The conclusion of Jane Austen’s best-loved novel, Pride and Prejudice, recounts like the plot of an unimaginative average fairy tale – girl of modest means falls in love with and marries a rich and handsome man and lives happily ever after. By today’s standards Elizabeth Bennet’s eventual achievement of finding herself a husband is not much of a triumph, yet she remains one of the most enduringly popular characters in literature. Her story has captivated me many times over. Is this because secretly all I long for is financial security as the wife of my very own Mr Darcy? Or does Elizabeth hold a deeper attraction, as a character? Is there any reasonable justification for my affection for this eighteenth century genteel heroine?
The first thing that we notice about Elizabeth is her wit – her “impertinence” as she calls it; or the “liveliness of [her] mind”, as Mr Darcy prefers. Like many I sat down to read P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley with glee – legitimate fanfiction, by a reputable author! But the book left me disappointed and it took me a while to realise why. It was because James had reduced Elizabeth to a monochromic docile wife; she has none of the sparkling wit that so endears her to us in the original novel. Absent was her “lively, sportive manner” of talking to her husband described in Pride and Prejudice’s closing chapter. It is a testament to the timelessness Austen’s writing that the vast majority of the dialogue in Andrew Davies’ 1995 BBC adaptation is lifted straight from the book and still has the power to make us laugh.
Elizabeth is always laughing. She herself declares that she “dearly love[s] a laugh” but qualifies this with the addition that she hopes not to “ridicule what is wise and good”, only “follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies.” This distinction sets her apart from the laughter of her younger sisters, Kitty and Lydia, and her mother. Lydia is often described as laughing; after eloping with Wickham, she writes that she can “hardly help laughing myself at your surprise tomorrow morning, as soon as I am missed.” Lydia has no sense of when laughing is appropriate, whereas Elizabeth has a keen awareness of this.
That Elizabeth flaunts social convention and expectations of women in some ways (“jumping over stiles and springing over puddles” on her way to see her sister Jane when she is taken ill, rambling in solitude in the parkland at Rosings) is tempered by her acute consciousness of decorum. In response to her mother’s loud and vulgar pontificating on the subject and Jane and Bingley’s marriage at the Netherfield Ball, Elizabeth “blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation.” Austen uses Elizabeth’s blushes throughout the novel to indicate a “social awareness that others lack.” Elizabeth knows when and where to appropriately direct her mischievous conversation. Darcy, as evidenced by his conversations with Miss Bingley, though more reserved, is also capable of this. It is this, alongside Eliza Bennet’s “fine eyes”, that first attracts him to her. Though he believes her manners are “not those of the fashionable world” he is “caught by their easy playfulness.” He, like us, does not care for the simpering pretentions of Miss Bingley, preferring instead intelligent exchanges with Elizabeth.
With her great eye for the “minutiae”, Austen’s novels are filled with gently mocking observations of the ridiculousness present in the society of her time, and through Elizabeth we hear Austen’s own voice. Most of these characters are so pompous and oblivious that they do not realise they are being mocked, and so we share in the private joke with Elizabeth and Austen. It is this balance of disregard for the good opinions of those she does not respect with her recognition of the impropriety of her family’s behaviour that identifies Elizabeth as the rational voice guiding us through the follies of Regency Society.
Elizabeth is not without faults, which perhaps accounts for why we love her more than Austen’s other heroines. She is not the meek Fanny Price of Mansfield Park nor the unwaveringly sensible Elinor Dashwood of Sense and Sensibility, nor is she the sometimes irritatingly delusional eponymous Emma Woodhouse. She certainly has her flaws – her hasty prejudices, to name one – but retains an intrinsic goodness and an all-important self-awareness, which is familiar to the modern reader. Though she is quick to judge Darcy based on Wickham’s lies about their shared past, when she learns the truth she is happy to acknowledge her error.
There is one aspect of Elizabeth’s behaviour that divides those who debate her status as a feminist character. Her determination to marry for love leads her to reject not one, but two proposals. At first glance this seems vindication of Elizabeth’s position as a thoroughly modern woman – who amongst us could contemplate the unendurable agony of a marriage to the absurd Mr Collins? Should we not celebrate her courage in turning down Mr Darcy, with all his wealth, because she does not like him? Mr Darcy, as would be expected of a man of his social standing at the time, is certain of her acceptance, despite the insulting pride and arrogance of his proposal. Elizabeth’s rebuttal is so strong and unusual for the time that we cannot help but cheer her on.
We join Elizabeth in her shock at her friend Charlotte Lucas’ acceptance of Mr Collins' offer of marriage; in her “distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen.” We see later that Charlotte is embarrassed by the gaucheness of her husband, but she defends herself: “I am not a romantic you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home.” Marrying well was one of the only options available to women at this time and Charlotte has submitted to pragmatic realism. And thus we start to question whether Elizabeth is, in fact, acting selfishly in turning down two men who have the means to provide financial security for her and her sisters, whose fortunes are entailed away from them on their father’s death.
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Lyme Park, standing in for Pemberley in the
1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice |
In Georgian England, these decisions were not merely a question of love versus money. This “crudely reduce[s] the intricacies of human choice” for “surely the strategic and emotional are blended in all of us?” Indeed, we can never be sure that Elizabeth is a not a little serious when she tells Jane that her love for Mr Darcy dates from the moment she “first saw his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” It does appear that Elizabeth’s feelings have already begun to change on arrival at Pemberley, before Mr Darcy has made his unexpected entrance. In the eighteenth century, the “notion that the way a man landscaped his grounds might give some indication of his moral and mental qualities” was not uncommon, and we may reasonably conclude that Elizabeth’s admiration of Pemberley’s extensive woods and natural beauty is due to her appreciation of Mr Darcy’s tastes, and not to her desire for his fortune. Nevertheless she does muse, apparently with some regret, “of all this I might have been mistress.”
Set at the end of the eighteenth century, Pride and Prejudice’s characters would doubtless have been aware of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792. Against this backdrop, we may judge Elizabeth harshly for succumbing to that which society expected of her and settling for life as a gentleman’s wife. On the other hand, this is no marriage of convenience and we should not begrudge her a life of comfort, for it is not one chosen in haste. In Georgian England, where marriages were primarily business arrangements, for the consolidation of assets and procreation of heirs, and where women lived entirely subservient to their husbands, hers, we are confident, will be a marriage based on love and, most importantly, respect. Safe in the knowledge that Mr Darcy so admires the qualities in Lizzy that we do ourselves - so much so that he has been inspired to change his opinions and his manners - we are able to anticipate her future happiness.
Is Elizabeth Bennet a feminist, a realist, or simply a romantic? It may well be that she is a mixture of all three in equal measure, set apart from her contemporary literary heroines by her passion, her flaws, her complexities and, ultimately, her humanity. She is as real a woman to today’s readers as she was to her 1813 audience and will unquestionably remain so for many centuries to come.
