through his love for Lizzy that he comes to understand (and care) about how prideful he has seemed to others.

It is possible to map the characteristics of “domestic novels” onto the structure of Pride and Prejudice: the entailment of Longbourne presents a (distant) threat of homelessness; Lizzy does come into self knowledge about herself, and is able to defeat her adversary Lady Catherine and “win” her place in the world at Darcy’s side. But Lizzy is hardly an ”exemplar” of any particular value. None of the other characters can be said to supply the place of the typical foils for the heroines of domestic novels (none of the women are ”passive,” for example), and the some of the pictures of domestic life we have (Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Charlotte and Mr. Collins) are more pragmatic—or comic—than idealized. In my view, Austen’s genius at rendering complex characters, and her delight in skewering social conventions, puts her work in a different class that “domestic novel”—probably its own class.

A domestic novel, also called a sentimental novel or women's fiction really reached its heyday from 1820-1865, though there are examples reaching back to the mid 1700's.  Pride and Prejudice was published before its heyday in 1813, but Jane Austin was known through her letters to be influenced by Samuel Richardson, who was one of the forerunners in the genre.

Pride and Prejudice does focus primarily on emotional matters, which is the hallmark of a domestic novel.  Lizzy fits the "practical woman" template, and does fight for self mastery through the novel and does make a marriage, all of which are typical of a domestic novel. 

However, Austin's Sense and Sensibility is considered to be a more pinnacle piece in the genre, due to the witty, almost satirical version of the genre.

The genre classified as "domestic fiction" became popular from the early to mid 1800's and is also found under categories such as "women's fiction", or sentimental fiction.

This type of literature is characterized for centering the plot around a young woman, often in distress, and unable to solve her main problems due to the unequal social adequacy of women. According to Nina Baym, who wrote Woman's Fiction, this genre can be defined as

...the story of a young girl who is deprived of the supports she had rightly or wrongly depended on to sustain her throughout life and is faced with the necessity of winning her own way in the world . . . . At the outset she takes herself very lightly--has no ego, or a damaged one, and looks to the world to coddle and protect her . . . .To some extent her expectations are reasonable--she thinks that her guardians will nurture her . . . But the failure of the world to satisfy either reasonable or unreasonable expectations awakens the heroine to inner possibilities. By the novel's end she has developed a strong conviction of her own worth as a result of which she does ask much of herself. She can meet her own demands, and, inevitably, the change in herself has changed the world's attitude toward her, so much that was formerly denied her now comes unsought

This being said, there are plenty of themes that are completely in tandem with this definition. In Pride and Prejudice more than one female is completely dependent on the expectations that society bestows upon them. In this novel, women depend on marriage to rise and survive in society, yet, their social status impede them from being able to marry the way they wished. Additionally, an entailment placed upon the family makes the women destitute upon the death of their father since there are no male heirs that can legally inherit. This means that men were the only people in society with the right to own property.

If you can put yourself in their situation, it would be very hard to comprehend how society can just decide who is worthy and who is not; who has the right to freedom and joy and who doesn't.

Hence, Pride and Prejudice epitomizes the meaning of domestic, sentimental fiction.

In many ways, domestic life is at the center of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, as it is a novel concerned with the home and the family. In general, it could be said that domestic life in the novel is reflected as the single most important factor in determining one's station, comfort, and status in life. For instance, the landed gentry (Darcy's social class) enjoy the fat of the land and can move freely about in elite social circles without worrying about needing to work. The Gardiners, however, while not poor by any means, occupy a lower rung in the social ladder simply because their family has made its wealth through trade. As such, the Gardiner family is thought of as lesser than those families, such as Darcy's, who have inherited their wealth through the ownership of land. Here, we can see that domestic life is dominated by the reputation (and usually a monetary reputation) of one's family. 

 Thus, there is understandably a scramble to "marry well," which means marrying into a rich family, as doing so will secure a stable social position for the future. It is this impulse that provokes Mrs. Bennet to tirelessly hunt for husbands for her daughters and Darcy to be initially hesitant and rude in his pursuit of Elizabeth. By focusing the novel so intently on this scramble to secure an eligible family, Austen also illustrates the importance of one's domestic life during the era in which the book takes place.