Written by Hermance L. Written on: March 4th, 2020.
Transcript:
One of the world's most popular novels, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has delighted readers since its publication with the story of the witty Elizabeth Bennet and her relationship with the aristocrat Fitzwilliam Darcy. Similar to Austen's other works, Pride and Prejudice is a humorous and yet serious portrayal of the social atmosphere of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, and it is principally concerned with courtship rituals of the English gentry. The novel is much more than a comic romance, however; through Austen's subtle and ironic style, it addresses economic, political, feminist, sociological, and philosophical themes, inspiring a great deal of diverse critical commentary on the meaning of the work. In one of her letters to her sister Cassandra Austen, Jane writes “I must confess that I think her [Elizabeth Bennet] as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, & how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know” (Jane Austen’s Letters. ed. Deirdre Le Faye. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. p.201-202). However, when Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 it received different kinds of criticism through published reviews, private letters and diaries. Indeed, according to Jane Davy’s letter to Sarah Ponsonby, Jane Austen’s novel outlines that “picture of vulgar minds and manners [...] is unrelieved by the agreeable contrast of more dignified and refined characters occasionally captivating attention” (p. 351) while Annabella Milbanke thinks Pride and Prejudice “the most probable fiction I have ever read” (p. 159). The Critical Review was extremely impressed and states that Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice “rises very superior to any novel we have lately met with in the delineation of domestic scenes” (p.57) as well as the British Critic which concludes “it is very far superior to almost all the publications of the kind which have lately come before us” (p.56). Criticism of the novel from the nineteenth century through the early twentieth century also tend to regard Austen as a moralist, discussing the value system that Pride and Prejudice establishes. Evaluations of this work have included condemnatory dismissals such as that of Mark Twain, measured praises of Austen's sophistication and wit, and plaudits for the novel as the author's masterpiece “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone!” (Morrison, Robert. Pride and Prejudice, A Sourcebook, p. 64). However, in 1848, Charlotte Brontë’s letter to George Henry Lewes criticizes the lack of depth and passion in Austen’s characters and style “And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers-but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy- no open country- no fresh air- no blue hill- no bonny beck” (Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Chapter 4 Knowledge & Opinion: Pride and Prejudice, p.103).
Critics from the 1920s through the 1950s focus on Austen's characteristic themes and stylistic devices, as well as discussing her choice of subject matter and the moral and ideological journey that Elizabeth undertakes throughout the course of the novel “These writers explore Austen’s commonplace and uneventful world, compare her to other novelists, and reflect on a wide-ranging- series of issues including her selflessness, satire, realism, politics, language, readability, and inexhaustibility” (Morrison, Robert. Pride and Prejudice, A Sourcebook, p.52). Indeed, according to D.W. Harding’s Regulated Hatred: an Aspect of the Work of Austen, Jane Austen is a “distinctly modern figure, an alienated and misunderstood person and artist who sought unobtrusive spiritual survival, without open conflict through caustic and subversive ironies” (Morrison, Robert. Pride and Prejudice, A Sourcebook, p.71). During the 1960s and 1970s, commentators offered contextual criticism that evaluated Pride and Prejudice within the literary and social world in which Austen wrote. It was also during this period that the attention given to the political subtext of the novel increased new ways of interpreting its relationship to the historical context of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the later decades of the twentieth century and into the early years of the twenty-first century, the most prominent trends in criticism of Pride and Prejudice have derived from the perspectives of literary feminism, including analysis of the novel's view of female oppression, its portrayal of the patriarchal society of the time, and its treatment of the possibility, fantasy, and reality of female power. Feminist critics such as Nina Auerbach state that women are imprisoned in the act of waiting and not living, contrary to men:
“In the family microcosm, the male whom all await can alone bring substances to inheriting the estate, he will ensure the family solidity and continuity of income and land. Without him, their emotional and financial resources, and ultimately the family itself, can only evaporate. The quality of the Bennet household is determined by the Beckett-like realization that the period of protracted waiting is not a probationary interim before life begins: waiting for a male is life itself.” (Communities of Women, p.38-55).
However, for Mary Poovey, Pride and Prejudice “exposes the acute vulnerability of women like Elizabeth Bennet, but Austen did not have the strength of her own feminist insights, and so she opted for a fairytale conclusion that was aesthetically satisfying rather than politically responsible” (Pride and Prejudice, a Sourcebook, p.53). Nevertheless, Judith Lowder Newton has envisioned the novel as a triumphant fantasy of female autonomy:
“There is some point, though an unconscious point, to his stiffness and unreality, for both function at some level to preserve the fantasy of Elizabeth’s power. […] The end of Pride and Prejudice, nevertheless, witnesses a decline in Elizabeth Bennet, for in Pride and Prejudice as in much of women’s fiction the end, the reward, of woman’s apprenticeship to life is marriage, and marriage demands resignation” (Women, Power and Subversion: Social Strategies in British Fiction 1778-1860, p.55-85).
In this way of thinking, does Jane Austen capitulate to the patriarchal and aristocratic powers or does she succeed in uniting two equals, Elizabeth and Darcy, whom are depicted by George Eliot as two “equivalent centres of self” (Pride and Prejudice, a Sourcebook, p. 53)? Indeed, Elizabeth learns to divest herselfof her pride, her prejudice and her irony while Darcy also reconsiders his aristocratic behaviour towards Elizabeth by tempering his pride and his coldness. The heroine of Pride and Prejudice threatens the patriarchal society of the nineteenth century through her manners, her intelligence, her bravery and her independence as well as her social environment. Through this novel, Jane Austen criticizes to a certain extent the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security in a world only ruled by men “far from being a fairy tale, the novel shows the oppressive reality of women’s lives in early nineteenth-century Britain” (Communities of Women, p.38-55). How does Elizabeth Bennet stand up to patriarchy?
In 1794, Lord George Savile, Marquis of Halifax states in his novel The Lady’s New Year’s Gift: or Advice to a Daughter, “it is one of the Disadvantages belonging to your Sex, that young Women are seldom permitted to make their own choice” (p.17). Indeed, preparation for marriage and motherhood was the overriding goal of women’s education. Drawing, talking, singing, playing an instrument (piano forte or harp), embroidering and paintings in watercolours are the main activities for women living in high middle-class or in the aristocracy.
In the early nineteenth century Britain, patriarchy is a Western male-dominated system, as Nina Auerbach says in her Communities of Women, which “ensure that women remain economically, politically, artistically and socially subordinate to men” (p.38-55). Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice outlines perfectly the rules that govern matrimony for women who belong to the gentry. Indeed, the first sentence of the novel embodies with an ironic tone the dependent condition of women towards men “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in a want of a wife” (Chapter I, p.1). Jane Austen enlightens the heavy tasks that bear upon women especially if they want to survive economically and socially. They must conform to the rules as Tony Tanner explains in Jane Austen by the achievement “of satisfactory marriages – which is exactly how such a society secures its own continuity and minimises the possibility of anything approaching violent change” (p.105). However, in Pride and Prejudice, the question of matrimony is principally linked to homelessness. Indeed, Mr Bennet’s estate is entailed. When Mr Bennet will die, Longbourn will belong to his cousin Mr Collins because the Bennets have five daughters but no son. This shows again the patriarchal domination of the early-nineteenth century but it also helps to understand the extravagant and irritating behaviour of Mrs Bennet. In fact, as Robert Morrison outlines in Pride and Prejudice, a Sourcebook “she [Mrs Bennet] is also under pressure to get all her five daughters advantageously matched” (p.33) before the death of Mr Bennet and also “before spinsterhood sets in” (p.33). Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice argues that the fact of being threated by being left without a fortune enslaved young women to men because they sought protection and the only way to be protected from poverty and homelessness is marriage. As Mary Butler explains in The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, “there is a pressing reality which runs just below the surface: for women there must be marriage.” (vol.iv.p.25-26).
In this way of thinking, this materialistic point of view indicates that the romantic idea of matrimony is quite overestimated. Indeed, Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend Charlotte Lucas accepts Mr Collins’s proposition of marriage to avoid spinsterhood. The marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins is a kind of contract which is to the advantage of both. This is the perfect emblem of a marriage of convenience as Jane Austen writes in chapter XXII “In as short a time as Mr Collins’s speeches would allow, everything was settled between them to the satisfaction of both” (Pride & Prejudice, Chapter XXII, p.84). Her lack of beauty and charm condemned Charlotte to be reasonable and to conform to the rules of middle-class society “without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object, it was only honourable provision for well educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want” (Pride & Prejudice, chapter XXII, p.85). Moreover, Charlotte Lucas’s explanations to Elizabeth are really clear “I am not romantic you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state” (Pride & Prejudice, chapter XXII, p.87). As Tony Tanner emphasizes in Jane Austen, Elizabeth is the perfect embodiment of the romantic character who goes against the established order contrary to her friend Charlotte Lucas who by marrying Mr Collins without affection makes “an unconceivable capitulation to the solicitations of social convenience” (p. 127). The way Charlotte acts reflect a submission to the early nineteenth century codes “in such a society, the need for an ‘establishment’ is a very real one, and in putting prudence before passion Charlotte is doing what the economic realities of her society – Jane Austen makes abundantly clear - all but force her to do” (Ramsbottom, John D. A Companion to Eignteenth Century Britain. Chapter Sixteen: Women and the Familyp.133). In addition, Charlotte Lucas can also be considered as a material object for Mr Collins because as well as she needs a husband he also needs a wife to please his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as he said to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice:
“My reasons for marrying are first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly – which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject [...] ‘Mr Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry’” (Pride & Prejudice, chapter XIX, p.73).
Moreover, for Charlotte Lucas and her mother the idea of marriage is closely linked with the idea of property and financial security. Indeed, Lady Lucas gives way to her imagination by anticipating the death of Mr Bennet who will allow her daughter and her new son-in-law to become owners of Longbourn “Lady Lucas began directly to calculate with more interest than the matter had ever excited before, how many years longer, Mr Bennet was likely to live” (Pride & Prejudice, Chapter XXII, p.85). However, for Lydia Bennet, it is fairly different. Obviously, Lydia and Wickham’s marriage is an example of a bad marriage. Their marriage was based on appearances, good looks, and youthful vivacity. Once these qualities can no longer be seen by each other, the once strong will slowly fade away. As in the novel, Lydia and Wickham’s marriage gradually disintegrates; Lydia becomes a regular visitor at her two elder sister’s home when "her husband was gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath" (Pride & Prejudice, Chapter LXI, p.261). Through their relationship, Austen shows that hasty marriage based on superficial qualities quickly sinks and leads to unhappiness. Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet’s relationship is similar to that of Lydia and Wickham. Mr. Bennet had married a woman he found sexually attractive without realizing she was an unintelligent woman. Mrs. Bennet’s favoritism towards Lydia and her comments on how she was once as energetic as Lydia reveals this similarity. The effect of the relationships was that Mr. Bennet would isolate himself from his family; he found refuge in his library or in mocking his wife. Mr. Bennet’s self-realization at the end of the novel in which he discovers that his lack of attention towards his family has led them to develop the way they are, comes too late. He is Austen’s example of a weak father. In these two latter relationships, Austen shows that it is necessary to use good judgement to select a spouse, otherwise the two people will lose respect for each other. Indeed, John D. Ramsbottom argues that in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, a careful marriage “was a key ingredient of success: it is no exaggeration to say that a man’s relationship to his wife’s family could make or break him” (A Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain. Chapter Sixteen: Women and the Family. p.216). However, for Elizabeth, the problem resides in the fact that she does not belong to the same world as Darcy even if she affirms the contrary in Pride and Prejudice during a heated exchange with Lady Catherine de Bourgh “He [Mr Darcy] is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we equal” (Chapter LVI, p.239). Nevertheless, as Mark Schorer points out in ‘Pride Unprejudiced’ in Kenyon Review, the social standing of Elizabeth is in fact undoubtedly below Darcy’s but “the discrepancy between [Darcy’s] aristocratic assumptions [...] and [Elizabeth’s] bourgeois desires for social place that are not quite realizable” finally transcends the inequality between social classes of that period when Darcy proposed to Elizabeth. In this way of thinking, we might suppose that Elizabeth has nothing to offer to Darcy except her intelligence and liveliness of mind. However, this is a wrong assumption. Indeed, the marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth reveals the characteristics that constitute a successful marriage but it also emphasizes the idea that a gentleman like Darcy will also choose the woman who is the most capable of giving birth to a male heir. This theory is sustained by Bernard-Jean Ramadier in Pride and Prejudice: le Roman de Jane Austen et le film de Joe Wright when he opposed Elizabeth and Miss Anne de Bourgh:
« Son ‘admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion’ (Pride & Prejudice, p.23) montre qu’il [Darcy] est sensible à sa saine énergie [Elizabeth], qui contraste avec l’allure souffreteuse, fin de race, de Miss de Bourgh (“of a sickly constitution” p.46; “pale and sickly” p.108) chez qui l’on devine une ascendance charge par la consanguinité. Un homme comme Darcy, issu d’une ancienne famille, ne saurait rester sans héritier, et entre les deux femmes, son choix de la plus apte à porter ses enfants ne peut pas faire de doute » (p.115).
In Heroines of Fiction, William Dean Howells argues that Elizabeth Bennet is “much more a lady than her ladyship, [...] her superiority is not invented for the crisis; it springs from her temperament and character, cool, humorous, intelligent and just: a combination of attributes which renders Elizabeth Bennet one of the most admirable and attractive girls in the world of fiction.” (p.37-48).
Elizabeth Bennet is outspoken and brave, and yet, even her courage has to be moderated in a society that values above all things appearances, manners and social class. Indeed, she claims her intellectual and physical independence to strengthen her opposition to a degrading patriarchal view of women. Moreover, in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, Rachel M. Brownstein states that Elizabeth has numerous admirable qualities which enable her to rise above the nonsense and bad behavior that pervade her class-bound and often spiteful society. Her honesty, virtue, and lively wit constitute her best qualities to seduce Darcy who “dismisses Elizabeth at first sight, but it soon enchanted by her ‘fine eyes’ and ‘the liveliness of [her] mind.” (p.51). This “liveliness of mind” (Pride & Prejudice, Chapter LX. p.256) reinforces the idea that Elizabeth is a vivacious heroine who goes against the established order. Her intellectual wit and her insurrection shock and threaten the high members of the aristocracy such as Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Miss Bingley. Indeed, in chapter VIII of Pride and Prejudice the Bingleys sisters are the first to be outrageously astonished by Elizabeth’s “indifference to decorum” (Chapter VIII, p.24). Miss Bingley clearly outlines her opposition to this “abominable sort of conceited independence” (ibidem; p.24). However, as Tony Tanner points out, this independence has “nothing to recommend it and is seen as totally and reprehensibly anti-social. […] It is a fine point, and not perhaps a fixed one, at which liveliness becomes wildness, yet the latter is merely dull. [Moreover] Elizabeth is often described as laughing […] and laughter is also potentially anarchic, as it can act as a negation of the principles and presuppositions, the rules and rituals, which sustain society.” (Jane Austen, p.135). There is another important episode in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth’s behaviour goes against the established order. Indeed, in chapter X, Mrs Hurst leaves Elizabeth and her sister, Miss Bingley and Mr Darcy on a walk, Darcy then suggests that they should take a wider path but Elizabeth answers laughingly “No, no; stay where you are.- You are charmingly group’d, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Goodbye.” (Chapter X. p.35-36). Here, we discover that Elizabeth is “happy to leave the group, laughing, rambling, rejoicing” but it suggests that she is not yet ready “to submit [herself] to any grouping found to be unacceptably restricting” (Tony Tanner, Jane Austen, Chapter 4: Knowledge & Opinion: Pride and Prejudice, p.135). In this way of thinking, Tony Tanner intones that Elizabeth is not ready for marriage which is “part of the social grouping and is also a restriction” (Ibidem, p.135). “Conventional himself, he admires her for defying conventions”, her strong personality is exactly what wins her to Darcy. Indeed, Rachel M. Brownstein states that “he [Darcy] admires her [Elizabeth] for defying conventions.” (The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Chapter 4: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, p.51). Even Jane Austen herself depicts Elizabeth “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print” (Jane Austen's Letters, p.201-202). However, Elizabeth Bennet’s independent spirit of course has its limits. She is acutely aware of her society's moral norms and expectations, and treats them with no great sense of injustice. Among her family members, Elizabeth is Lydia's most fervent critic, due to the latter's increasing reputation for flirtation and impropriety “A flirt too, in the worst and meanest degree of flirtation; without any attraction beyond youth and a tolerable person; and from the ignorance and emptiness of her mind, wholly unable to ward off any portion of that universal contempt which her rage for admiration will excite” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XLI. p.156). She is worried for the effect of Lydia’s unpredictable behaviour on her family`s reputation; and that is why Elizabeth explicitly tells her father that “our importance, our respectability in the world, must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia`s character.” (ibidem, p.156).
Nevertheless, despite all her intelligence, Elizabeth is guilty of a wrong assessment towards Darcy because “she identifies her sensory perceptions as judgements, or treats impressions as insights” (Tony Tanner, Jane Austen. Chapter 4: Knowledge & Opinion: Pride and Prejudice, p.106). Indeed, she dislikes him first because she eavesdrops upon Darcy making an unkind remark about her physical appearance to Mr. Bingley “she is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me. […] Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings towards him” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter III. p.7) and “His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again.” (ibidem, Chapter III, p.6) whereas her sister Jane tries to defend Darcy while he is fiercely condemned by everybody “Jane pleaded for allowances and urged the possibility of mistakes” (ibidem, Chapter XVII. P.58). However, this dislike is reinforced when she meets the handsome and attentive Mr. Wickham, a lieutenant in the nearby militia whom she considers charming and personable “His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a goof figure, and very pleasing address.” (ibidem, Chapter XV. p.49). Wickham leads Elizabeth and the neighbourhood to believe that he has been unfairly treated by Darcy. He claims that Darcy denied him a living as a clergyman that was promised to him by Darcy's father “We are not on friendly terms […] disgracing the memory of his father” and “There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to give me hope from law […] but Mr. Darcy chose to doubt it.” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XVI. p. 53-54). Elizabeth is persuaded that her prejudice against Mr. Darcy is well-founded, both on available evidence and upon what she considers to be her superior judgment of human character as Laurent Bury explains it in Pride and Prejudice: Le Roman de Jane Austen et le film de Joe Wright “L’orgueil d’Elizabeth lui fait croire que ses premières impressions sont une base de jugement solide, ce en quoi elle se trompe” (p.13). Jane Austen depicts her heroine as being personally proud of her mental quickness and her acuity in judging the social behaviour and intentions of others. Indeed, during one of her conversations with Mr. Bingley at Netherfield Park she considers herself as a studier of character “‘You begin to comprehend me, do you?’ cried he, turning towards her. ‘Oh! Yes – I understand you perfectly.’ ‘I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen through I am afraid is pitiful’ […] ‘I did not know before, continued Bingley immediately, that you were a studier of character. It must be an amusing study.’ ‘Yes, but intricate characters are the most amusing. They have at least that advantage.’” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter IX. p.28). However, when she realizes how dreadfully mistaken she has been in some of her first impressions, she finds herself completely puzzled after reading Darcy’s letter “How despicably have I acted! […] Till this moment, I never knew myself.” (ibidem, Chapter XXXVI. p.141). Nonetheless, this moment of insight, “of self-recognition” as Tony Tanner underlines, is one that Elizabeth Bennet shares with several of Jane Austen heroines. Indeed, in Emma, Miss Woodhouse embodies perfectly disillusion. Obviously, when she understands her love for Mr. Frank Churchill has faded away, she still continues to neglect her own heart until Harriet Smith reveals to Emma that she is in love with Mr. Knightley. As Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar point out in The Madwoman in the Attic, it is at that particular moment that Emma Woodhouse finally discovers her own feelings towards Knightley “A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. […] She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed her before.” (Austen, Jane. Emma. Chapter 47). As for Catherine Morland, in Northanger Abbey, her introspection comes after she reveals to Mr. Tilney her shocking and absurd suspicion that General Tilney has murdered his wife. Henry Tilney urges Catherine Morland to “Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you.” (Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Chapter XXIV, p.216). When Catherine does this, she realizes, as did Elizabeth, how she has misjudged matters “The visions of romance were over. Catherine was completely awakened […] Nothing could shortly be clearer, than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion” (Northanger Abbey, Chapter XXV, p.216). Like other Jane Austen heroines, except Fanny Price, Elizabeth must open her eyes and learn to know herself and the extent of her prejudice. Nevertheless, as Catherine Letellier argues in Pride and Prejudice de Jane Austen, Elizabeth needs to take her time before being accurately aware of her love for Darcy “She was convinced that she could have been happy with him; when it was no longer likely they should meet” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter LIII, p.223). However, in Pride and Prejudice, the heroine is not the only one who has to work on herself. After Elizabeth rejects his marriage proposal, Mr. Darcy understands that he must improve his own character and lessen his pride and to gain humility in order to woo Elizabeth’s heart. Indeed, Darcy’s major defect is to believe that a woman like Elizabeth who comes from an inferior social class than himself will not refuse to marry a wealthy man as he is. That explains why when he proposes for the first time to Elizabeth he is so self-assured “As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XXXIV, p.129). Through the letter he gave to Elizabeth after his disastrous proposal, Mr. Darcy attempts to give us a more authentic picture of himself. Indeed, Darcy’s letter tries to draw the attention of Elizabeth “I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XXXV, p.133) because he is going to reveal the truth about Wickham’s character and why he separated his friend Bingley from Jane. Through the revelations of Darcy, we discover a more sensitive man who is no longer afraid to share some kind of painful memories, especially when he talks about his younger sister Georgiana Darcy and her near-elopement with Wickham “You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister’s credit and feelings” (Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XXXV, p.137). This significant episode highlights the fact that these two central characters must improve themselves before their final union. Indeed, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet’s moments of insights highlight their desire to become equals. This is exactly what Elizabeth argues when she confronts Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who is the perfect embodiment of a socially superior institution against whom Elizabeth will not abdicate “He [Darcy] is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter, so far we are equal” (Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Chapter LVI, p.239). By improving the character of Darcy, Jane Austen manages to bring him to be the hero of the novel and, above all things, to let him become the soul mate of Elizabeth “she has always seen a great similarity in the turn of [their] minds” (Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Chapter XVIII. p.63) and “We are each of an unsocial […] disposition, […] unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the éclat of a proverb” (Chapter XVIII. p.63). Marvin Mudrick states that Jane Austen helps her heroine in “the process of the interpretation of Darcy’s personality from disdain through doubt to admiration is represented with an extraordinarily vivid and convincing minuteness” (Irony as Discrimination: Pride and Prejudice, in Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery, p.94-p.126). Darcy proves himself worthy of Elizabeth, and she ends up repenting her earlier. In spite of his distaste for her low connections, Darcy demonstrates his continued devotion to Elizabeth when he rescues Lydia and the entire Bennet family from disgrace, when he helps Mr. Bingley to make his marriage proposal to Jane, the elder sister of Elizabeth and finally when he goes against the wishes of his haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, by continuing to pursue Elizabeth. The fact that Darcy comes to Elizabeth humble at the end of Pride and Prejudice shows that he is now aware of his true feelings for Elizabeth and that he can make a proper marriage proposal to her “the wish of giving happiness to you, might add force to the other inducements which led me on […] I thought only of you”, “though she could not look, she could listen, and he told of feelings which […] made his affection every moment more valuable” and “My affections and wishes are unchanged” (Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Chapter LVIII. p.246). This time, both Darcy and Elizabeth can rejoice in the thought of being united in “an union that must have been to the advantage of both” (ibidem, Chapter LV. p. 209) because with “her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance” (ibidem, Chapter LV, p.209). Jane Austen’s idea that a happy marriage builds itself on mutual respect and on the fact that both sexes should learn something from the other is also taken by Charlotte Brontë at the end of her novel when Jane Eyre, a young woman who possesses a sense of her self-worth and dignity, a commitment to justice and principle, a passionate disposition and who is in search for autonomy, finally claims that Mr. Rochester and herself are now equals “All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character- perfect concord is the result” and “for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand” (Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Chapter 38. London: Penguin Popular Classics, 1994, P.446).
To conclude, in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen denounces, in some ways, the patriarchal structures that underline the limited options that were given to women at that period of time. This lack of autonomy for the fair sex is well exposed by Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which she highlights the fact that “to persuade women to endeavour to acquire strength, both mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings [...] will soon become objects of contempt.” (p.75). Through this paper, we saw that in the late eighteenth- early nineteenth century in which Jane Austen female characters lived were confined in a very restrictive world. So their only way to acquire a kind of identity was through marriage as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar argue in The Madwoman in the Attic “Marriage is crucial because it is the only accessible form of self-definition for girls in [this] society” (p.127). Indeed, the primary concern of Pride and Prejudice is to show how a young woman of some intelligence and beauty but who has no fortune can finally enter into a good marriage. Nevertheless, like we explained it earlier in this paper, Jane Austen heroine goes against the established order of her era because she is able to resist social confinement and social limitations by her “liveliness of mind” which combines strong will and moral integrity such as Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre. Indeed, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy do not make a marriage of convenience contrary to Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, even if, Elizabeth becomes aware of being “mistress of Pemberley might be something!” when she discovers for the first time “her lover’s hidden dimensions” at Pemberley.
According to the feminist critic Susan Fraiman, Mr. Darcy’s influence on Elizabeth’s self-introspection at the end of the novel emphasizes “the humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet” because at that particular moment “she ceases to think for herself and submits to Darcy as a second father, relinquishes her trust in her own judgement, and thereby suffers a loss of influence” (Fraiman, Susan. “The Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet” excerpted in the Norton Critical Second Edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, p.377). Moreover, Mary Poovey, another feminist critic “exposes the acute vulnerability of women like Elizabeth Bennet” and states that “Austen did not have the strength of her own feminist insights […] so she opted for a fairytale conclusion that was aesthetically satisfying rather than politically responsible” (Morrison, Robert. Pride and Prejudice, a Sourcebook. p.53). Indeed, the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy can easily be perceived as a fairy-tale in which the witty heroine betrays her “impertinence” and independence by capitulating to the patriarchal and aristocratic powers of which Darcy is the heir. This envisioned Judith Lowder Newton’s reflection when she argues “The end of Pride and Prejudice, nevertheless, witnesses a decline in Elizabeth Bennet, for in Pride and Prejudice as in much of women’s fiction the end, the reward, of woman’s apprenticeship to life is marriage, and marriage demands resignation” (Newton, Judith Lowder. Women, Power and Subversion: Social Strategies in British Fiction 1778-1860, p.55-85).
Indeed, feminist critics would surely have been pleased if Jane Austen’s heroine has been totally independent but in the late eighteenth- early nineteenth century England, this would have been a pure fantasy of female autonomy. In this way of thinking, the marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth constitutes a revolution for the time. In fact, they both have changed through the second part of the novel in order to be united as two “equivalent centres of self” (Morrison, Robert. Pride and Prejudice, a Sourcebook, p. 53.). Moreover, even if Elizabeth Bennet does not gain a clear independence at the end of the novel, she is clearly seen as being equal to Mr. Darcy and that is why in Pride and Prejudice we can foresee the early beginnings of feminism.
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