What Is Pride and Prejudice About?

The answer to the question" What is Pride and Prejudice About" is not a plot summary. The plot is what happens in the novel, not what it is about. You might say that all of Austen's novels are about how to live. Pride and Prejudice is about how to make the most important choice of your life. It is about how to select a mate. Marriage, in other words. There are two aspects of this decision: what factors should you consider, and how do you know the information upon which you act is correct?  Mr. Darcy does not understand the factors and the weight to be given them at the start of the novel, but he learns. Elizabeth Bennet does not know how to properly assess information, but she learns.

There are various reasons one can marry in this novel, and the first thing for a prospect to determine is the purpose of the marriage. Elizabeth is speaking with Jane about Mr. Bingley and the marriage advice he might get from his sisters, during Mr. Bingley's extended stay in London. Jane says the sisters can only wish their brother's happiness, and, as she notes if he is "attached" to her, i.e. in love with her, he can only find happiness by marrying her. Elizabeth, a bit more realistic than Jane, rebuts with the idea that they might wish their brother to marry for money, or social advancement, rather than happiness.  This idea points to Ms. Darcy as the ideal mate since she has both; and the Bingleys, who while not short of money, are only one generation from being a family of merchants. She does not say that Bingley himself would consider money or social position important: and indeed he does not.

The right answer is: happiness. Even Mr. Collins knows this, for, as he explains to Elizabeth when proposing, one of his reasons for marrying is to increase his happiness.  Happiness requires mutual affection. "Oh, Lizzy, do anything rather than marry without affection" says Jane. Mr. Bennet expresses this idea a bit differently, saying saying Elizabeth must respect her husband, must look up to him as a superior, else her disposition will lead her into disgrace and unhappiness.

Austen seems to be showing in this novel that we should judge others by the "content of their characters" as Martin Luther King, Jr put it one day in Washington, rather than by the competing claims of their wealth, power, or social status.  Mr. Collins is wrong when he says, in a letter to Mr. Bennet, that the 3 elements of happiness are wealth, social position, and extensive patronage in the church. But then, Mr. Collins is often wrong.

More to come, quotes at this moment are approximate.

Upon Examining Their Watches

There are remarkably few physical objects in Austen's novels. I was shocked when, near the end of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy suddenly, like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, examine their watches. Who knew they had watches? The novel has covered about 18 months at this point, and never before has anyone cared about what time it was. Well, once we hear a clock strike 3. When Elizabeth spends her first day at Netherfield nursing Jane, the clock strikes 3 and she realizes that she has to go home.  There are references to specific times in the novel - always an hour, never an hour and so many minutes - Mr. Collins is to arrive at 4 o'clock, not 4:20.  Darcy includes the time, "8 o'clock in the morning" in his letter to Elizabeth explaining his relationship with Wickham, the Netherfield ladies retire to dress for dinner at 5 o'clock, and Lydia is to be at the church to marry Wickham at 11 o'clock, and not "beyond the hour", either.  So, one clock and two watches, and these seen but one time each in the novel.

I'm sure you recall General Tillney's watch in Northanger Abbey, for he was a tyrant about time. Perhaps to emphasise his military background, but certainly to show him as an early adopter of a modern disease - a mania for regulating life by the clock.

What Think You of Books?

Mr. Darcy, striving to find a topic for conversation while dancing with Elizabeth at Netherfield, asks this question. Elizabeth, who at the moment does not like Mr. Darcy, replies that she is certain they never read the same books, or at least not with the same feelings. Why does she say this? Why would he mention books as a topic?

Books in Austen's day were not what they are now. Then, they were valuable, and unless you had your own, difficult to access. Although the novel speaks of libraries - Lydia remarks about a library, and Mr. Collins declines to read a book which appears to be from a library, these are not libraries in the sense that we think of them. They are more like bookstores, and bookstores with a very limited selection. Books were so valuable that when someone died and a list was made of their possessions, as part of probate, books would be individually listed. Thus, only the wealthy would have them. Mr. Bennet spends much of his time in his library, and Mr. Darcy is adding to his as he feels is his duty "in times like these." That is a comment somewhat mysterious to me. What is it about the novel's present that particularly encourages or requires keeping his private library up to date. After all "it is the work of generations."

I think that the same facts lie behind times like these and Elizabeth's comment about their differing tastes. The novel was written in a time of intellectual ferment. The enlightenment had caused many aspects of life and reality to be examined, and new discoveries about the nature of the universe, and how we should live in it in light of these discoveries, were being published.  Not only science and religion were advancing, for romantic poetry and novels were being written. Austen's people related to nature through poetry. Recall Anne Elliott in Persuasion, walking across the meadows with a family party, thinking of quotations about autumn, or the younger sister in Sense and Sensibility decrying the hero's unfeeling reading of poetry as a mark of a problem with his soul.  People had the idea that in books, especially in current books, a bold new world was unfolding, and they were excited by it. Thus Col. Fitzpatrick can entertain Elizabeth at Rosings by speaking of music and new books in an evening in which she found the most enjoyment of any of her visits there.

I was struck by Elizabeth's behavior at Netherfield while staying there to nurse Jane. One evening she finds the party playing cards. She is invited to join but "suspecting them of playing high" declines and takes up a book. Bingley confesses that his library is not large but he seldom reads the books in it. "I am a lazy fellow." Caroline, always flattering Darcy, mentions his library at Pemberly. Then came the surprising part. Elizabeth, caught up in the conversation, closes her book and moves over to join the party. What was that all about? They are discussing Darcy's family library, hardly a topic a modern reader would expect would attract Elizabeth to the company of people she really doesn't like. But it does. It is the first interest she has taken in Mr. Darcy. The novel does not go further into her motives, but I'm suspecting this was a signal to the reader who understood books that there may be something to Darcy after all other than pride and arrogance.  Another time in this visit the topic of the accomplishments of women arises, and Caroline speaks of a number of aspects of superior female accomplishment, all of which have to do with display - her air, her tone of speech, her ability to play music, draw, and speak the "modern languages" (unlike Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which men learned so they could read the classics) - and Darcy agrees with her, but adds "she must improve her mind by extensive reading."

More later.

Hello

I am an avid reader of Jane Austen's novels, and I think about them a good deal. This blog is a way for me to keep track of what I'm thinking, and to see if anyone else has input for me. I am especially working on Pride and Prejudice right now, attempting to determine what, if anything, Jane Austen was attempting to do with the novel, other than write a good story.