remember what Charlotte Lucas had said, very early in Jane and Bingley's acquaintance, when Elizabeth had remarked to her that though Jane
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was falling in love with Bingley, her serenity and self-control were such that Elizabeth did not think anyone else would be able to notice it.
"'It may perhaps be pleasant,' replied Charlotte, 'to be able to impose on the public in such a case: but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and then it will be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin freely;--a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.'"
"'But She does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If I can perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton indeed not to discover it too.'"
"'Remember, Eliza, he does not know Jane's disposition as you do.'"
The suddenly brought about marriage of Charlotte and Mr. Collins, which is in its way one of the most interesting things in the book, is led up to before the reader has any suspicion of what is to happen. At the Netherfield Ball, before Mr. Collins has made his famous
proposal to Elizabeth, he exacerbates her almost beyond endurance by his pertinacious attentions; as she has refused to dance with him, she is not able, in the etiquette of the day, to accept another partner; therefore she has to sit and endure Mr. Collins, who says he had rather sit by her than dance with anybody else. Her only moments of relief are when Charlotte Lucas
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comes to them and kindly diverts some of Mr. Collins' conversation to herself.
The difference between the meretricious, dishonest Wickham and his father, who had been the trusted steward and lifelong friend of old Mr. Darcy, is explained in a single statement. The elder Wickham had had an extravagant wife.
The celestial brightness of Pride and Prejudice is unequalled even in Jane Austen's other work; after a life of much disappointment and grief, in which some people would have seen nothing but tedium and emptiness, she stepped forth as an author, breathing gaiety and youth, robed in dazzling light. The penetration, the experience, the development of a mature mind, are latent in every line of the
construction, in every act and thought; but the whole field of the novel glitters as with sunrise upon morning dew. The impression cannot be wholly analyzed and accounted for, but it is worthwhile noting that in this book there are no people who are thrown in upon themselves by an unsympathetic atmosphere, like Fanny Price; no one who is laboring under a painful secret like Jane Fairfax; no one whose natural frame of mind is one of stormy light and shade, like Marianne Dashwood; no one whose life has been radically altered by a killing past of unhappiness like Anne Elliot; there is
disappointment in the book, and agitation, and acute distress, but the characters are all, even Wickham's, of an open kind, despite their individual variety.
Much of the novel's charm is created by the relationship of the two sisters; the idea that we have here something of the relationship of Jane and Cassandra is inescapable, particularly in such a passage as:
"I was uncomfortable enough --I was very uncomfortable--I may say, unhappy. And with no one to speak to of what I felt, no Jane to comfort me, and
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say that I had not been so very weak and vain and nonsensical as I knew I had! Oh, how I wanted you!" Cassandra Austen is to us something of a sibyl; she is a veiled presence whose face we never see. Her sister is always talking to her; and we listen to her sister's voice and watch the changing expression of her face, but we never see the person to whom Jane is turned. Even the people who tried to give some account of her said very little. She was devoted to Jane, and thought nobody good enough for her, but one; she admired
Jane's work with a full, intelligent participation. She was
exceedingly reserved; she had very strict and delicate notions of honor. Her nephews and nieces remembered her as "sensible and charming": Fanny was "energetic" in her longings for her Aunt Cassandra when a party had come to Godmersham without her. Jane had fancy and invention and a delicious faculty for nonsense; but Caroline Austen remembered that she was sometimes "very grave"; in their early middle age Cassandra seemed, to the younger
generation, the more equably cheerful of the two. So much we piece together; but one quality of Cassandra's we recognize for ourselves: she had a striking sense of humor. In acknowledging one of her letters, Jane declared her to be "one of the finest comic writers of the age." Would Cassandra but read her own letters through five times, she might get some of the pleasure out of them that her sister did.
Jane sent delighted thanks for the "exquisite piece of workmanship"
which had been brought into Henry's breakfast room among the
other letters.
Now a letter from Jane Bennet would never have ranked as an
exquisite piece of workmanship. A partial sister could not have described her as one of the first comic writers of the age. If she had been, Mr. Bingley would not have fallen in love with her. Some characteristics of hers seem to suggest
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Cassandra Austen: she was perfect with Mrs. Gardiner's children, and when Lydia inadvertently burst out with the information that Mr.
Darcy had been at her wedding, and then exclaimed: "But, gracious me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised them so faithfully! What will Wickham say? It was to be such a secret!" Jane replied: "If it was to be a secret, say not another word on the subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further."
But Jane Bennet would not have been described as one who
"admired so few people"; on the contrary, she had the lovely, gentle, candid approach that both men and women find so charming: even Bingley's sisters were attracted to her; she "looked to like." Elizabeth said, when she found that her sister was pleased with Bingley: "I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person."
Jane delighted in Elizabeth's liveliness, but she never said a lively thing herself; but for the fact that the term conveys a sense of reproach, we should say she had no sense of humor. She was
inclined to take Elizabeth's remarks au pied de la lettre; she said she could hardly be happy, even if Bingley did propose to her, knowing that his relations and friends were against the match; Elizabeth said:
"'You must decide for yourself, and if, upon mature deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you, by all means, to refuse him.' 'How can you talk so!' said Jane, faintly smiling. 'You must know that though I should be exceedingly
grieved at their disapprobation, I could not hesitate.'"
"Mild" and "steady" are words used in describing her; her very beauty was of the reposeful cast; she was not so
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light nor so used to running as Elizabeth; she was the sooner out of breath when they pursued Mr. Bennet across the paddock. In every respect she forms the ideal contrast to her mercurial sister, whose face, Miss Bingley said, was too thin, and whose eyes enchanted Mr.
Darcy with "their shape and color, and the eye-lashes, so remarkably fine."
Of the young men, Bingley and Wickham sustain the sense of gaiety and open good humor which is a part of the novel's atmosphere.
Bingley is simple, modest, easily led; but with a disposition to be pleased. His impulsively affectionate behavior to Jane when she and Elizabeth are at Netherfield; his sending his inquiries to Elizabeth by a housemaid very early in the morning, long before she received any
from the two elegant ladies who waited on his sisters; his piling up the fire and his anxiety lest Jane should be sitting in a draft when she came down after dinner, are all a part of his character; so is his weakness, his dependence on Darcy's stronger mind; but even in that he laughs at himself. It is he who supplies that masterpiece among thumbnail sketches, of Darcy at Pemberley. "I declare I do not know a more awful object than Darcy on particular occasions, and in particular places; at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening, when he has nothing to do."
The character of Wickham, though so base, is not of a kind to cloud the brilliant surface of the mirror. A curious degree of sexual attraction often goes with a lively, unreliable disposition, which may either be somewhat superficial but perfectly well-meaning, or, driven by circumstances which it has not the strength to withstand, become that of a scoundrel. Wickham was well on the way to being a
scoundrel; but his sexual fascination was so great that Elizabeth Bennet, who was normally of a very critical turn of mind,
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saw at first absolutely nothing in him but what made him seem the most charming man she had ever met. Even Mrs. Gardiner thought him delightful and only warned Elizabeth against him because he was not in the position to support a wife. "You have sense, and we all expect you to use it." Even when the whole of his very discreditable story had been exposed, and Mr. Darcy had with
difficulty brought him into marrying Lydia Bennet, Wickham's
vanity made him still exert all his known powers of attraction on the family. The goaded Mr. Bennet said to Elizabeth: "'He is as fine a fellow as ever I saw. He simpers and smirks and makes love to us all.'" Wickham's epitaph in the story is perhaps Mr. Bennet's finest flight. Speaking to Elizabeth: "'I admire all my three sons-in-law highly,' said he; ' Wickham, perhaps, is my favorite; but I think I shall like your husband quite as well as Jane's.'"
Elizabeth Bennet has perhaps received more admiration than any other heroine in English literature. Stevenson's saying, that when she opened her mouth he wanted to go down on his knees, is particularly interesting because it is the comment of a man on a woman's idea of a charming woman. Not less significant is Professor Bradley's: "I am meant to fall in love with her, and I do." She is unique. The only girl between whom and herself there is any hint of resemblance is
Benedict's Beatrice. The wit, the prejudice against a lover, the warm and generous indignation against the ill usage of a cousin or a sister, remind us, something, one of the other. She attacks the mind in two ways:
. . . when she moves you see
Like water from a crystal over-filled,
Fresh beauty tremble out of her, and lave
Her fair sides to the ground.
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She is also completely human. Glorious as she is, and beloved of her creator, she is kept thoroughly in her place. She was captivated by Wickham, in which she showed herself no whit superior to the rest of female Meryton. She also toyed with the idea of a fancy for Colonel Fitzwilliam, who was much attracted by her. "But Colonel Fitzwilliam had made it clear that he had no intentions at all, and, agreeable as he was, she did not mean to be unhappy about him."
Above all there is her prejudice against Darcy, and though their first encounter was markedly unfortunate, she built on it every dislike it could be made to bear; her eager condemnation of him and her no less eager remorse when she found that she had been mistaken, are equally lovable.
The serious side of her nature is perhaps nowhere better indicated than in the chapter where Charlotte Lucas secures and accepts Mr.
Collins' proposal and then has to tell Elizabeth that she has done so.
"The possibility of Mr. Collins' fancying himself in love with her friend had once occurred to Elizabeth within the last day or two; but that Charlotte could encourage him seemed almost as far from
possibility as that she could encourage him herself; and her
astonishment was consequently so great as to overcome at first the bounds of decorum, and she could not help crying out--
"'Engaged to Mr. Collins! my dear Charlotte, impossible!'
"The steady countenance which Miss Lucas had commanded in telling her story gave way to a momentary confusion here on
receiving so direct a reproach; though, as it was no more than she expected, she soon regained her composure, and calmly replied--
"'Why should you be surprised, my dear Eliza? Do you think it incredible that Mr. Collins should be able to procure
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any woman's good opinion, because he was not so happy as to
succeed with you?'
"But Elizabeth had now recollected herself; and making a strong effort for it, was able to assure her, with tolerable firmness, that the prospect of their relationship was highly grateful to her, and that she wished her all imaginable happiness.
"'I see what you are feeling,' replied Charlotte. 'You must be surprised, very much surprised, so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it all over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic; you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and, considering Mr. Collins' character, connections and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.'
"Elizabeth quietly answered: 'Undoubtedly,' and after an awkward pause, they returned to the rest of the family."
It is a scene between two young women, both of them normal,
pleasant and good; the conversation is of the briefest; in it the more remarkable of the two speaks only twice, and less than a dozen words in all; but what a world of thought and feeling, experience and philosophy it conjures up!
Mr. Darcy would not perhaps have acknowledged it, but of all her attractions it was Elizabeth's independence which charmed him
most; by standing off from him, she gave him, unconsciously, an opportunity really to see her. His quiet reply to Miss Bingley that there was meanness in any of the deceptions women sometimes
condescended to use for captivating men, suggests that though she was the worst offender, she had not been the only one. For the first time in his life he met an attractive woman who not only did not try to draw him in, but turned on him with anger and disgust
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when she found that, all unwittingly, she had done it. Her rejection of his proposal is of course the climax of his experience in finding that he had to be agreeable to a woman before she would be
agreeable to him; but the reader perceives, long before Elizabeth perceives it herself, how much he was attracted by her
unselfconscious behavior; as, for instance, when she almost ran from Meryton to Netherfield before breakfast to see Jane, "jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity." When she was shown into the breakfast room, with the hem of her petticoat deep in mud, she had not the least idea that Mr. Darcy, while
wondering whether the occasion justified her coming so far in such a manner, was admiring "the brilliancy which exercise had given her complexion."
The character of Fitzwilliam Darcy has been said to have no
counterpart in modern society. The error is a strange one. Darcy's uniting gentle birth with such wealth is indeed an anachronism.
Today death duties would have felled the Pemberley woods and the estate passed into the hands of ales and stout. But Darcy's essential character is independent of circumstances. He had the awkwardness and stiffness of a man who mixes little with society and only on his own terms, but it was also the awkwardness and stiffness that is found with Darcy's physical type, immediately recognizable among the reserved and inarticulate English of today. That his behavior in the early part of the book is owing to a series of external
circumstances rather than to his essential character is very carefully shown, and we have a further proof of how easy it was to
misunderstand him: when he and Elizabeth were becomin
g
reconciled to each other at Lambton, and Elizabeth had suddenly to give him the news of Lydia's elopement, he was quite silent and took an abrupt departure. She thought his behavior owing to his redoubled disgust
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at her family; it was really consternation at a state of affairs for which, as one who had failed to expose Wickham to society, he
thought himself partially responsible.
That his character was actually quite different from what it appeared to be on the surface is of course revealed by his behavior once the shock of Elizabeth's abuse has made him realize how it struck other people. It is a piece of extremely subtle characterization that when Elizabeth first met Lady Catherine, she thought that she and Mr.
Darcy were alike, and after she had fallen in love with Darcy, she wondered how she could ever have imagined a resemblance. We do not, however, doubt that the resemblance was there. It was a family likeness, accentuated on the one hand by a harsh and arrogant nature and on the other by a shy and uncommunicative one. This view of Darcy is borne out by the drawing of his sister. Georgiana Darcy was a very well-meaning girl, but she was so extremely shy that society was an agony to her; and though for her brother's sake she was longing to please Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner, it was all that her gentle, pleasant governess could do to guide her through the
occasion of their call as became the lady of Pemberley.
That some of his real nature had been, if unconsciously, perceived by Elizabeth before their reconciliation is proved by one of Jane Austen's rare and very beautiful touches of sensibility. It occurs when Elizabeth and her party are being taken round Pemberley by the housekeeper and arrive at the picture gallery. "In the gallery were many family portraits, but they could have little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked on in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested her--and she beheld a striking resemblance of Mr. Darcy,
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