Pride and Prejudice

The Bennet sisters are all in search of love, but their mother had a different idea. Mrs. Bennet's idea of marrying well is that the girls find a respectable young man who is wealthy. The day of the ball at Netherfield makes all the girls in town very excited to meet Mr. Bingley, a young, good looking, and not to mention rich man, hoping that he will pay special attention to them. Everyone begins to assume that he is attracted to one of the Bennet sisters, Jane, because he asked her to dance twice with him, which was a big deal for them. Even though Mr. Bingley was having a good time at the ball, his friend Darcy, another gentleman, feels out of place and superior to the people there because they are not as wealthy as he is. At first Elizabeth is not pleased with Darcy and uses her preconceptions of him against him; however she soon realizes that she was being prejudice towards him and that she was too prideful not to know that he actually wanted to marry her. In the middle of all the drama, Charlotte who is one of Elizabeth’s good friends marries Mr. Collins who is the heir of the Bennet home. Lydia, one of the younger sisters elopes with Wickham who is an army officer, then marries him after Mr. Bingley paid for Wickhams debts and secured them an amount of ten thousand pounds. After all the confusion and dilemmas faced by each of the Bennet sisters and the two friends, Jane marries Mr. Bingley and Elizabeth marries Darcy. The point of the story being that sometimes social class differences, as was the case between Darcy and Elizabeth, blur the line between marrying for love and marrying for social status.

Elizabeth Bennet: Protagonist of the story and second eldest of the Bennet sisters, Elizabeth is smart, prideful, and sharp-tongued. Lizzy speaks her mind and is on the edge of being rude. She has a lot of pride and vanity in herself and finds it hard to get over first impressions of people. She is able to perceive who people really are and what their intentions are, but this talent doesn’t get her very far with Darcy. Her vanity doesn’t allow her to see the truth in Darcy and that he really loved her. She thought Darcy was arrogant due to his wealth, which she wasn’t impressed with. 

Jane Bennet: She is considered to be the prettiest of the Bennet sisters. She is amiable, sweet, and humble, making her easy to like. Her optimistic attitude makes her family calm down when Lydia runs away with Wickham. She is always giving people the benefit of the doubt like she did with Caroline who she thought was her friend but only helped in separating Bingley and her. She falls in love with Mr. Bingley and ends up marrying him. 

Charles Bingley: Rich and single young man who is mostly indifferent to social class, making it one of the reasons why he fell in love with Jane. Like Jane, he is amiable and modest but is easily influenced by Darcy’s advice not to marry Jane. He is much more sociable than Darcy, but is scared off by Mrs. Bennet’s insistence on the marriage between Jane and him. 

Mr. Darcy: First impressions of Darcy are that he is arrogant, prideful, and very class conscious. But he had a reason to be proud, he was wealthy and good looking. However, later in the novel we see that he is generous and becomes less class conscious as his love for Elizabeth grows and he tries to win her over. 

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters.” Element: Women: The opening line of the novel makes women seem inferior to men, but it is Jane Austen’s sense of humor that says that. In the novel, women are the ones that are in search of a husband because they need stability in their life. Regardless of social class, women always seem to be regarded as less smart than men and inferior to them. The entailed Longbourn estate is be given to the oldest son, which shows the prejudice towards women because women are capable to inheriting family property.

“What I have to say relates to poor Lydia. An express came at twelve last night, just as we were all gone to bed, from Colonel Forster, to inform us that she was gone off to Scotland with one of his officers; to own the truth, with Wickham! Imagine our surprise……But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. Lydia—the humiliation, the misery she was bringing on them all, soon swallowed up every private care; and covering her face with her handkerchief, Elizabeth was soon lost to everything else;” Element: Society: Society plays the role of a minor misogynist in this novel. Everything that everyone does in the novel becomes a social matter. When Lydia elopes with Wickham the family is concerned about what neighbors and other people will think about them because it is inappropriate for a respectable lady to run away with her lover. When characters in the novel make decisions they are aware that society might think bad of them or that they will talk bad of them. Miss Bingley’s society would never accept the marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth.

“‘You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.’…..[Mrs. Bennet] She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.” Element: Marriage: Mrs. Bennet is unintentionally a misogynist because she just wants to marry her daughters to wealthy, respectable men, so that they will be set their entire life. She doesn’t try to encourage them to be independent from men so that they could essentially be their own person. She just generally has an idea of accomplishment which is marrying off her daughters to wealthy men so they won’t be left without anything when their father dies. The novel revolves around the Bennet sisters trying to find love but their mother is insistent of finding them a rich husband. For women of that day and social class, marriage was the only way to gain financial stability, but the only one who actually married for that reason was Charlotte. However, Jane wanted to find love and Elizabeth simply refused to marry for anything other than for love, and they portray the role of feminists because of this.