In the winter the Bingley’s and Mr. Darcy move to London which upsets Jane. The news that Charlotte Lucas, the poor daughter of a local knight, who is also Elizabeth’s best friend, is to marry Mr. Collins reaches the Bennet family. Charlotte says it is for financial reasons. During the winter Jane visits London to see friends and to hopefully see Mr. Bingley. Miss Bingley visits Jane and is quite rude to her and Mr. Bingley doesn’t see her at all.
In spring, Elizabeth goes to visit Charlotte. Charlotte lives near the Aunt of Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy calls on his Aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh and sees Elizabeth. He then makes several visits to the Collin’s home where she is staying. One day, he proposes but Elizabeth quickly refuses. She reprimands him for steering Bingley away from Jane and leaving Wickham penniless. Darcy leaves her but shortly delivers a letter to her. In this letter, he admits that he persuaded Bingley to stay away from Jane, but says he only did it because he thought their romance was not serious. As for Wickham, he informs Elizabeth that Wickham is a liar and that the real reason they don’t like each other was Wickham’s attempt to run off with his young sister, . The letter makes Elizabeth change her feelings about Darcy. She goes home and acts coldly toward Wickham. However the soldiers are leaving town, which makes the younger, rather man-crazy Bennet girls distraught. Lydia manages to get permission from her father to spend the summer with an old colonel in Brighton, where Wickham’s regiment will be.
In the summer, Elizabeth goes on another journey, this time with the Gardiner’s, who are relatives of the Bennet’s. She goes to , Mr. Darcy’s estate. She visits Pemberley, after making sure that Mr. Darcy is not there, and is pleased with the building and grounds, while hearing from Darcy’s servants that he is a great and generous boss. Suddenly, Darcy arrives and behaves affectionately toward her. Making no mention of his proposal, he entertains the Gardiner’s and invites Elizabeth to meet his sister.
Shortly after, a letter arrives from home saying that Lydia has eloped with Wickham and that the couple is nowhere to be found. They family suspect they are living together without being married which would be an embarrassment to the family. Elizabeth goes home and and Mr. Bennet go off to search for Lydia. Mr. Bennet comes home empty-handed then a letter comes from Mr. Gardiner saying that the couple has been found and that Wickham has agreed to marry Lydia in exchange for an yearly income. The Bennet’s are convinced that Mr. Gardiner has paid off Wickham, but Elizabeth learns that the source of the money, and of her family’s salvation, was from Mr. Darcy.
Wickham and Lydia return to Longbourn and Mr. Bennet acts coldly to them. They then leave for Wickham’s new assignment in the North of England. Bingley soon returns to Netherfield and continues his relationship with Jane. Mr. Darcy goes to stay with him and pays visits to the Bennet’s.
Mr. Bingley then proposes to Jane, to the happiness of everyone apart from Mr. Bingley’s. While the family celebrates, Lady Catherine de Bourgh pays a visit to Longbourn. She talks to Elizabeth and says that she has heard that Mr. Darcy is planning to marry her. She says she considers a Bennet an unsuitable match for a Darcy, Lady Catherine demands that Elizabeth promise to refuse him. Elizabeth stubbornly refuses, saying she is not engaged to Mr. Darcy, but she will not promise anything against her own happiness. A little later, Elizabeth and Darcy go out walking together and he tells her that his feelings have not altered since the spring. She accepts his proposal, and both Jane and Elizabeth are married.
Impressions of Characters
Elizabeth Bennet
Elizabeth is the second of the five daughters and is also the protagonist in this novel.
Fitzwilliam Darcy
A wealthy man, who owns the estate and he is the nephew of . Mr. Darcy is intelligent and honest. Throughout the novel, he lessens his class-consciousness and learns to love Elizabeth for her strong character.
Jane Bennet
Jane is the oldest and most beautiful of the Bennet daughters and a lot quieter than Elizabeth.
Charles Bingley
He is Mr. Darcy’s very wealthy best friend. He is a genial, well-intentioned man, whose laid-back nature contrasts Mr. Darcy’s rude appearance. He doesn’t care about class differences.
Mr. Bennet
He is a gentleman of modest income with five unmarried daughters. Mr. Bennet has a sarcastic sense of humour that he uses to irritate his wife. Though he loves his daughters (Elizabeth in particular), he often fails as a parent.
Mrs. Bennet
Mr. Bennet’s wife, noisy woman whose only goal is to see her daughters married. Because of her low breeding and often unsuitable behaviour, often repels the men whom she tries to attract for her daughters.
George Wickham
He is a good-looking gold-digger from the army. ’s good looks and charm attract Elizabeth but Mr. Darcy’s surprise about Wickham’s past, shows her his true nature and at the same time draws her closer to Darcy.
Lydia Bennet
The youngest Bennet sister, she is gossipy, immature, and self-involved. Unlike Elizabeth, flings herself headlong into romance and ends up running off with Wickham.
Mr. Collins
He is an idiotic clergyman who stands to inherit Mr. Bennet’s property. ’s own social status is nothing to brag about, but he takes great pains to let everyone and anyone know that Lady Catherine de Bourgh serves as his patroness.
Miss Bingley
Bingley’s snobbish sister. bears inordinate disdain for Elizabeth’s middle-class background. Her vain attempts to garner Darcy’s attention cause Darcy to admire Elizabeth’s self-possessed character even more.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh
She is a rich, bossy noblewoman. Catherine is Mr. Collins’s patron and Mr. Darcy’s aunt. Lady Catherine symbolizes class snobbery, especially in her attempts to order the middle-class Elizabeth away from her well-bred nephew.
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner
They are Mrs. Bennet’s brother and his wife. The Gardiner’s are caring, nurturing and full of common sense. They often prove to be better parents to the Bennet daughters than Mr. Bennet and his wife.
Charlotte Lucas
Charlotte is Elizabeth’s dear friend. Practical where Elizabeth is romantic, and also six years older than Elizabeth, does not view love as the most vital part of a marriage. She is more interested in having a comfortable home. Therefore when Mr. Collins proposes she accepts.
Georgiana Darcy
Darcy’s sister. She is very pretty and very shy. She has great skill at playing the piano.
Mary Bennet
She is the middle Bennet sister, studious and pedantic.
Catherine Bennet
She is the fourth Bennet sister. Like Lydia, she is girlishly enthralled.
Themes
Love
Pride and Prejudice is one of the most loved love stories in English literature: the courtship between and . As in any good love story, the lovers must elude and overcome numerous stumbling blocks, beginning with the tensions caused by the lovers’ own personal qualities. Elizabeth’s pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression, while Darcy’s prejudice against Elizabeth’s poor social standing blinds him, for a time, to her many virtues. Elizabeth is guilty of prejudice and Mr. Darcy of pride—the title cuts both ways. Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the realization of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, including ’s attempt to control her nephew, ’s snobbery, ’s idiocy, and ’s deceit. In each case, anxieties about social connections, or the desire for better social connections, interfere with the workings of love. Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply that Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as something that can be captured if only an individual is able to escape the warping effects of hierarchical society. Austen does sound some more realist (or, one could say, cynical) notes about love, using the character of , who marries the buffoon for his money, to demonstrate that the heart does not always dictate marriage. Yet with her central characters, Austen suggests that true love is a force separate from society and one that can conquer even the most difficult of circumstances.
Reputation
Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is expected to behave in certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to ostracism. This theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss Bingley and her friends. At other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behaviour of Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and snobbish) Darcy’s and Bingley’s. Austen pokes gentle fun at the snobs in these examples, but later in the novel, when elopes with Wickham and lives with him out of wedlock, the author treats reputation as a very serious matter. By becoming Wickham’s lover without benefit of marriage, Lydia clearly places herself outside the social pale, and her disgrace threatens the entire Bennet family. The fact that Lydia’s judgment, however terrible, would likely have condemned the other Bennet sisters to marriageless lives seems grossly unfair. Why should Elizabeth’s reputation suffer along with Lydia’s? Darcy’s intervention on the Bennet’s’ behalf thus becomes all the more generous, but some readers might resent that such an intervention was necessary at all. If Darcy’s money had failed to convince Wickham to marry Lydia, would Darcy have still married Elizabeth? Does his transcendence of prejudice extend that far? The happy ending of Pride and Prejudice is certainly emotionally satisfying, but in many ways it leaves the theme of reputation, and the importance placed on reputation, unexplored. One can ask of Pride and Prejudice, to what extent does it critique social structures, and to what extent does it simply accept their inevitability?
Class
The theme of class is related to reputation, in that both reflect the strictly regimented nature of life for the middle and upper classes in Regency England. The lines of class are strictly drawn. While the Bennet’s, who are middle class, may socialize with the upper-class Bingley’s and Darcy’s, they are clearly their social inferiors and are treated as such. Austen satirizes this kind of class-consciousness, particularly in the character of Mr. Collins, who spends most of his time toadying to his upper-class patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Though Mr. Collins offers an extreme example, he is not the only one to hold such views. His conception of the importance of class is shared, among others, by Mr. Darcy, who believes in the dignity of his lineage; Miss Bingley, who dislikes anyone not as socially accepted as she is; and Wickham, who will do anything he can to get enough money to raise himself into a higher station. Mr. Collins’s views are merely the most extreme and obvious. The satire directed at Mr. Collins is therefore also more subtly directed at the entire social hierarchy and the conception of all those within it at its correctness, in complete disregard of other, more worthy virtues. Through the Darcy-Elizabeth and Bingley- marriages, Austen shows the power of love and happiness to overcome class boundaries and prejudices, thereby implying that such prejudices are hollow, unfeeling, and unproductive. Of course, this whole discussion of class must be made with the understanding that Austen herself is often criticized as being a classist: she doesn’t really represent anyone from the lower classes; those servants she does portray are generally happy with their lot. Austen does criticize class structure but only a limited slice of that structure.
