When Mr. Bingley, a young gentleman of London, takes a country estate near to the Bennet's home, Mrs. Bennet begins her match-making schemes without any trace of subtlety or dignity. Despite Mrs. Bennet's embarassing interference, Mr. Bingley and Jane become fond of one another. Mr. Darcy, who has accompanied Bingley to the country, begins his acquaintance with Elizabeth, her family, and their neighbors with smug condescension and proud distaste for the all of the country people. Elizabeth, learning of his dislike, makes it a point to match his disgust with her own venom. She also hears from a soldier that she has a fondness for that Darcy has misused the man. Without thinking through the story, Elizabeth immediately seizes upon it as another, more concrete reason to hate Mr. Darcy. She contradicts and argues with Darcy each time they meet, but somewhere along the way he begins to like Elizabeth.

When Bingley leaves the countryside suddenly and makes no attempts to contact Jane anymore, the young woman is heartbroken. Elizabeth, who had thought well of Bingley, believes that there is something amiss in the way that he left Jane in the lurch. Only when Elizabeth goes to visit her friend at the estate of Darcy's aunt does the mystery begin to unfold. After several encounters with Mr. Darcy while visiting her friend, Elizabeth is shocked when Darcy proposes to her. Elizabeth refuses him and questions him about the way that he misused her soldier friend and his undoubted role in the way that Bingley abandoned Jane. Darcy writes a letter to explain himself, and Elizabeth is embarrassed to learn that she had been mislead about Darcy's character. Had she known the truth, she would have loved Darcy as he loved her. Darcy leaves that part of the country before she can sort out her feelings and make amends with him. Then she meets him again when she is touring the gardens of his estate with her aunt and uncle. Darcy treats her with kindness and she believes he may still love her, but before anything can be done about it, she learns that one of her younger sisters has shacked up with the very soldier who mislead Elizabeth and the rest of her family about Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth returns home immediately.

When the indignity of her sister's shot-gun wedding is straightened out, Elizabeth is surprised that Darcy returns to the country with Bingley. She expected that the shame of her sister's actions had ruined any chances of a relationship with Mr. Darcy, or Jane and Bingley. Elizabeth learns from her aunt that Darcy did a great part to help get her younger sister properly married to the infamous soldier. Jane and Bingley sort out the misunderstanding that drove him away before and get engaged. Then Elizabeth and Darcy work out their misunderstandings and agree to marry.


Metaphor Analysis

Landscape and dance are two important metaphors in Pride and Prejudice.  Bodenheimer (1981) asserts that in many Jane Austen novels, "good estates" like Pemberley are the key to the social virtues of their owners, that the characters' estates help to define the social worth of the characters themselves.  She argues that the spatial terms used in describing landscape can also be seen as perceptual or emotional ones.  For example, when Elizabeth sees Pemberley, there is a sense of ascent, mutiplicity and expansion of the landscape, which could also symbolize Elizabeth's changing view of Darcy and his character and the expansion of the possibilities of her relationship with him.

According to Adams (1982), dance is another metaphor in many of Austen's novels, and that it is akin to marriage. In many novels there is a heroine who through dance must judge each of her partners for appearance, style, character and compatibility, not just in dancing, but in marriage. The importance of the dance cannot be impressed enough, and the women must be careful whom they accept and whom they refuse.  In Pride and Prejudice, there are quite a few parallels between dance and marriage for Elizabeth.  The first time Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance she refuses, just as she refuses his first proposal.  The second dance and proposal are accepted.  We can also see the parallels with Mr. Collins.  The dance with Collins is "mortifying," and the proposal is as well, as he continues not to believe she is declining his offer no matter how serious she is.


Theme Analysis

Pride and Prejudice was first titled First Impressions, and these titles embody the themes of the novel. The narrative describes how the prejudices and first impressions (especially those dealing with pride) of the main characters change throughout the novel, focusing on those of Elizabeth Bennet. 

Elizabeth's judgments about other characters' dispositions are accurate about half of the time.  While she is correct about Mr. Collins and how absurdly self-serving he is and about Lady Catherine de Bourgh and how proud and snobbish she is, her first impressions of Wickham and Darcy steer her incorrectly.  Wickham is first thought to be a gentleman by all.  His good looks and his easy manner fool almost everyone, and Elizabeth believes without question all that he tells her of Darcy. Elizabeth's first impressions of him are contradicted when she realizes that he has lied about Darcy.

Elizabeth and many of the other characters see Darcy as proud, and it can be seen from this quote just how quickly this judgment of him is formed.

"The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which tuned the tide of his popularity; for he as discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend" (58).

It is not only what she believes to be pride in Darcy's character that makes her judge him harshly, but also her prejudice against him because of the lies Wickham has told her. Darcy sees this fault of prejudice in Elizabeth, stating that her defect is "willfully to misunderstand everybody." In the end Elizabeth realizes her folly in trusting her first impressions and prejudices about the men, and states, "how despicably have I acted. I, who have prided myself on my discernment! - I, who have valued myself on my abilities."

The above are only a few of the major examples of first impressions, prejudice and pride in the novel, as these themes show up throughout the story. Characters besides Darcy are also accused of having too much pride, such as Bingley's sisters, Miss Darcy, Lady Catherine and others. There are also discussions about pride between Elizabeth and Darcy, and Mary discusses pride vs. vanity.  Characters are also described as being proud on certain occasions.  For example, Mrs. Bennet is described as visiting her married daughters with pride, and Elizabeth is said to be proud of Darcy because of what he had done for Lydia.  First impressions can be discussed of many of the other characters than those discussed here, and prejudice is illustrated not only in Elizabeth's behavior, but in Darcy's and Lady Catherine's reactions to the status of Elizabeth's family as well.


Top Ten Quotes

1) "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" (51). This sentence, the first of the novel, introduces the reader to the marriage theme that will outline much of the book. 

2) "The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which tuned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend" (58). This quote describes other characters' reaction to Mr. Darcy and how he is initially thought to be proud.  This belief serves to guide how many will think of him until the very end of the book.

3) "To Elizabeth it appeared, that had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit, or finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he must have witnessed" (143). These thoughts of Elizabeth follow the Netherfield Ball, where her family has embarrassed her, and serve to show her concern for the other characters' sense of her family's inferiority.  It is Darcy she is most concerned about, for as the quote states, Bingley was not as set against them.

4) "I have no wish of denying that I did every thing in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success.  Towards him I have been kinder than towards myself" (223). This quote from Darcy is spoken to Elizabeth after she has refused his hand in marriage. This angers Elizabeth even more, as she feels that it is solely because of her family that he would want to prohibit any sort of engagement between Bingley and Jane or Elizabeth and himself.

5) "You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner" (224).  Elizabeth says this to Darcy after he accuses her of only refusing him because of the way he proposed.  Her reproof of him in this way serves to make him reevaluate his behaviour and makes him change in the end.

6) "How despicably have I acted!' she cried. - 'I, who have prided myself on my discernment! - I, who have valued myself on my abilities!." (236).  Elizabeth says this to herself after she reads Darcy's letter and realizes that she had no reason to despise him as she had.

7) "Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it" (268). This description of Elizabeth's first visit to Pemberley marks a changing point in Elizabeth's feelings for Darcy.

8) "There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle sensation towards the original, that she had ever felt in the height of their acquaintance" (272). Along with the quote before, this serves to show how Elizabeth's trip to Pemberley changes the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth. (See the metaphor discussion for the how the expanding landscape is a symbol for Elizabeth expanding her vision of Darcy.)

9) "The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the world, though only a few weeks before, when Lydia had first run way, they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune" (361). This is written after Jane's engagement to Bingley is announced.  It shows, as does the rest of the novel, how quickly beliefs and prejudices can change.

10) "If he had been wavering before, as to what he should do, which had often seemed likely, the advice and entreaty of so near a relation might settle every doubt, and determine him at once to be as happy, as dignity unblemished could make him" (370). Here Elizabeth worries that Darcy's aunt will again bring the inferiority of Elizabeth's family to Darcy's mind and will turn him against her for sure.  Darcy is not so easily swayed though (as Bingley was), and in fact Lady Catherine's attempts to draw Darcy and Elizabeth apart instead serve to bring them together at last.


Biography

Jane Austen was born at Steventon Parsonage, Hampshire, England on December 16, 1775.  The seventh of eight children, she was educated by her minister-father and the Abbey School in Reading, England. The first twenty-six years of her life were spent in the rectory, but in 1801, the family moved to Bath in hopes of restoring her father's health.  In 1805, upon his death, they moved to Southampton, and then to Chawton, Hampshire in 1809.  Austen's novels incorporate her observations on the manners of her time and class, and while they often relate courtship, love, and marriage, Austen herself never married.

Austen began her literary career by writing parodies and sketches for her family, some of which survive today. Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813, and is the second of Austen's novels.  Her other novels include Sense and Sensibility (1811), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma, (1816), Persuasion (1818), and Northanger Abbey (1818).  Also surviving are a few novel beginnings, some verse, some prayers, and many letters.  Jane Austen died at the age of forty-two on July 18, 1817 in Winchester, England of what historians now believe to have been Addison's disease.