Pride-and-Prejudice

and social organization. In Austen’s world, these qualities of discrimination
helped to preserve the correct social alliances and were integral to the stability
of the order of things, even when exhilarating—or menacing—new
possibilities for social mobility began to impinge upon the consciousness and
writings of English provincials such as Austen.
The exploration of pride and prejudice through Austen’s principal
characters, Elizabeth and Darcy, is instructional but also multifaceted. The
heroine’s early prejudices against Darcy and in favor of Wickham—an
inappropriate set of judgments formed by Elizabeth’s having put too much
weight on first impressions and circumstantial evidence—are made possible
by an excess of pride in her own ability to read character. Darcy’s pride of
place, his disdain for social inferiors who lack a proper sense of their own
provincialism, leads to a blanket prejudice against nearly every local at the
assembly room ball. And yet there is something defensible in these
weaknesses: Elizabeth proves herself a thoughtful judge of character in most
instances, while Darcy is not entirely amiss in his estimation of a party of
lower gentry who are eager to ape the manners of the great but who lack the
true social refinement that he himself possesses. In this novel of emotional
growth, pride and prejudice are not flaws for Elizabeth and Darcy to
overcome but character traits that require minor adjustments before the couple
can recognize each other’s merits and live happily together.
Even when pride and prejudice impair judgment, Elizabeth and Darcy
remain principled, perceptive, and admirably strong-minded. As Darcy puts it,
in a critique of his friend Mr. Bingley’s complaisance, “To yield without
conviction is no compliment to [one’s] understanding” (p. 50), while
Elizabeth declares of herself that “There is a stubbornness about me that
never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises
with every attempt to intimidate me” (p. 173). This strength of personality—
she calls it her “impertinence” and he “the liveliness of your mind” (p. 367)—
draws an initially unimpressed Darcy to Elizabeth. Further, when evidence
presents itself, Elizabeth is able to turn her keen powers of perception inward.
Through Darcy’s letter to her, she quickly recognizes her errors, which ability
sets her apart from someone like her own undiscerning mother. Although the
scene of humiliation and painful self-recognition—“Till this moment, I never
knew myself” (p. 205)—that follows Elizabeth’s reading of the letter is more
the stuff of Greek tragedy than of the novel of manners, its presence in the
narrative demonstrates that Elizabeth has the capacity for introspection.
Pride and prejudice seem an almost indispensable set of character traits, or
qualities worth cultivating, when we detect the effects of their virtual absence