Pride and Prejudice

The Bennets and their problem

Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813. Jane Austen wrote the first version, called First Impressions, in the 1790s, when she was about twenty-one. Her father offered it to a publisher, who refused it unread. She revised it fifteen years later, and it became her most popular book in her lifetime and since.

The novel opens with its famous line: a single man with a good fortune must be in want of a wife. The joke is that the sentence states the view of the neighborhood, not the man. The neighborhood is Meryton, a village in Hertfordshire, and the family at the center is the Bennets of Longbourn.

Mr. Bennet is a dry, clever man who has retreated into his library and amuses himself by mocking his wife. Mrs. Bennet is loud, anxious and not clever. They have five daughters and no son. The Longbourn estate is entailed: by law it will pass on Mr. Bennet's death to the nearest male relative, a cousin named Mr. Collins. The girls will be left with little. Mrs. Bennet's one project is to get them married.

The daughters are Jane, the eldest, beautiful and kind, who thinks well of everyone; Elizabeth, the heroine, quick, witty and her father's favorite; Mary, who reads sermons and plays the piano badly; and Kitty and Lydia, the two youngest, who care only for officers and balls.

First impressions

A rich young man, Charles Bingley, rents Netherfield Park nearby. He brings his two sisters, Caroline Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, and his closest friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy, who owns the great estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire and has ten thousand pounds a year.

At the Meryton assembly ball, Bingley is friendly to everyone and dances twice with Jane. Darcy dances only with Bingley's sisters and refuses to be introduced to anyone else. Elizabeth overhears him telling Bingley that she is tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt him. She tells the story as a joke to her friends, but it fixes her opinion of him.

Over the following weeks, Darcy finds himself watching Elizabeth and admiring her eyes and her conversation. She has no idea. Her closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, who is twenty-seven and plain, warns that Jane is too reserved and that Bingley may not realize she loves him. Charlotte also says that happiness in marriage is a matter of chance and that it is best to know as little as possible of a husband's faults before the wedding. Elizabeth laughs. Charlotte is serious.

Jane is invited to Netherfield, rides there in the rain at her mother's insistence, catches a cold and has to stay. Elizabeth walks three miles through the mud to nurse her. Caroline Bingley mocks her dirty petticoat. Darcy, who Caroline is pursuing, says the walk brightened her eyes. During the stay, Elizabeth and Darcy spar about character and pride. He admits that his temper is resentful and that his good opinion, once lost, is lost forever.

Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham

Mr. Collins, the cousin who will inherit Longbourn, arrives for a visit. He is a clergyman, pompous and servile, obsessed with his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who happens to be Darcy's aunt. He has come to choose a wife from among the Bennet girls, as a way of making up for the entail. He settles on Elizabeth and proposes in a long speech that lists his reasons. She refuses. He assumes she is being coy. She refuses again. Mrs. Bennet is furious; Mr. Bennet tells Elizabeth that her mother will never see her again if she does not marry Mr. Collins, and that he will never see her again if she does.

Within days, Mr. Collins proposes to Charlotte Lucas, who accepts. Elizabeth is shocked. Charlotte explains that she is not romantic. She wants a comfortable home, and at her age with no fortune this is her best chance. The marriage is one of Austen's clearest pictures of what the economic facts meant for women.

Meanwhile a militia regiment is stationed in Meryton, and the younger girls are in heaven. One officer, George Wickham, is handsome, easy and charming. He tells Elizabeth that he grew up at Pemberley as the son of the Darcys' steward, that old Mr. Darcy left him a church living in his will, and that the present Darcy refused to give it to him out of jealousy. Elizabeth believes every word. It fits what she already thinks.

At the Netherfield ball, Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance, and she accepts out of surprise. She needles him about Wickham. Her family disgraces itself all evening: Mrs. Bennet boasts loudly that Jane will soon marry Bingley, Mary sings badly, Mr. Collins introduces himself to Darcy without being asked, and Lydia and Kitty run after officers.

The next day Bingley goes to London on business. Soon a letter from Caroline tells Jane that the whole party is leaving Netherfield for the winter and hints that Bingley will marry Darcy's sister. Jane is quietly heartbroken. Elizabeth is sure that Caroline and Darcy have separated him from Jane on purpose.

Kent: the first proposal

Jane goes to London to stay with her uncle and aunt, the Gardiners, who live in Cheapside, the merchant district that Bingley's sisters despise. Caroline snubs her, and Bingley never comes.

In the spring Elizabeth visits Charlotte, now Mrs. Collins, at Hunsford in Kent. The parsonage stands at the gates of Rosings, Lady Catherine's estate. Lady Catherine is rich, rude and used to directing everyone's affairs. She has a sickly daughter, Anne, whom she intends Darcy to marry. Darcy arrives for his yearly visit with his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is pleasant and open with Elizabeth.

Darcy begins calling at the parsonage and meeting Elizabeth on her walks. She cannot understand why. Then Colonel Fitzwilliam mentions that Darcy recently saved a friend from an imprudent marriage. Elizabeth realizes he means Bingley and Jane.

That same evening Darcy comes to the parsonage and proposes. He begins by saying how much he admires her, then spends most of the speech on how far beneath him her family is and how hard he has struggled against his feelings. Elizabeth refuses him. She accuses him of ruining Jane's happiness and of ruining Wickham. Darcy, white with anger, asks whether she might have accepted him had he flattered her. She answers that he is the last man in the world she could ever be persuaded to marry, and that his manner has been ungentlemanlike from the start.

The next morning Darcy hands her a letter. It makes two points. About Jane: he watched her and believed she did not return Bingley's feelings, and he admits that he helped keep Bingley away. He also says the behavior of her mother and younger sisters was a real objection. About Wickham: Wickham refused the church living and took three thousand pounds instead, spent it, came back for more, and then, the previous summer, tried to elope with Darcy's sister Georgiana, who was fifteen and had a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. Darcy stopped it just in time.

Elizabeth reads the letter again and again. She remembers that Wickham told his story to a stranger at their first meeting, and that he avoided the Netherfield ball when Darcy would be there. She sees that she was flattered by one man and offended by the other, and that she judged both on that basis. She tells herself that until this moment she never knew herself.

Derbyshire: Pemberley

Elizabeth goes home. Lydia is invited to Brighton with the regiment, as the guest of the colonel's young wife. Elizabeth begs her father to refuse. He lets her go, saying she will be no trouble to anyone there.

In the summer Elizabeth tours Derbyshire with the Gardiners, her sensible, warm uncle and aunt. They visit Pemberley as tourists, after Elizabeth makes sure the family is away. The house is handsome and the grounds are beautiful. The housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, who has known Darcy since he was four, describes him as the best landlord and the best master who ever lived, and says that she has never heard a cross word from him.

Then Darcy walks around a corner. He has come home a day early. Elizabeth is mortified. He is courteous, asks after her family and asks to introduce his sister. Over the next days he treats the Gardiners with respect, despite their trade connections, and Georgiana turns out to be shy, not proud. Elizabeth begins to see that she could love him.

A letter from Jane ends the visit. Lydia has run away from Brighton with Wickham. They were thought to be going to Scotland to marry, but they have been traced to London and there is no sign of a wedding. Elizabeth, in tears, tells Darcy everything. He leaves quickly, and she assumes she has lost him.