Pride-and-Prejudice

better than Jane’s, not because Darcy is the master of Pemberley and has
twice the annual income of Bingley, but because, as Elizabeth compares the
two sisters’ relative happiness, “she only smiles, I laugh” (p. 369).
That this resolution glosses over Elizabeth’s early attraction to Wickham,
who is now married to her thoughtless sister Lydia, and her prior antipathy
toward Darcy—a dislike so pronounced that Jane can hardly accept her
sister’s subsequent avowal of love for him—is not altogether justified by
Elizabeth’s recent maturity or by the evidence that comes to light about
Wickham’s and Darcy’s respective characters. At the very least, Elizabeth’s
change of heart suggests that she is far more rational in romantic matters than
one might think the passionate and idealistic side of her nature would allow.
But it is the role of the comic ending to obscure inappropriate desires and
inconvenient hostilities in order to establish the alliances that will secure a
stable and joyous future. What distinguishes the conclusion of Austen’s great
novel from that of lesser comic fare is that, as we turn the final pages, the new
community established at Pemberley and at the nearby Bingley estate, by the
characters we have come to know so well, seems to us both plausible and
reassuring.
Carol Howard has published essays on early British and contemporary
African-American women writers and has coedited two books on British
writers (1996, 1997). Chair of the English Department at Warren Wilson
College, her current book project traces the tension between the desire for
freedom and for stability in British women’s writings about slavery and
empire, from 1688 to 1805. She was educated at SUNY Purchase and
Columbia University, where she received her Ph.D. in 1999, and she now
lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina, with her husband and two
daughters.