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Pride and Prejudice Versus Marriage and Tolerance

 

In Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice, Austen reveals a sparkling comedy of love and marriage, wit, form, and feeling that achieve some type of balance between pride and prejudice.  Mr. and Mrs. Bennett illustrate how comic characterization can be used to reveal different marital situations.  Pride and Prejudice shows many aspects of marriage and demonstrates how one can make the most of their life regardless of the circumstances.  Elizabeth and Darcy have discovered themselves through their differences and the loss of their pride and their prejudices.  The traits pride and prejudice can be seen as desirable merits: self-respect and intelligence.  Pride and Prejudice shows that human nature can be influenced by the society in which one subscribes.

 

Marriage, one of the basis of the novel, was somewhat a tragic experience for Mr. and Mrs. Bennett.  Mr. Bennett was captured by a pretty face, and was in a marriage that tied him to a foolish woman for the rest of his life.  The result was disastrous to Mr. Bennett's character: he was, "forced into an unnatural isolation from his family, into virtual retirement in his study and the cultivation of a bitter amusement at his wife's folly and vulgarity," (Daiches 753-754).  Though he was not happy in his marriage to Mrs. Bennett, he was content enough to remain with her and their five children: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia.

 

Mrs. Bennett, in this world where eligible marriages for young ladies are chief objectives, had succeeded in her aim, using her good looks while she had them.  Mrs. Bennett's main concern was marrying off the elder Bennett girls to men with monetary means.  They had beauty and intelligence, but an inconsiderable fortune.  Austen reveals that, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," (Austen 1).  Mrs. Bennett's desire to have her children married, through her expression of that desire reveals the defects of her character in a richly comic manner, is itself natural and laudable; "for girls of negligible fortune genteelly brought up must secure their man while they may, or face a precarious shabby genteel spinsterhood with few opportunities of personable satisfaction or social esteem," (Daiches 751).

 

Marriage is a form of unison that allows two people to come together and be as one.  In spite of this, Elizabeth Bennett is proposed to by Collins and declines to be part of the blessed unison.  Mrs. Bennett threatens to disown her daughter because of her fear of Elizabeth becoming an old maid.  Elizabeth's best friend, Charlotte Lucus, then accepts Collins.  Though it may seem that Charlotte settled in her marriage to Collins, she handles it very well.  Charlotte, "knows it is her last chance, and she takes it deliberately, weighing her future husband's intolerable character against the security and social position he offers," (Daiches 752).  Rather than face life with no economic security and no social prospect in an age when few means of earning an independent livelihood were opened to daughters of gentlemen, Charlotte married the grotesque Mr. Collins.

 

Elizabeth's vivacity, beauty and wit leaves Darcy unmoved in their first meeting, and his aloof superiority is more than matched by Elizabeth's cool disdain (Conrad).  She is more like her father in her scorn of society's conventional judgments.  She champions the concept of individual merit and independence of money and rank.  She is, "prejudice against the prejudices of society.  From this premise she attacks Darcy's sense of pride, assuming that it derives from the causes that Charlotte Lucus identifies, "...with family, fortune, everything in his favor... he has a right to be proud.'" (Magill 5311).  Elizabeth prides herself in her discriminating judgment, boasting that she is a student of character.  She, almost unconsciously, acknowledges a connection between wealth and human values at the moment when she first looks upon the home of Darcy, Pemberly (Magill 5312).

 

Darcy's tactful generosity toward Lydia and Wickham leads Elizabeth to differentiate between Charlotte's theory and Darcy's position that the intelligent person does not indulge in false pride.  Darcy, however, left a bad impression, seeming cold and extremely proud.  He insulted Elizabeth by refusing to dance with her.  He said where she could hear him, that he was in no mood the prefer young ladies slighted by other men.  Consequently, he began to admire Elizabeth in spite of himself.  Elizabeth and Darcy's gradual revaluation of each other reveals genuine conquest of pride and prejudice (Bower 165).

 

To say that Darcy is proud and Elizabeth is prejudice is but half of the story of Pride and Prejudice.  It can be seen that, "Darcy's pride lead to prejudice and Elizabeth's prejudice stems from a pride in her own perception," (Wright 106). Darcy warns Elizabeth against her own prejudice conclusions and reminds her that her experience was limited.  Darcy is not just a representative of a society that primarily values wealth and consequence, as Elizabeth initially saw him, but he is also of a larger society.  The heroine raises her conclusion as new experience warrants, in the case of Darcy and Wickham altering their opinion (Magill 5311).

 

Pride and Prejudice reveals how society and others can influence a person.  Elizabeth realizes how prideful Darcy may seem after over hearing him say to Bingly that, "she is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me," (Austen 7).  Her prejudice towards Darcy is also cultivated by her mother who states, "... he is the most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all with pleasing.  So high and conceited that there is no enduring him," (Austen 9).  Elizabeth's prejudice is once again fueled by the defamatory remarks Wickham makes towards Darcy.  However, Elizabeth realizes Wickham's true character through his absence at the Netherfield ball (Daiches 751).

 

Elizabeth's marriage to Darcy is, "in a sense a triumph of the individual over society; but, paradoxically, Elizabeth achieves her most genuine conquest of pride and prejudice only after she has accepted the full social value of her judgment that, "to be mistress of Pemberly might be something!'" (Magill 5313).

 

Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice, deals with, "the involvement, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life," (Tucker 512).  Unrestrained by society, having been captivated by youth and beauty, Mr. Bennett consulted only his personal desire and made a disastrous marriage (Magill 5312).  Elizabeth and Darcy start by disliking one another but wit turns dislike and disdain into love and leads then to a greater understanding of themselves and others (Daiches 28).  Pride and prejudice are not always faults.  The pride and prejudice shown in this novel through these characters reveal some do the self-respect and intelligence that they posses.  Though Elizabeth's prejudices were often influences by others, she managed to look past it as she learned that Darcy did in fact have an immense measure of pride. However, the pride in which he possessed was that of a noble standing.

 

The marriages of Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingly, Charlotte and Collins, Lydia and Wickham, and even Mr. and Mrs. Bennett all were unique in their own manner.  Despite the conflicts in the numerous relationships throughout the novel, Pride and Prejudice revealed its comedy of life through these marriages.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1956.

 

Bower, Reuben.  The Field of Light.  New York: Oxford University, Pr., 1951.

 

Conrad, Peter. "Pride and Prejudice." (1997): Online. Internet. 30 March

      Available: www. Penguin.couk/penguin/books/0140238212.html.

 

Daiches, David, ed. A Critical History of Englilsh Literature. 2 vols. New York:

      Ronald Press, 1960.

 

---. The Penguin Companion to English Literature.  Great Britain: McGraw-Hill,

      1971.

 

Magill, Frank.  Masterplots.  New Jersey: Salem Press, 1976.

 

Tucker, Martin. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American

      Authors.  New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966.

 

Wright, Andrew.  Jane Austen's Novels.  New York: oxford University Pr., 1954.