Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy’s aunt and her cousin Mr Collins’s patroness, is a grand lady, to whom the rule “Do not speak until you are spoken to” is applied. This works well until Elizabeth pays a visit to Rosings. Lady Catherine is shocked when she asks Elizabeth-
“Pray, what is your age?”
and does not to receive a direct answer, only-
“With three younger sisters grown up, your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.”
Clearly, Elizabeth enjoys trifling with the morals of society and good manners. This is satire, finding the lady’s high-and-mighty ways humorous, and showing her true feelings much to the old woman’s shock. She also enjoys teasing Mr Wickham after she discovers he lied to her about Mr Darcy, and intended to elope with fifteen year old Miss Darcy. When Mr Wickham mentions Miss Darcy, unaware that he knows the truth-
“I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn out well.” Elizabeth replies-
“I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age.” Wickham, understandably, begins to panic, but Elizabeth only confronts him in good humour.
The head of the family, Mr Bennet, is a source of great drollness in the book. We can see this from the first chapter when there is a conversation between himself and his wife. Mrs Bennet is most excited when Mr Bingley arrives in Hertfordshire, for the one off the girls may be betrothed to him in time-
“A single man of large fortune, four or five thousand a year! What a fine thing for our girls!” Mr Bennet, however, pretends not to know-
“How so? How can it affect them?” This is only the first in a series of Mr Bennet’s dry humour, which he takes great pleasure in showing, especially to his dramatic wife, whom after twenty three years of marriage still does not understand her husband’s humour-
“You take delight in my poor nerves. You take great delight in vexing me.”
“I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends.”
Such scenes are highlights of the book, but it is sad to think that Mr Bennet married Mrs Bennet because she had beautiful looks, and when her looks faded, a sense of irony gave Mr Bennet the ability to survive a disastrous marriage. Much to his wife’s displeasure, despite his love for all of them, Mr Bennet does not think much his younger girls-
“They have nothing much to recommend them, they are all silly and ignorant, like other girls.”
Mr Bennet is most proud of his two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth. Jane is a sensitive quiet character, who is very sensible and likeable. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is Mr Bennet’s personal favourite.
“Though I must put in a good word for my little Lizzy”
Mr Bennet doesn’t seem to care much for women and their feminine ways, but Elizabeth has a strong understanding of the world around her with a mind that works like a male’s would. Elizabeth has a balance between the cold knowledge of Mary and the wild emotion of Lydia. Mr Bennet brands Lydia, Kitty and Mary as silly, but he respects Elizabeth as she can use reason to apply her knowledge and to curb her emotion. Elizabeth is very much like her father, and takes after his wit, which makes their relationship very special. Elizabeth, despite this inheritance, does not share Mr Bennet’s constant dry humour which is often displayed in his conversations-
“No officer is ever to enter my house again, nor even to pass through the village!”
In spite of Mr Bennet acting the jester, the tables are turned nearing the end of the book. Elizabeth has been secretly harbouring strong feelings for Mr Darcy, who Mr Bennet thinks Elizabeth hates. Mr Bennet beckons Elizabeth into his study to discuss a letter that his cousin Mr Collins has sent giving details of a match between Elizabeth and Darcy. Much to Elizabeth’s awkwardness, Mr Bennet does not know the letter is true, and starts to laugh at the situation-
“Mr Darcy, you see, is the man! Now Lizzy, I think I have surprised you!”
This is a most humorous piece in the book; Mr Bennet unknowingly playing the fool. The climax of the situation is when Mr Bennet states at the end of the letter-
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn!” unaware that he is the one being laughed at. It is not humiliation, only light hearted comedy.
Mrs Bennet is a wonderfully dramatic woman, lamenting all throughout the book. Her character is made clear in chapter one when she is described by the narrator
as-
“A woman of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper.” Mrs Bennet certainly lives up to her description. We find out in the first few chapters that if Mr Bennet died and all the Bennet girls were still unmarried, Mr Bennet’s cousin Mr Collins would be heir to their house, Longbourne. Thus, Mrs Bennet starts a mad hunt to find suitable matches for her girls so they will not be turned out of their home. The arrival of the bachelor Charles Bingley in the previously unoccupied house Netherfield is a great source of excitement for Mrs Bennet. She is keen to get the eldest, Jane, to marry Bingley, and tries to be clever to pair them up somehow.
When Jane receives a letter from Miss Bingley, his sister, about dining at Netherfield, Mrs Bennet hatches a plan. Mrs Bennet knows that rain is imminent, so deliberately sends Jane on horseback so she will have to stay with the Bingley’s longer if there is bad weather-
“This was a lucky idea of mine indeed!” exclaims Mrs Bennet, not thinking how seriously ill Jane could become in the rain. Mrs Bennet certainly possesses no wit, but we laugh at her actions and her theatrical ways. When Lydia and Wickham elope, Mrs Bennet blames everybody but herself-
“And now here's Mr. Bennet gone away, and I know he will fight Wickham wherever he meets him, and then he will be killed, and what is to become of us all?”
This is a fantastic example of hyperbole; hyperbole is a figure of speech which is an exaggeration. Persons often use expressions such as "I nearly died laughing," "I was hopping mad," and "I tried a thousand times." Such statements are not literally true, but people make them to sound impressive or to emphasize something, such as a feeling, effort, or reaction. This is exactly what Mrs Bennet does, dramatizing every possible situation, making out she is the one who has been wronged and overreacting about a situation instead of acting calm. It is humorous to see her exaggerated actions and how they are portrayed.
Mr Collins, Mr Bennet’s cousin, is one of the funniest characters in the book, as he comes across as a bit of a fool. He is a clergyman in Derbyshire, but his behaviour is far from holy. Mr Collins is willing to tell anybody who listens about his ‘noble’ patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh. This is a great source of humour in the book, for Mr Collins social status is far from high, but he assumes his peers will be impressed by his connections.
“I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh”.
The namedropping of Lady Catherine is so extreme that Mr Collins uses her name even in his proposal to Elizabeth-
“Allow me, by the way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh as among the least of the advantages in my power to offer.” It is comical that he should use Lady Catherine’s name so desperately, especially to Elizabeth, who could not care less about Mr Collins’s acquaintances.
Mr Bingley’s sisters, Caroline Bingley and Mrs Hurst, are extremely snobbish and look down on the Bennet’s and the Lucas’s-
“It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum.”
However, we soon learn that the Bingley Sisters “Were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed in their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade”
This is a direct example of irony and satire because although the Bingley sisters criticise The Bennet’s, trade is actually the source that created the Bingley’s wealth; as their ancestors were in trade. The satire shows the snobby nature of the Bingley sisters and that they criticise others for the things that they too share.
The main subject in the novel is stated in the first sentence of the novel: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." In this statement, the narrator has cleverly declared that the main subject of the novel will be courtship and marriage and she has also established the humorous tone of the novel by taking a simple subject to elaborate and to speak intelligently of.
There are many different people with different humour in Pride and Prejudice, but they all come together very well to produce an extremely well written book. A range of humour is shown here, Elizabeth’s wit is extraordinary, equalled only to her father’s fantastic drollness and mockery of his wife, and both have a gift of irony. Mrs Bennet and the emphasis of hyperbole is a fantastic source of comedy in the book. There is the added pleasure of seeing Mrs Bennet agitated at her husband’s sense of humour, not realising he does not mean what he says. Mr Collins’s constant efforts of trying to establish a position of social prosperity through knowing Lady Catherine de Bourgh are wasted, this is satire. It is also deeply ironic that the Bingley sisters should be so disgusted at the lower class when they themselves have acquired their vast fortune and prosperity by trade. Even Mr Bennet, who was the one who laughed at other’s misinterpretations, was the butt of the joke, although it was done in good nature.
Satire, wit, irony, mockery and comedy are shown by at least one character in full detail, and it is those variations in humour in the character’s personalities that make Pride and Prejudice a compelling written piece worldwide.