by Jane Austen
“If! do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a report is spread abroad?”21
“I never heard that it was.”
“And can you likewise declare, that there is no foundation for it?”
“I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. You may ask questions, which I shall not choose to answer.”
“This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?”
“Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.”22
“It ought to be so; it must be so, while he retains the use of his reason. But your arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family.23 You may have drawn him in.”24
“If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it.”
“Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to such language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world, and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns.”
“But you are not entitled to know mine; nor will such behaviour as this, ever induce me to be explicit.”
“Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?”
“Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will make an offer to me.”
Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied,
“The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind.25 From their infancy, they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of his mother, as well as of her's. While in their cradles, we planned the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished, in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world,26 and wholly unallied to the family!27 Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his tacit engagement with Miss De Bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy?28 Have you not heard me say, that from his earliest hours he was destined for his cousin?”
“Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall certainly not be kept from it, by knowing that his mother and aunt wished him to marry Miss De Bourgh. You both did as much as you could, in planning the marriage. Its completion depended on others. If Mr. Darcy is neither by honour29 nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?”
“Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed30 by his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by every one connected with him. Your alliance31 will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”
“These are heavy misfortunes,” replied Elizabeth. “But the wife of Mr. Darcy must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine.”
“Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude for my attentions to you last spring?32 Is nothing due to me on that score?
“Let us sit down. You are to understand, Miss Bennet, that I came here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose; nor will I be dissuaded from it. I have not been used to submit to any person's whims.33 I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment.”
“That will make your ladyship's situation at present more pitiable; but it will have no effect on me.”
“I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter and my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended on the maternal side, from the same noble line;34 and, on the father's, from respectable, honourable, and ancient, though unti-tled families.35 Their fortune on both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses;36 and what is to divide them? The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections,37 or fortune. Is this to be endured! But it must not, shall not be. If you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere, in which you have been brought up.”
“In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.”38
“True. You are a gentleman's daughter. But who was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition.”
“Whatever my connections may be,” said Elizabeth, “if your nephew does not object to them, they can be nothing to you.”39
“Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?”
Though Elizabeth would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady Catherine, have answered this question; she could not but say, after a moment's deliberation,
“I am not.”
Lady Catherine seemed pleased.
“And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?”
“I will make no promise of the kind.”
“Miss Bennet I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that I will ever recede. I shall not go away, till you have given me the assurance I require.”
“And I certainly never shall give it. I am not to be intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants Mr. Darcy to marry your daughter; but would my giving you the wished-for promise, make their marriage at all more probable? Supposing him to be attached to me, would my refusing to accept his hand, make him wish to bestow it on his cousin? Allow me to say, Lady Catherine, that the arguments with which you have supported this extraordinary application,40 have been as frivolous as the application was ill-judged. You have widely mistaken my character, if you think I can be worked on41 by such persuasions as these. How far your nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell; but you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg, therefore, to be importuned no farther on the subject.”
“Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I am no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous elopement. I know it all; that the young man's marrying her, was a patched-up business,42 at the expence of your father and uncles.43 And is such a girl to be my nephew's sister? Is her husband, is the son of his late father's steward,44 to be his brother? Heaven and earth!—of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”45
“You can now have nothing farther to say,” she resentfully answered. “You have insulted me, in every possible method. I must beg to return to the house.”
And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catherine rose also, and they turned back. Her ladyship was highly incensed.
“You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit46 of my nephew! Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a connection with you, must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?”
“Lady Catherine, I have nothing farther to say. You know my sentiments.”
“You are then resolved to have him?”
“I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”
“It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to obey the claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are determined to ruin him in the opinion of all his friends, and make him the contempt of the world.”
“Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude,” replied Elizabeth, “have any possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either, would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Darcy. And with regard to the res
entment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former were excited by his marrying rae, it would not give me one moment's concern —and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.”
“And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable; but depend upon it I will carry my point.”
In this manner Lady Catherine talked on, till they were at the door of the carriage, when turning hastily round, she added,
“I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention.471 am most seriously displeased.”
Elizabeth made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself. She heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded up stairs. Her mother impatiently met her at the door of the dressing-room, to ask why Lady Catherine would not come in again and rest herself.
“She did not choose it,” said her daughter, “she would go.”
“She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the Collinses were well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare say, and so passing through Meryton, thought she might as well call on you. I suppose she had nothing particular to say to you, Lizzy?”
Elizabeth was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.
1. Current etiquette counseled against visits early in the day (Bingley, who is already at the Bennets, is a different case since he is virtually a family member by now); this visitor's violation ofthat principle is a sign of rudeness.
2. equipage: carriage and horses, and possibly the attendant servants. They would be distinctive to individual families.
3. answer: correspond.
4. post: hired. This could be ascertained because post horses were driven by a man riding one of the front horses, rather than by a man seated on the carriage (see illustration of such a method of driving on p. 397). The use of post horses signaled that it was a visitor from farther away, for those traveling locally would use their own horses if they had them. When Elizabeth traveled from Kent her carriage as well as her horses were hired; in this case, the carriage may be owned by the traveler, which would indicate greater wealth.
5. livery: uniform; they would identify the family employing the servants.
6. Lady Catherine's visit, and her exchange with Elizabeth, is one of the most dramatic episodes in the novel. It serves a number of purposes: it advances the story, specifically by precipitating Elizabeth and Darcy's marriage (though one imagines that this would have happened eventually in any case); it gives further evidence of Elizabeth's intelligence and strength of character, and gives a sense that after marrying Darcy she will not be intimidated by associating with people of a higher rank than she had known; it allows Lady Catherine, one of the most distinctive characters in the novel, to enter the story once more; and finally, it vividly presents, in the person of Lady Catherine, a caricature of the very pride that is central to the theme of the novel, and that Darcy needed to acknowledge and to curb in himself.
7. room: the text gives mixed clues as to the identity of this room. The chapter's first sentence indentifies it as the dining room, but on the next page Lady Catherine calls it a sitting room. She is then described as inspecting a separate “dining-parlour.” The last would be the room where formal dinners occur; this is indicated by its location next to the entrance hall on the ground floor, and its proximity to the drawing room, the room where people withdrew after a formal dinner. The room where they are now may be an informal dining room that is also a sitting room; it could even be the breakfast room mentioned elsewhere, which seems to serve such dual functions.
8. As the one who is superior in social position, it would be up to Lady Catherine to decide whether and when to initiate conversation with those she does not know. That is why Elizabeth sat silently and did not introduce her mother on her own initiative.
9. Now that Mrs. Bennet has been introduced, and Lady Catherine has asked another question, Mrs. Bennet is free, according to the conventions of the day, to speak to her.
10. park: grounds, especially for pleasure, around a home. Having one was a sign of status, which is why, after Lady Catherine belittles this park, Mrs. Bennet eagerly asserts its superiority to the Lucases'.
11. Lady Catherine's brief silence suggests that she was not pleased with Mrs. Bennet's entrance into the conversation.
12. This statement hints at the origin of the report that Lady Catherine will shortly say reached her two days ago.
13. wilderness: term for a wooded area arranged in an elaborate pattern. Wildernesses had been very popular in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, but from the middle of the eighteenth century they had been gradually superceded by shrubberies. The main difference between the two—for both terms could refer to areas involving trees as well as undergrowth—is that wildernesses tended to be arranged in a highly geometric pattern, whereas shrubberies were usually formed in the more serpentine and irregular style that had become popular by Jane Austen's time (see also p. 463, note 64). In Mansfield Park a wilderness is described by the author as being “laid out with too much regularity.” Thus it is probable that Lady Catherine, who has already denigrated the Bennets' park as very small, means to imply a slight insult by describing their wooded area as a wilderness; immediately below the same area is described by the narrator as “the copse,” a completely neutral term. That this could be Lady Catherine's intent is suggested by her calling the area “a prettyish kind of a little wilderness.”
14. hermitage: the dwelling of a hermit or monk. During the eighteenth century the movement toward landscapes and gardens that were more natural and primitive, along with the increasing interest in the medieval and Gothic, led to the frequent construction of mock hermitages on the grounds of estates. They would be built to appear as simple and rustic as possible, and were, if possible, placed in remote or wooded areas. In a few cases, in order to make them as realistic as possible, people were hired to inhabit them as full-time hermits, with the stipulation that they live with monkish austerity and not cut their hair or nails; the extravagance of these requirements generally kept the experiments from succeeding. In other cases, wax hermits were installed in hermitages to make them look more real.
15. parasol: a parasol was considered essential for a lady when walking outdoors, especially during warmer months, in order to keep her from getting tanned.
16. Thus Lady Catherine helps give Elizabeth a renewed appreciation for Darcy, for even in his worst moments he was never as disagreeable as his aunt.
17. A boast similar to one made by Darcy earlier. An early sketch of Jane Austen's, “Letter the Third,” contains an aristocratic lady, arrogant and unpleasant like Lady Catherine, who also boasts repeatedly of her frankness as she issues insulting words to a young woman of lower social rank.
18. The source of this report is revealed shortly (see p. 660). It also turns out that Lady Catherine heard the report in the evening, which meant that it was too late for her to leave immediately. This is why, despite her hurry, she has only arrived two days later; it is possible that she reached the Bennets' vicinity on the day she set out, which would allow her to visit them early the following morning.
19. injure him so much: do him such an injustice, malign him so much.
20. Lady Catherine's hurry in coming has already been indicated by her arrival in a chaise, rather than the barouche she spoke of traveling in earlier. The latter carriage would normally be preferable since it was more luxurious and it displayed one's wealth more conspicuously; a chaise, however, was faster. For illustrations of the two carriages, see pp. 389 and 397.
21. abroad: widely, or outside of one's home. Lady Catherine's supposition is that the Benn
ets have purposely circulated the rumor in order to make a marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth more likely. Since it was considered dishonorable for a man to break an engagement, making people in general believe that an engagement existed could be one means of pressuring a man to marry a woman.
22. Elizabeth avoids answering the question directly, for if she were to answer directly she would either have to lie or to tell Lady Catherine of Darcy's earlier proposal.
23. That is, his obligation to his family to marry someone of a suitable social position. This was considered a very important obligation at the time, especially for someone of high social rank.
24. The idea of a woman drawing a man in, especially with her “arts and allurements,” was a common one at the time. Jane Austen, drawing on earlier literary examples, presents a title character who is an expert at seducing and gulling men in the unfinished novel, Lady Susan.
25. What is peculiar, i.e. special or distinctive, about the engagement is that it was formed in the plans of Darcy's mother and Lady Catherine, rather than by Darcy and Miss De Bourgh themselves. Since this is not a society in which arranged marriages occur (even though parents are expected to have a say in their children's marriage), parental plans like that in no way constitute a real engagement.
26. no importance in the world: no social significance or rank.
27. Marriages among the upper classes frequently involved people whose families were related, or allied, in some way, for such marriages could further strengthen the family ties that were so crucial in this society in determining power, wealth, and position, especially among the upper classes. This is a critical reason why first cousin marriages, such as that envisioned here, were tolerated, and why Lady Catherine and her sister would have been concerned to plan a marriage while their children were still in their cradles. Their incentive to match the two children would have been strengthened by the knowledge that both were heirs of wealthy estates, which means that a union of the two would greatly enrich each of their families.
