Pride and Prejudice

In comparison, when the narrator (Austen) takes over and starts ‘telling’ us the story, and about the characters, she uses free indirect speech, giving the reader more of an insight into the characters and of their private thoughts or feelings. This narrative is directed to the reader, and includes such phrases as ‘Wickham’s affection for Lydia was just as Elizabeth had expected to find it; not equal to Lydia’s for him.” The character of Lydia doesn’t have this insight into her husband’s character due to the ‘naïve consciousness of the character and the knowing consciousness of the narrator’, (p.59 The Realist Novel). Using free indirect speech, the narrator (Austen) ‘tells’ us how Mrs Bennet advocates and encourages Lydia’s non-conformity by ‘having very frequent parties at home’, and ‘telling’ us with the use of hyperbole how Lydia was ‘exceedingly fond’ of her ‘dear Wickham’ and how he did ‘everything best in the world’. This exaggeration, which is in Lydia’s reported voice or style, enables us to view and understand the story with more depth, giving us an insight not only to what the characters are saying, but also to what they are not saying. These techniques of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ help to bring out the character of Austen’s writing. There is an irony in her work, where we, as the reader, are shown the two sides of the story. The dialogue between the characters, ‘shows’ how they converse with each other and what they are willing to share of their lives, then in contrast, the narrative gives us their secret, innermost feelings and desires. Eventually they share with the other characters, what we already know, because that is how Austen uses irony in this novel. Although in the case of Lydia and Wickham, Lydia remains innocent of his feelings towards her, as the narrative indicates with, ‘their elopement had been brought on by the strength of her love, rather than by his’. On the contrary, she is intoxicated by her own happiness, as shown in the fist paragraph, in her conversation with her mother about the possibility of her sisters all envying her, “I only hope they may have half my good luck”. This innocence and excitedness ‘shows’ us her character’s naivety, and the irony involved here.

The passage relates to one of the main themes of Austen’s novel, the fact that in her society, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women were expected to get married; this was their pre-determined role in life. Austen produced her novel during a time when ‘Evangelicalism was a growing force throughout English social life’, which stressed the condemnation of ‘frivolity in behaviour, dress, social intercourse, thought and word’. (P.49 The Realist Novel). The conversation between Lydia and her mother firmly establishes that they both agree with the rules of society – but their manner offers a critique of that society too.

 The techniques of ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ accentuate the conflict shown by Elizabeth and indeed of her indifference to the events of Lydia’s wedding. It becomes obvious that there is a difference of opinion, and that Elizabeth’s judgement was distorted by her knowledge of Wickham, obtained from Darcy’s letter to her. This letter, written by Darcy after his and Elizabeth’s confrontation when he had proposed to her, (chapter 34, Pride and Prejudice), stated how Darcy’s father, being Wickham’s godfather, ‘supported him at school and afterwards at Cambridge, and when Darcy’s father died, Wickham expected ‘immediate pecuniary advantage’, (p.156 Pride and Prejudice). Her prejudice deriving from her ‘ill-founded pride in the astuteness of her first impressions of Wickham’. (P.43 The Realist Novel).  Austen uses her characteristic irony to ‘tell’ us that although Lydia was in love with her ‘dear Wickham’, he in fact (according to Elizabeth’s character), only married her ‘by distress of circumstances’ and ‘he was not the young man to resist an opportunity of having a companion’. The irony of this situation being that, through the narrator, we know that Elizabeth was aware of Wickahm’s past conduct, after all, ‘her heart had been but slightly touched’, ‘believing that she would have been his only choice, had fortune permitted it’ (page 118 P&P). Through Darcy’s letter, she had learnt of Wickham’s advances towards Darcy’s own sister, with the chief objective of his ‘sister’s fortune’ of ‘thirty thousand pounds’. (Page 158 P&P). Then of course there was Miss King, who had come into a fortune of ten thousand pounds; Wickham ‘had paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather’s death made her mistress of this fortune’, (Page 121 P&P). His ‘distress of circumstances’ compelled him to seek a fortune, for which he would apparently go to any length to secure.  We are encouraged by the use of dialogue and narrative to differentiate between Elizabeth’s personal and emotional integrity, Lydia’s immorality, and Mrs Bennet’s persistence in securing husbands for them all, no matter what it takes.

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Bibliography

• Pride and Prejudice  by Jane Austen

• The Realist Novel –

     Part One:

Chapter One – The Genre Approach

     Chapter Two – Reading Pride and  

                              Prejudice

              Part Two:

         

             Realism and Romance

             Realism and the novel form

            Jane Austen and the war of ideas