Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s comedy of manners about love, money and misjudgement in English country society. Published in 1813, it follows Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five daughters, as she learns how far first impressions can mislead.

The Bennets live at Longbourn in Hertfordshire. The estate is entailed, so it must pass to a male heir, a distant cousin, and the daughters will have little to live on unless they marry well. Mrs Bennet’s urgent hopes and Mr Bennet’s dry detachment frame the comedy from the opening line.

The arrival of the wealthy Mr Bingley at nearby Netherfield sets the story moving. Bingley is quickly drawn to Jane, the eldest Bennet sister. His friend Mr Darcy, richer still, offends Elizabeth at a local ball by refusing to dance with her and remarking that she is not handsome enough to tempt him.

Elizabeth’s dislike deepens when the charming officer George Wickham tells her that Darcy cheated him of an inheritance. Meanwhile Bingley leaves Netherfield abruptly, and Jane is left hurt and puzzled. The pompous clergyman Mr Collins, heir to Longbourn, proposes to Elizabeth and is refused, then marries her practical friend Charlotte Lucas instead.

Darcy’s own proposal comes as a shock. He declares his love while making plain how far beneath him he considers her family, and Elizabeth rejects him with spirit. His letter the next day changes everything: it explains his part in separating Bingley from Jane and reveals the truth about Wickham’s past.

Elizabeth begins to see that her judgement has been shaped by her own pride and prejudice. A visit to Pemberley, Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire, shows her a gentler man, respected by those who know him best.

The crisis comes when her youngest sister, Lydia, runs away with Wickham, threatening the whole family’s reputation. Darcy quietly arranges their marriage at his own expense. In the closing chapters Jane and Bingley are reunited, and Elizabeth and Darcy, each changed by the other, come to an understanding.

Around the central couple, Austen builds a crowd of memorable minor characters. Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Darcy’s overbearing aunt, tries to forbid the match and only hastens it. Mr Collins flatters his patroness at every turn. Mary Bennet moralises, Kitty follows Lydia, and Mrs Bennet’s nerves are a running joke.

Austen wrote an early version of the novel in her early twenties, under the title First Impressions, and revised it before publication. The finished book was published anonymously, as the work of “the author of Sense and Sensibility”.

Austen tells the story with sharp irony and much of it through dialogue. Her narrator rarely lectures; instead, readers watch characters reveal themselves through what they say and what they overlook.