. Her characters were interesting and fun to read about. Most importantly, her novels, especially Pride and Prejudice, offered a lot of meaningful insights into the making of a good relationship.

When talking about Pride and Prejudice, the first thing we need to mention is the relationship between Lizzie and Darcy. Their story is full of ironies. At the beginning of the story, Darcy tried to separate Bingley from Jane Bennet, believing that her family’s inferior situation would only harm his best friend and that she wasn’t as attached to Bingley as the man was to her. But mid-way through the book, Darcy went out of his way to propose to Jane’s sister, Lizzie, given that she didn’t show any particular interest in him. Lizzie thought that she didn’t care two straws about Darcy, a despicable man in very way. But in reality, she was actually really concerned about his opinions, regardless of how she felt about them. She paid close attention to his words and actions, jumping at nearly every chance to criticize him. He, whose status and wealth made him the target of many women of high rank, got bluntly rejected by a woman he considered to be beneath himself. She, who thought so highly of her own opinions and impartiality, was always biased against him in every situation possible. Through the course of their interaction, Darcy and Lizzie slowly learned to understand one another, brush off their awful first impressions and mend their ways. By allowing their partners to be their mentors, both became better people as a couple.

In a novel with such striking protagonists, it’s very easy to overlook other characters. However, Pride and Prejudice isn’t just about the main characters’ marriage and journey of self-discovery. More than that, it’s a commentary on the social customs of Regency (or late Georgian) England. Therefore, the interactions between different people in terms of classes, ideals and financial situations is another main focus of the novel. All characters in Pride and Prejudice are important. Each of them serves as a model for a type of people that you might have met, had you were born in Austen’s time. There’s practical Charlotte, Lizzie’s good friend and Mr. Collins’ wife. Charlotte agrees to marry Mr. Collins just days after Lizzie’s rejection of his proposal. Though Charlotte could hardly respect a man with such foolishness and absurdity, she knows that he could afford her a decent life. There’s silly Mrs. Bennet, Lizzie’s mother and the book’s most ridiculed character. Mrs. Bennet is obsessed with marrying her daughters into wealthy families and extremely well-versed in the art of embarrassing her family. She drinks, talks and acts vulgarly, without any consideration for the people around her. There’s also Mr. Bennet, father of the Bennet girls and a generally respectable man. His biggest flaw is that he cared too much for his peace, something he can rarely have in the company of his wife and five daughters. He sits in his study for most of the day and spends very little quality time with his family. Mr. Bennet’s decision to detach himself from the Bennet girls, especially the three youngest, is certain to come back to haunt him later in life.

Another interesting point about Pride and Prejudice, or any other novel by Jane Austen, is its emphasis on money. Usually, this is a very unromantic topic; nevertheless, it was never the Austen’s way to avoid sensitive matters. In fact, as a realist turned novel writer, Jane Austen made sure that all her works were rational and not overly romantic. Her heroines didn’t always have to marry very rich men (though this was the case for Lizzie), but they needed to have a comfortable home. In Pride and Prejudice, every time a suitor was introduced, the novel didn’t just implied how well-off he was, it specically told us how much money he had. Darcy, the ridiculously rich kind of characters, had ten thousand pounds a year from his tenant’s rental (his other business ventures and investments weren’t mention in the novel). Bingley, who eventually married Lizzie’s eldest sister, had five thousand pounds a year. But since his family rose from trade, Bingley didn’t have any land of his own (While his pal, Darcy, owned half of an entire county). And Wickham? Well…he had nothing but a mountain of debts that added up to more than one thousand pounds. So, even though the two eldests of the Bennet sisters both married extremely well, Lizzie clearly hit the Jackpot. It’s clear that Jane Austen wasn’t keen on the romanticists’ idea that love was all we need. Hence, she looked for the balance between mutual admiration and affordability in a match.

However, Jane Austen’s practicality in regards to matrimonial matters goes beyond her depiction of money in Pride and Prejudice. This novel is, above all, her means to educate readers to think about marriage in a pragmatic way. Through the relationship between Lizzie and Darcy, Austen shows us how misleading first impression can be and how two seemingly incompatible people can make a good couple by continuously challenging each other. Lizzie and Darcy didn’t hit it off very well on their first encounter. For Lizzie, Darcy was the most conceited and selfish human being she had ever met. At Rosings Park, she told Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy’s cousin, of their first meeting, saying “He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner”. Darcy didn’t want to get too involved with the people of the neighborhood he looked down on, especially Lizzie’s family. He hurt her pride, saying that she was tolerable but not enough to tempt him. For all of that (plus Wickham’s bad-mouthing), she deemed him the worst man on earth and believed that in every conflict that involved him, he must be the one at fault. It took Lizzie and us, the readers, quite a while until we realized that though Darcy was definitely pride, he had done nothing to deserve such an awful reputation. By the end of the novel, it’s hinted that Lizzie and Darcy, two deeply flawed people with completely different backgrounds and personalities, had got married and were very happy together. Instead of just bearing with each other’s differences, they rejoiced in their distinct good points and challenged one another to change for the better. Could a couple be more perfect? As we read dig into Pride and Prejudice for a second, third or fourth time, we can find a lot more precious lessons that Jane Austen has to offer us.  

My next post is going to be about Emma, whose protagonist is probably the least sympathetic Austen’s heroine. Nevertheless, I love her, almost as much as I love Lizzie. This is a promotional picture of the BBC Emma adaptation in 2009, a very delightful series.