Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen, is a story about a misunderstanding between two people who are destined to be married, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. It is also the story of two good people who learn how to overcome their weakness or character flaws: pride and prejudice.

Elizabeth Bennet is an intelligent and beautiful girl, but she has a strong sense of justice. Although she comes from a family with a vulgar mother and two spoiled sisters, her refined temperament and brightness deeply attracts Mr. Darcy, who is a wealthy country gentleman. Mr. Darcy is intelligent, handsome, refined, and rich, but he is not very sociable. From the first time they meet, he leaves a poor impression in the mind of Elizabeth Bennet because he appears to her as someone full of arrogance and pride. Thus Elizabeth forms a prejudice against him. After they clear the misunderstandings between them, they discover that their taste and refinement are almost identical.

The character that impresses me most is Mr. Darcy. People often misunderstand Mr. Darcy because of his aloofness. But the true Mr. Darcy is not arrogant at all. It is because his honesty to himself in refusing to follow the fashion of his time and his contempt against vulgar social pretensions that make people think of him as someone full of conceit. He does not unveil Mr. Wickham’s past evil and even does not defend himself against his evil slandering against him because he is a gentleman in the true sense of the word. And despite all these unjust treatments he is still willing to pay for the expenses of the wedding of Lydia and Mr. Wickham for the sole purpose of protecting the reputation of the Bennet family and of rescuing Lydia from a marriage that would inevitably lead to disaster. The event that gives Elizabeth her deep misunderstanding is her finding out that it is Mr. Darcy who is responsible for separating Mr. Bingley from her favorite sister-Jane. But finally she realizes that Mr. Darcy and she are really the people who have similar strengths and weakness.

Both Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are skeptical to the conventional wisdoms of the world and cautious in the revelation of the self to others. Hence they are likely to fall prey to relying too much on their first impressions. Yet as one philosopher in around the time of Jane Austen has said that if mankind is to begin with certainty they might end up in the collapse of that certainty. Yet if mankind is to begin in questioning they might end up with certainty. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the novel. The story helps me to be convinced that ultimately the cultivation of true moral strengths, the process of creating good taste, and the proper training of one’s observation of the world will reap its true reward eventually.

The book begins with the famous line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This famous opening line is often quoted to show the universal and timeless matrimonial ideology. In the story, we can see the flighty and impetuous Mrs. Bennet, spending her entire life seeking wealthy husbands for her daughters, who is a parody of Austen’s age.

This might be a caricature of the world of Jane Austen. Yet it is also the true plight of the impoverished gentlemen and ladies in her time. Jane Austen never married. Perhaps her mother was not as ambitious as Mrs. Bennet. Yet she in a way also becomes an Elizabeth Bennet. She created an ideal Mr. Darcy who would complement her in creating a world where one could have the freedom of making decisions on important matters such as love and marriage. Although one can argue that it is only possible in a world of fiction, yet Pride and Prejudice does show us a way to navigate our life in important matters such as freedom, honesty, and refinement.