SOURCE: Foster Stovel, Nora. “Famous Last Words: Elizabeth Bennet Protests Too Much.” In The Talk in Jane Austen, edited by Bruce Stovel and Lynn Weinlos Gregg, pp. 183-203. Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press, 2002.

[In the following essay, Foster Stovel examines Elizabeth's first impressions of Mr. Darcy, claiming that the reader knows they are destined for each other from the beginning because of Austen's “classic comic structure.”]

“I believe, Ma'am, I may safely promise you never to dance with him” (PP 20). So Elizabeth Bennet declares to her mother in Pride and Prejudice. These are famous last words indeed. The astute Austen reader suspects the lady protests too much and anticipates witnessing her eat her words. The fact that she does protest too much, however, suggests that Elizabeth is impressed with Darcy from the outset, a theory that we will see borne out later in the book.¹ In fact, I suggest that we know all along that Darcy and Elizabeth are destined to be united at the end of the novel because the reader recognizes classic comic structure and Janeites recognize Austen's methods.² In order to make the plot intriguing, however, the author must place obstacles in the lovers' primrose path. So our pleasure lies in observing the skill with which the novelist overcomes these obstacles.

The occasion of this foolhardy promise is, of course, the famous, or infamous, snub that Darcy directs at Elizabeth on their first meeting at the Meryton Assembly. Charles Bingley interrupts his dance with Jane Bennet to urge Darcy to dance with her sister Elizabeth, who is languishing for want of a partner. Looking around until he catches her eye, Darcy withdraws his own and replies coldly, “She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men” (12).

Admirers of Darcy have long been at pains to account for his rudeness: supposing that he must be aware that she can overhear him, since she does overhear him, his barb seems to be deliberately launched. Why is he so cruel? Shyness will not suffice to exonerate him. Nor will his dislike of dance or small talk. I suggest that he is offended: first, his friend has preempted him in monopolizing the most beautiful and eligible woman in the room, and, second, Elizabeth has had the effrontery to catch his eye, as if “to beg for a partner” (26). After all, “the single man in possession of a good fortune” (3) may not be Charles Bingley, but his friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy, his superior in birth, position, and fortune. We need only think of Miss Bingley's fawning flattery to see how Darcy must constantly repel advances from single women in want of a good fortune. I suggest that Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth and is resisting the attraction in the pattern of the eminently eligible single man of fortune—a theory borne out by subsequent developments. Colin Firth, who plays Darcy in the BBC/A&E TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, cites in an interview “a very helpful saying: ‘A man who is eligible needs to entertain no one,’” and adds, “So out of both shyness and a lack of necessity [Darcy] remains aloof” (Birtwistle 102).

Whatever Darcy's reasons, Elizabeth imputes the worst possible interpretation to his words. But her “lively, playful disposition” (12) turns the slight into an amusing story. Mrs. Bennet, outraged by the snub, declares, “I quite detest the man” (13), and advises, “Another time, Lizzy, … I would not dance with him, if I were you.” Elizabeth goes one better by promising “never to dance with him” (20). Mrs. Bennet is scarcely the type for rational behaviour, and so, by allying herself with her mother, Elizabeth has put herself beyond the realm of reason. Just as Mrs. Bennet is said to be “beyond the reach of reason” (62) on the subject of the entail of the Longbourn estate, so Elizabeth has put herself beyond the reach of reason on the subject of Fitzwilliam Darcy.³

This phenomenon is, of course, the prejudice of Austen's title—a title one of my students referred to as The Pride and the Prejudice.⁴ As Fanny Burney says in Cecilia, “The whole of this unfortunate business … has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE” (930). Modern psychology employs another term for this phenomenon: it is referred to as mental schema, whereby an individual forms a rigid mental framework that influences the interpretation of all data.⁵ Elizabeth is a classic case of such schema: Darcy's snub, combined with her pride in her own perspicacity—what Walton Litz terms “Elizabeth's pride of her own quick perceptions” (102), a pride fostered by her doting father—results in an inflexible prejudice against Darcy that will require three volumes to dismantle.

Let us remember the original title of the novel—First Impressions.⁶ What I might call “love at first impression” may inspire their prejudice. Darcy and Elizabeth, I argue, fall in hate, or, rather, fall into a love/hate relationship, as a result of offended pride. As Colin Firth explains, “[Darcy] hates [Elizabeth] because he fancies her” (100). Elizabeth acknowledges, “I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” (20). Mary, the pedantic Bennet sister, offers a useful definition: “Vanity and pride are different things. … Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us” (20). This definition applies perfectly to Darcy and Elizabeth: he is proud while she is vain. Darcy refines this distinction further: “Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride—where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation” (57). He acknowledges that his temper is unyielding, even resentful: Elizabeth concludes, “Your defect is a propensity to hate every body,” to which he replies with ironic accuracy, “And yours … is wilfully to misunderstand them” (58). Much of the reader's delight consists of witnessing Elizabeth being obliged to dismantle her prejudice and Darcy his pride—a process that provides the impetus for the novel.

Elizabeth proves as good as her word, and the fast-stepping that she is forced to execute to avoid dancing with Darcy, before he manages to outmanoeuvre her, affords the reader considerable entertainment—especially since the perverse author contrives to construct Volume I in terms of a series of dances. As Henry Tilney explains to Catherine Morland at the Bath Assembly in Northanger Abbey, in both matrimony and dancing “man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal” (77). As Elizabeth later notes to Colonel Fitzwilliam, who has been recounting Darcy's success in saving his friend Bingley from a most imprudent match, Darcy takes “great pleasure in the power of choice” (183). Whereas Darcy enjoys exercising his power of choice, Elizabeth can only exercise her right to refuse.

The second dance occurs at the gathering at Lucas Lodge, when Sir William flaunts his courtly manners by urging Darcy to dance with Elizabeth. Although Darcy has just expressed his disdain for the amusement, declaring, “Every savage can dance” (25), he is not unwilling to partner her.⁷ But she remonstrates, “Indeed, Sir, I have not the least intention of dancing.—I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner” (26). Why, then, has she moved towards them, if not to seek a partner? Elizabeth is steadfast in refusing to accede either to Darcy's polite propriety or to Sir William's persistent persuasion, however. When the latter asks rhetorically, “Who would object to such a partner?” (26), Elizabeth “looked archly, and turned away” (26). Austen adds, “Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman” (26-27). As Colin Firth notes, for once Darcy is “the pursuer rather than the pursued: it's irresistible” (Birtwistle 102).

Let us not fail to accord credit to Caroline Bingley for helping to dismantle Darcy's resistance to Elizabeth, for I suggest that he uses Elizabeth to protect himself from Miss Bingley's advances. He is hoist with his own petard, as the saying goes, however, for in attending to Elizabeth in order to offend Caroline, he falls under Elizabeth's spell. Upon Caroline's confronting him, he responds, “I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow” (27). Darcy is learning the language of looks: the very glance that offended him at the Meryton Assembly now enchants. As Colin Firth says, “That's when he first notices her eyes. What starts off as intriguing becomes profoundly erotic for him” (Birtwistle 102). The glossary of glances is a vocabulary that Austen will pursue.

Darcy has further opportunity to admire Elizabeth at Netherfield when she goes to visit Jane, who, thanks to her mother's ingenuity, has fallen ill after getting soaked through while riding on horseback to Netherfield and must therefore remain there for a week to recover. Darcy persists in gazing intently at Elizabeth, who persists in misinterpreting his steadfast gaze:

Mr. Darcy's eyes were fixed on her. She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her because he disliked her, was still more strange. She could only imagine however at last, that she drew his notice because there was a something about her more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other person present. The supposition did not pain her. She liked him too little to care for his approbation.

(51)

The fact that men do not usually stare at women because they do not like the way they look serves to emphasize Elizabeth's rigid mind-set that will not admit any data that does not fit her schema.

When Elizabeth arrives with her petticoat inches deep in mud as a result of walking three miles to see her sister, Caroline Bingley attempts to denigrate her by observing, “She has nothing … to recommend her, but being an excellent walker” (35). But being an excellent walker is a giant step towards being an exquisite dancer. When Miss Bingley attempts to call Darcy's attention to herself by playing “a lively Scotch air,” he surprises Elizabeth by asking, “Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Bennet, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?” She is so surprised that she remains silent, provoking him to repeat his question, to which she replies, “I do not want to dance a reel at all—and now despise me if you dare.” He replies, “Indeed I do not dare” (52). As Austen notes, “Darcy had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger” (52). Thus, Austen reinforces the idea that Darcy is resisting his attraction to Elizabeth because of his prejudice against her class. Her technique has the opposite effect from what is intended, however. Later Darcy acknowledges, “I believed you to be wishing, expecting my addresses” (369). Perhaps, at some level of which she is wilfully ignorant, she deliberately piques his admiration with her playful teasing. As she later declares, “Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind” (208). Such passion may be at the root of her prejudice.

The grand finale of Volume I is, of course, the Netherfield ball on November 26. The Elizabeth—Darcy duo has by now become a trio and the antagonism rendered more complex by the arrival of George Wickham to join the———shire Militia stationed near Meryton. In short, the plot thickens. Besides his handsome face, fine figure, easy manners, and appearance of virtue (Austen is always careful to include the word “appearance” to suggest that Elizabeth cannot see beyond surfaces), Wickham has the added advantage of being able to fuel Elizabeth's anger at Darcy. So blinded is she by her bias against Darcy that she cannot see the impropriety of Wickham's confidences to a virtual stranger nor the impudence of his vilifying his patron behind his back. Jane's tolerant nature provides the perfect foil for Elizabeth's intolerance: when she says, upon hearing Wickham's history of Darcy, “One does not know what to think,” Elizabeth retorts, “I beg your pardon;—one knows exactly what to think” (86): “Attention, forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham” (89).

Anticipating “the conquest of all that remained unsubdued of [Wickham's] heart” (89) at the Netherfield ball—for “to be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love” (9), as Austen reminds us at the outset—Elizabeth is crushed to discover that Wickham has avoided the ball by going to town, and her animosity towards Darcy is exacerbated accordingly. Consequently, she is so surprised by his voluntarily inviting her to dance that, “without knowing what she did, she accepted him” (90)—suggesting that her impulses are right, but her head in the form of her mental schema is at war with her heart. But when Charlotte Lucas remonstrates, “I dare say you will find him very agreeable,” Elizabeth retorts, “Heaven forbid!—That would be the greatest misfortune of all!—To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate!—Do not wish me such an evil” (90). Austen suggests that Elizabeth is well aware of her prejudice: Darcy is the man she loves to hate.

Elizabeth, “amazed at the dignity to which she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy,” employs first silence, then talk to torment him. Initially she maintains a steadfast silence, until, after they had “stood for some time without speaking a word,” and “fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk” (for Darcy is taciturn, while Elizabeth is talkative), she speaks, adding, “It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy.—I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples,” provoking him to ask, “Do you talk by rule then, while you are dancing?” (90-91). She replies, “Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of some, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible” (91). She adds, “We are each of an unsocial, taciturn 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 eclat of a proverb” (91). Her catechism continues as she provokes Darcy by inquiring about his quarrel with Wickham, asking whether he never allows himself to be “blinded by prejudice”: “It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first” (93). Ultimately she succeeds in her design of offending him, and they separate in silence. What Reuben Brower terms “the poetry of wit” or “jeux d'esprit” (168, 171) Andrew Davies, screenwriter of the BBC/A& E adaptation, labels “a fencing match caught in dance” (Birtwistle 71). Indeed, Darcy and Elizabeth do resemble that reluctant couple, Beatrice and Benedick, from Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing, who love to hate and hate to love, and who, in turn, inspired warring couples like Mirabel and Millamant in Congreve's The Way of the World.⁸

No sooner has she achieved her object, however, than circumstances conspire to challenge her complacency. Her admirer, Mr. Collins, on learning that he is in the presence of a relative of his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, announces to Elizabeth his intention of introducing himself to Darcy. Elizabeth is appalled at his effrontery in accosting a man so much his social superior and observes with embarrassment as Collins courts Darcy's contempt. A “most unlucky perverseness” (with the initials J.A.) seats Darcy where he can overhear Mrs. Bennet's insulting comments, just as Elizabeth overheard Darcy's insults at the Meryton Assembly: “What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say nothing he may not like to hear” (99). After dinner, Mary regales the company with her songs. Finally, Collins displays his partiality for Elizabeth by monopolizing her in the dance, where he “gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable partner … can give” (90). Austen concludes, “To Elizabeth it appeared, that had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit, or finer success” (101). It is Darcy's disapprobation that she fears the most, of course, for she does not wish to fuel his prejudice against her connections, indicating that his opinion is of the utmost importance to her. In short, she desires his approbation.

Collins's invitation to the dance proves to be a prelude to his proposal of marriage to Elizabeth. Recall Henry Tilney's comment to Catherine Morland at the cotillion ball in Northanger Abbey: “I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage” (76); so it proves in Pride and Prejudice. After cataloguing his reasons for marrying—not the least compelling being that it is the recommendation of his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh—and assuring her “in the most animated language of the violence of [his] affection” (106), he is incapable of accepting her refusal, assuming that it is her natural delicacy that leads her to refuse, plus the coquetry of an elegant female who wishes him to repeat the offer. Finally, she is forced to insist: “I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time” (107)—famous last words again. Remember them, for these are additional words that she will be obliged to eat. She then declares categorically, “Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart” (109)—a good example of self-deception, for Elizabeth is anything but rational at this point and has little interest in learning the truth, especially where Fitzwilliam Darcy is concerned.

Collins is, of course, a comic counterpart to Darcy, anticipating him first in dancing with, and then in proposing marriage to, Elizabeth. Even their proposals are parallel in some ways, as both detail their reasons for or against marrying. While Collins changes the object of his attentions and proposals with alacrity, however, Darcy stands firm in both his affections and his intentions.

Volume I ends with the overthrow of all Mrs. Bennet's dearest hopes of seeing her two eldest daughters well married—well, married. Elizabeth rejects the proposal of Mr. Collins, who redirects his attentions towards her friend, Charlotte Lucas, almost as readily as he redirected his intentions from Jane to Elizabeth. Jane's hopes are dashed by the news that the Bingley party is returning to London with no prospect of revisiting Netherfield. As a cheerless Christmas season approaches, Mrs. Bennet wallows in the winter of her discontent. Only the visit of the Gardiners consoles the Bennet women. When Aunt Gardiner hears of Elizabeth's preference for Wickham, she cautions her against encouraging such an imprudent attachment: “You have sense, and we all expect you to use it” (144). Elizabeth takes this appeal to her intelligence to heart, and, although she does allow herself one outburst—“Oh! that abominable Mr. Darcy!” (144)—she promises to “do [her] best” (145). When her aunt suggests a tour of the Lakes, she greets the prospect eagerly, exclaiming rhetorically, if disingenuously, “What are men to rocks and mountains?” (154).

Volume II does take the Bennet women far afield: Jane accompanies the Gardiners to London, where she is ignored by the Bingleys and left to languish alone; Elizabeth accepts Charlotte's urgent invitation to visit her new establishment at Hunsford Parsonage in Kent, where Elizabeth is able to admire Collins's conjugal felicity and the condescension of his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh—all delights that she might have been able to call her own: “Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; and he was obliged to walk about the room, while Elizabeth tried to unite civility and truth in a few short sentences” (216).

No sooner is Elizabeth established in Kent, however, than Darcy arrives at Rosings Park with his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam. The intercourse between the Park and the Parsonage provides many opportunities for Elizabeth to tease Darcy about his taciturn temperament: she even twits him about snubbing her at the Meryton Assembly. His excuse of shyness and dislike of small talk may impress the reader, who credits him with being “the strong silent type,” but not the intolerant Elizabeth. As Darcy observes, “We neither of us perform to strangers” (176). Interestingly, this is the first time Darcy refers to himself and Elizabeth as we, suggesting a new level of intimacy.

The Rosings episode constitutes a turning point in Darcy's feelings for Elizabeth. I suggest that there are several reasons for this development. First, Darcy sees Elizabeth for the first time in isolation from her family. Secondly, he realizes that rank is no guarantee of good manners, for he is as embarrassed by the behaviour of his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, as Elizabeth could be by her own relations. Lastly, Colonel Fitzwilliam admires Elizabeth, and, although he makes it clear to her that he cannot afford to entertain any serious intentions towards her, his admiration must carry weight with his cousin, if only to arouse his jealousy.

Easter brings a renewal of Darcy's admiration of Elizabeth. Charlotte Lucas, unblinded by pride, prejudice, or passion, is able to interpret his “earnest, steadfast gaze” (181) and concludes, “My dear Eliza, he must be in love with you” (180). She is convinced that “all her friend's dislike would vanish, if she could suppose him to be in her power” (181). But Fitzwilliam's account of the decisive part played by Darcy in vanquishing all her sister Jane's hopes of happiness arouses Elizabeth's resentment: “If [Darcy's] own vanity … did not mislead him, he was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause of all that Jane had suffered” (186). Then, “as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy” (188), she rereads Jane's letters. It is in this mood of resentment that she greets Darcy's proposal of marriage.

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” (189). The reader, like the heroine herself, is in shock. The effect is as if a singer had changed register, moving from musical comedy to grand opera. The polite social mask is off. Darcy has long been the classic strong silent type, but still waters run deep indeed, and he is, unlike Collins, run away with by the violence of his affection. But where Austen allowed Collins to articulate his reasons for marrying in his own words, she wisely represses Darcy's reasons against marrying, summarizing them in the omniscient narrative. We can assume that his eloquence on the subject of his pride and her inferiority renders him just as rude, however, as did Bingley's initial invitation to partner Elizabeth in the dance, for he provokes her to incivility and accusations of his officious interference with regard to Bingley and Jane and his vicious behaviour to Wickham. Darcy cuts to the quick when he accuses: “These offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design” (192). The gloves are off, and the wigs are on the green. She responds, “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it” (192-93). These are famous last words, Volume II, and Elizabeth will devote all of Volume III to attempting to eat them. She expands her rejection eloquently:

From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

(193)

The lady does indeed protest too much and in the process reveals, ironically, that she has considered marriage to Darcy. However, she does, as a result of this direct attack, achieve the last word. Darcy retires in defeat (or so it appears), leaving Elizabeth in a tumult of emotion, as she cries for half an hour—a torrent of tears that alerts the reader to the emotions Elizabeth refuses to acknowledge.

How curious it is, then, that, although she intends to avoid Darcy, her morning walk the next day takes her to the gates of Rosings Park, whence he emerges to give her a letter that the reader scans with almost as much impatience as the heroine herself. The missive provokes the process that his proposal failed to effect, namely the dismantling of her bias or schema. Darcy achieves this feat by appealing to her reason and her sense of justice, just as her Aunt Gardiner appealed to her sense. And a challenge to her reason and sense of justice must be answered:

With a strong prejudice against every thing he might say, she began his account of what had happened at Netherfield. … His belief of her sister's insensibility, she instantly resolved to be false, and his account of the real, the worst objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and insolence.

(204)

However, his desire to exonerate himself of blame and deserve her approbation by humbling his family pride to confess the scandal of his sister's intended elopement with Wickham ultimately has the desired effect. Like the figure of Justice herself, she “weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be impartiality” (205), in a manner that Reuben Brower calls her “judicial process” (176). Her eyes are opened, and she realizes that “she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd”:

“How despicably have I acted!” she cried.—“I, who have prided myself on my discernment!—I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust.—How humiliating is this discovery!—Yet, how just a humiliation!—Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.—Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.”

(208)

This epiphanic moment constitutes the turning point in Elizabeth's character development. Only when she achieves self-knowledge is she able to perceive Darcy's true character.

Mr. Darcy's letter, she was in a fair way of soon knowing by heart. She studied every sentence: and her feelings towards its writer were at times widely different. When she remembered the style of his address, she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against herself; and his disappointed feelings became the object of compassion. His attachment excited gratitude, his general character respect; but she could not approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal, or feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In her own past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret; and in the unhappy defects of her family a subject of yet heavier chagrin.

(212)

Her reaction to his letter is a lesson in reading and interpretation.⁹ It clarifies her continuum of reactions as she admits the justice of Darcy's prejudice against her relations' and her own defects.

Reunion with Jane tempts Elizabeth to “gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet been able to reason away” (218) by communicating Darcy's proposals to her sister. But, for once, she exercises restraint, until they are at leisure at Longbourn, where she reveals “Darcy's vindication” (225) in relation to Wickham. She concludes, “One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it” (225). She burlesques her bias in accounting for it to her more tolerant sister:

And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying any thing just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

(225-26)

Here she acknowledges her desire to employ her prejudice against Darcy as an opportunity to exercise her wit.

Volume II ends with the effective dismantling of both Darcy's pride and Elizabeth's prejudice. But it also ends with the renewed disappointment of both elder Bennet sisters' marital hopes, and only the prospect of the Gardiners' tour of the Lakes cheers Elizabeth until a change of schedule limits their tour to Derbyshire, the site of Darcy's country estate. “To Pemberley, therefore, they were to go” (241).

While Volume I staged the meeting of Elizabeth and Darcy in her home county of Hertfordshire, and Volume II reunited the pair on the relatively neutral ground of Kent, Volume III reunites them initially on Darcy's own turf of Derbyshire and finally in Hertfordshire once again, bringing their journeys full circle. Elizabeth is suitably impressed by Darcy's estate and thinks, “to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” (245). The testimony to Darcy's good nature by his housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, makes an impression, and, upon viewing his portrait in the gallery, she “thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before” (251). To her great surprise, no sooner does she view his portrait than she meets the man himself. Embarrassed by the perverseness of the meeting and amazed at the alteration in his manner, she is impressed by his civility to the Gardiners and his wish to introduce her to his sister. Elizabeth remains puzzled, but the Gardiners perceive his admiration for their niece and feel “the full conviction that one of them at least knew what it was to love. Of the lady's sensations they remained a little in doubt; but that the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was evident enough” (262). Even Elizabeth is impressed by the alteration in his behaviour and is obliged to adjust her attitude accordingly: “Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude—for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed” (266). Her gratitude inspires her to review her feelings:

She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on the renewal of his addresses.

(266)

Collins is vindicated, for Elizabeth wishes for the very thing she assured Collins she would never desire—namely, to invite a man to repeat his proposals. Fate in the form of the novelist intervenes, however: no sooner is Elizabeth well on the way to a reconciliation with Darcy than her hopes are dashed in the cruellest manner by a letter from Jane informing her that her youngest sister, Lydia, has eloped with none other than George Wickham. A further perversity brings Darcy to wait on Elizabeth at the very moment when the shock of this catastrophe has thrown her into a tumult of emotions; in the heat of the moment, she confesses her sister's shame to Darcy—a striking example of both her trust in his discretion and the level of intimacy that they have attained. His silence and hasty departure, the result of his apparent disapprobation, dash her nascent hopes of reconciliation:

As he quitted the room, Elizabeth felt how improbable it was that they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced in its termination.

(279)

Given the perversity of Elizabeth's nature, it is not surprising that the disgrace brought on the entire Bennet family by Lydia's shame ironically makes Elizabeth aware for the first time of her true feelings for Darcy, for it is human nature to value what we possess only when we have lost it. The achievement of Lydia's marriage to Wickham makes her regret that she ever informed Darcy of the affair (311). It also makes her realize that now “there seemed a gulf impassable between them” (311), for Darcy, even if he could overcome his repugnance at an alliance with the Bennet family, would never connect himself with a family that would make him brother-in-law of the man he so justly despised:

What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that the proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago, would now have been gladly and gratefully received! …

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.

But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their family.

(312)

The reader, however, thanks to the author's narrative skill, is a better judge than Elizabeth of Darcy's character. Not until after Lydia's wedding does Elizabeth learn from her sister's foolish loquacity that Darcy was a witness to her marriage to Wickham. Petitioning Aunt Gardiner prompts a letter revealing all that Darcy has done to effect the marriage, from hunting down the couple to bribing Wickham to marry Lydia by offering to settle his debts and purchase his commission. The motive Darcy professes is regret that “his mistaken pride” led him to conceal Wickham's real viciousness (322). Elizabeth's vanity may be equally to blame, for publication of the truth would have rendered her previous preference for Wickham risible. But she begins to suspect his real motive: “Her heart did whisper, that he had done it for her” (326).

Finally Elizabeth listens to her heart. This Janus-faced heroine has often been led towards Darcy by her heart—at the Meryton Assembly, the Lucas Lodge ball, the Netherfield ball, and at Rosings Park—but has been driven away from him by her head, in the form of her mental schema. Elizabeth's own pride is finally humbled by Darcy's generosity; in a satisfying reversal, she is proud of him:

They owed the restoration of Lydia, her character, every thing to him. Oh! how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For herself she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of himself.

(326-27)

The fact that Darcy proves himself to be not only generous, but also masterful in effecting this felicitous resolution of the situation may also, I suggest, influence Elizabeth's feelings.

September, surprisingly, brings the return of Bingley to Netherfield for the hunting season—to Mrs. Bennet's delight and Jane's distress. He comes to call, bringing that “tall, proud man” whom Mrs. Bennet so detests (334). Elizabeth is mortified by her mother's rudeness to their benefactor:

To Jane, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused, and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive information, he was the person, to whom the whole family were indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just, as what Jane felt for Bingley.

(334)

The words “reasonable and just” counter “proud and prejudiced.” Elizabeth's sense of shame as her mother boasts about Lydia's marriage is such that years of happiness could not compensate her, as she sees her own prejudice burlesqued in her mother's behaviour. Darcy's determined silence inspires her despair: “A man who has once been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the sex, who would not protest against such a weakness as a second proposal to the same woman? There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!” (341). Collins would be gratified at such a vision of hubris humbled.

Jane is more fortunate: with a little help from Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Bingley renews his addresses, and an understanding is reached between this well-suited, good-natured pair—but not until the influential Darcy has confessed to Bingley his subterfuge in concealing from him Jane's presence in London the previous winter and has communicated his approval of the match.

Elizabeth despairs of achieving equal felicity. But help comes from a most unexpected quarter. Lady Catherine de Bourgh proves to be an unlikely dea ex machina whose insolent interference backfires: descending on Longbourn in her chaise and four with the aim of exacting Elizabeth's promise to give up all pretensions to Darcy's hand in marriage in favour of her own daughter, her ladyship underestimates her antagonist's obstinacy, and her efforts achieve the opposite of their intended effect. “Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?” (357), Lady Catherine inquires rhetorically. The answer, apparently, is “Yes, they are,” for Elizabeth resolutely refuses to refuse to marry Darcy. Ironically, her ladyship's complaints of Elizabeth's obstinacy lead Darcy to dare to hope (367). He returns to Longbourn to renew his addresses, but remains steadfastly silent.

Since, as Henry Tilney explained, woman does not have the advantage of choice but only the power of refusal, Elizabeth is driven to subterfuge to bring on the renewal of Darcy's addresses. She forms “a desperate resolution” to invite a proposal by thanking him for his kindness to Lydia: “Mr. Darcy, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of giving relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be wounding your's. I can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my poor sister” (365). He responds, “If you will thank me, … let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you, might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe, I thought only of you” (366). He accepts her invitation: “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.” How different is this diffident address from his previous arrogant proposal! For once, Elizabeth is inarticulate, as she “immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances” (366). Austen writes, “The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do … he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable” (366). Austen declines to repeat Darcy's words to the avid reader. Elizabeth learns that passion is more likely to render a man speechless than eloquent. Later, when she taxes Darcy with taciturnity, he has a ready reply: “You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner,” she protests, and he responds, “A man who had felt less, might” (381).

Only when they have reached an understanding can they confess their previous prejudices; Elizabeth explains “how gradually all her former prejudices had been removed” by his letter (368). Colin Firth says, “He is so profoundly challenged by her that his old prejudices cannot be upheld” (Birtwistle 105). Their competition in conceit becomes a contest in contrition, a contest Darcy clearly wins. He then confesses, “What will you think of my vanity? I believed you to be wishing, expecting my addresses.” Elizabeth replies, “My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally I assure you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits might often lead me wrong.” (369) This exchange suggests what the reader has suspected, namely that Elizabeth, unconsciously, was attempting to attract Darcy's addresses all along, but her prejudice or schema prevented her from interpreting his attentions and her own emotions correctly. She also offers a rational account of Darcy's falling in love with her that bears out our original theory:

The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them. Had you not been really amiable you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you.

(380)

In Cecilia, Fanny Burney writes: “Yet this, however, remember; if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination” (930). Tony Tanner observes, “During a decade in which Napoleon was effectively engaging, if not transforming, Europe, Jane Austen composed a novel in which the most important events are the fact that a man changes his manners and a young lady changes her mind” (103). But changing her mind has always been a lady's prerogative, and, in this case, the reader approves Elizabeth's change of heart. She is such an attractive heroine that the reader wishes to see her rewarded by marital happiness. As Austen writes to her sister Cassandra in 1813, “I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print” (I. 201). Generations of readers have agreed.

Austen does not let Elizabeth off the hook so easily, however. She must run the gauntlet of family and friends, as each points to her well-known prejudice, and she is forced to eat her words repeatedly. First Jane remonstrates, “Oh, Lizzy! do any thing rather than marry without affection” (373). When her father protests, “Lizzy … what are you doing? Are you out of your senses, to be accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?” (376), Austen comments, “How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more reasonable, her expressions more moderate!” (376). When he says, “We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him,” she replies, with tears in her eyes, “I do, I do like him. … I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable” (376). But the worst is to come: Mrs. Bennet's former fulminations against Darcy are nothing to her effusions once he has been accepted. Loquacity is a sure sign of foolishness in Austen's books. Mrs. Bennet's raptures, sprinkled with exclamation marks like a teenage girl's letter, are a comic inversion of her previous prejudices as she gushes:

Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane's is nothing to it—nothing at all. I am so pleased—so happy. Such a charming man!—so handsome! so tall!—Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted.

(378)

Just as Lady Catherine is a parody of Darcy, so Mrs. Bennet is a caricature of Elizabeth, and, just as Lady Catherine absorbs all Darcy's conceit, freeing him to be courteous, so Mrs. Bennet absorbs all Elizabeth's folly, freeing her to be rational, so that the couple can live happily ever after. As Elizabeth assures Jane, “It is settled between us already, that we are to be the happiest couple in the world” (373). One suspects that their union will be more interesting than Jane and Bingley's, however, for, although Darcy has no improper pride, he “had yet to learn to be laught at” (371). Elizabeth, however, has learned to avoid uttering famous last words.

Elizabeth Bennet is not the only Austen protagonist who protests too much, however. Emma Woodhouse insists to Harriet Smith, “I am not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all” (E 84). Not until Harriet herself sets her cap at Mr. Knightley does Emma realize that “Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!” (408). But that is another story—and another essay.

Notes

1. Farrer, for example, thinks that Elizabeth is “subconsciously … in love with” Darcy from the outset (17).

2. Juliet McMaster, in “Talking about Talk in Pride and Prejudice,” states that skill in language “marks Darcy out from the beginning as a man of intelligence, and a fit mate for Elizabeth” (82).

3. Reuben Brower foresees the conclusion in this beginning: “As all ambiguities are resolved and all irony is dropped, the reader feels the closing in of a structure by its necessary end, the end implied in the crude judgment of Darcy in the first ballroom scene” (179).

4. I wish to thank my students for many opportunities to discuss Pride and Prejudice. I also wish to thank my husband, Bruce Stovel, for discussing the novel with me over the years.

5. David Miall writes, “Within psychology, the analysis of narrative has been directed by an information processing approach, in particular by different versions of schema theory” (55).

6. See the Introductory Note in R. W. Chapman's edition of the novel (xi).

7. For a fuller discussion of this subject, see my essay, “‘Every Savage Can Dance’: Choreographing Courtship in the Novels of Jane Austen.”

8. Interestingly, the anonymous reviewer of the novel in the Critical Review for March 1813 writes of Elizabeth, “She is in fact the Beatrice of the tale; and falls in love on much the same principles of contrariety” (Southam 13). For more on this, see Bruce Stovel, “‘A Contrariety of Emotion’: Jane Austen's Ambivalent Lovers in Pride and Prejudice.”

9. This idea is developed in Gary Kelly's essay “The Art of Reading in Pride and Prejudice.”

Works Cited

Austen-Leigh, James Edward. A Memoir of Jane Austen. 1870. Ed. R. W. Chapman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1926.

Birtwistle, Sue, and Susie Conklin. The Making of Pride and Prejudice. London and New York: Penguin, 1995.

Brower, Reuben A. “Light and Bright and Sparkling: Irony and Fiction in Pride and Prejudice.” The Fields of Light: An Experiment in Critical Reading. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951. 164-81.

Burney, Frances. Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress. 1782. Ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Peter Sabor. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Farrer, Reginald. “Jane Austen.” Quarterly Review 228 (1917): 1-30.

Kelly, Gary. “The Art of Reading in Pride and Prejudice.” English Studies in Canada 10 (1984): 156-71.

Litz, A. Walton. Jane Austen: A Study of Her Artistic Development. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.

McMaster, Juliet. “Class.” The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 115-30.

———. “Talking about Talk in Pride and Prejudice.” Jane Austen's Business: Her World and Her Profession. Ed. Juliet McMaster and Bruce Stovel. London: Macmillan and New York: St. Martin's, 1996. 81-94.

Miall, David. “Beyond the Schema Given: Affective Comprehension of Literary Narratives.” Cognition and Emotion 3.1 (1989): 55-78.

Pride and Prejudice. Dir. Simon Langton. Wr. Andrew Davies. With Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. BBC/A& E mini-series, 1995.

Stovel, Bruce. “‘A Contrariety of Emotion’: Jane Austen's Ambivalent Lovers in Pride and Prejudice.” International Fiction Review 14 (1987): 27-33.

Stovel, Nora Foster. “‘Every Savage Can Dance’: Choreographing Courtship in the Novels of Jane Austen.” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 23 (2001): 29-49.

Southam, B.C., ed. Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968.

Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.