Pride and Prejudice: Adaptations of Austen

[Ethel]

I think, imho only of course, that too much is made of Lizzie's supposedly "lower class-ness". It is true that Darcy is grander than Lizzy, but he is only richer, which is all I will say for fear of spoilers. Miss Bingley sneering at Lizzie is not quite sneering at Lizzie for being "low class" because if Lizzie WAS low class, the Bennett girls would NEVER have been invited to Netherfield. The Bingleys are not QUITE as "top drawer" as Mr. Darcy, either. Why do I say that? Because Mr. Bingley does not have an "estate", he is not a "landed gentleman". If he was, he wouldn't be at Netherfield, he'd be wherever his estate was. I suspect that the Bingley family is a "new" family, one recently made wealthy, perhaps by Mr. Bingley's father or grandfather. Miss Bingley is not 100% sure of her own status and not 100% at ease in Mr. Darcy's company. Her constant denigration of Lizzy comes as much from her own insecurity as anything else, I think. And she sees Lizzy as a rival from the first second they meet. Lizzy is an extremely attractive girl.

Well, but I don't quite agree with this. I think you have put your finger on Austen's point - that superiority of mind transcends class (though only to a degree) - but I think there is no question that (personal attractions aside) Darcy is out of Lizzie's class. Again - I hope this isn't too tedious - from the end notes of my edition:

This is a quotation from Clara Reeve's Plans of Education (1792):

The nobility of this land are rich and powerful, but there is a distinction between the different degrees and titles, and also between the old and new nobility, which the older families well understand.

The next order, are the old families of wealth and consequence; some of whom have refused titles that they thought it beneath them to accept; whose families are older, and their fortunes superior to many of the nobility.

In the third class, I would place those who have acquired great wealth by any profession or calling, and whose wealth, however gained, stands in lieu of birth, merit, accomplishments, to the world, and also to themselves. I mean only those overgrown and enormous fortunes which we have seen in our days...

Fourthly, I would reckon the inferior gentry, who can only count hundreds, where the above classes number thousands a year. In this class every real blessing and comfort of life is to be found, and those who know how to enjoy them, with virtue and moderation, are the wisest and happiest of mankind.

Darcy would be in the second category; Lizzie in the fourth. (And Bingley, perhaps, in the third.) There is a further note in my edition that says: "Darcy's income puts him among the 400 wealthiest families in the country."

So, yes, Darcy is a gentleman and Elizabeth is a gentleman's daughter. So far they are equal. Yet they are not equal. Darcy's estate and income put him among the great of the land. Elizabeth, with her tiny dowry and unfashionable education, is simply not in his class. Which he clearly feels, despite his attraction to her.

It is telling, to me, that Mr. Darcy is such a close friend of Mr. Bingley. There are several reasons, one of which is that Mr. Darcy can boss Bingley around. But why, if Mr. Darcy is so hotsy-totsy, would he be a friend to Bingley at all? Mr. Darcy is not an aristocrat, but a wealthy landed gentleman. Somehow Bingley came into his orbit and was found suitable as a friend. I don't recall that their friendship is explained, although I could be wrong. Likely they met at school.

Actually, the friendship between Darcy and Bingley is a bit of a puzzle. One suggestion I have read is that they knew each other at Eton or the like, and that Bingley was Darcy's 'fag' at school (a younger boy who was assigned to run errands and so forth for an older one - nothing to do with homosexuality.) Clearly Darcy values Bingley's good and ingenuous nature though.

[Ethel]

One of the most attractive qualities in a person is confidence and with confidence comes arrogance. In fact one could say that arrogance is simply the extreme of confidence. Darcy has that sort of artless arrogance that is appealing

Actually, my observation has been that people who are truly confident come across as open and sincere. No need to squeeze into your shell when you can face the world without fear. It is insecurity that is arrogant. (Conversely, someitimes people's perception of a person's superiority makes them react defensively and label him/her as arrogant, but that's a different story)

I think Darcy is introverted and insecure in society and hides behind the mask of bored arrogance. I've seen a few people like that around the boards, too.

Ah, Frelga. You touch on something that has been debated ad infinitum at Pemberley. Was Darcy shy and insecure? Or just so unused to exerting himself socially that he behaved at times boorishly out of complete indifference? I can actually argue this question either way, and perhaps the answer is, it's a bit of both.

[Cerin]

Ethel, your citations aren't tedious at all, but most enriching. Please don't hesitate to continue sharing them!

But Mrs Bennet says such absurd things.

Yes, you're quite right. That remark about the other daughters was ridiculous.

Clearly Darcy values Bingley's good and ingenuous nature though.

Yes, I think they are naturally good foils for each other.

The allusion here is to Gilpin's Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty...particularly the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland, and Westmorland (1786), where, in his comments on the prints included in the book, he explains picturesque principles through his 'doctrine of grouping larger cattle': 'Two will hardly combine ... But with three, you are almost sure of a good group ...

That is priceless, and they deserved it!


Once again there seems to be a natural break after the next four chapters, so my comments will cover Chapters 13-16.

Well, things are getting complicated! Enter Mr. Collins and Mr. Wickham!

Once again, I'm not sure I would have quite picked up on the ridiculousness of Mr. Collins right away, without the benefit of Elizabeth's and Mr. Bennet's comments directly after the reading of his letter.

Mr. Bennet remarked that he thought this ridiculousness promised well. Is that because he thinks he'll be able to manipulate Mr. Collins in some way?

I was wondering about this from Chapter 14, where Mr. Collins is referring to Lady Catherine's daughter: 'She has one only daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very extensive property.'

How is it that Lady DeBourgh's daughter may inherit, but Mr. Bennet's may not?

I wonder what Elizabeth will have to say about Mr. Collins plans to marry her?!

I wonder if Mrs. Bennet would have been as pleased with the idea if she was bright enough to perceive his idiosyncracies, or if the need to have the daughters provided for would blind her to his faults?

I wonder what Mr. Bennet will think of Mr. Collins' idea to marry Lizzie?! But surely with his cleverness, he would have perceived that intent without being told? Perhaps he is confident of being able to manipulate Mr. Collins away from that plan?

I have to confess that with the repeated references to Mr. Collins' prattling about his house and gardens, I wondered if he might be gay.


Now about Mr. Wickham. Does anyone else think the author is laying it on a little thick? Is he just a bit too good to be true?

'most gentlemanlike appearance'
'All were struck with the stranger's air ...'
'His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best parts of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address.'
'a happy readiness of conversation -- a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming;'
'but Mr. Wickham was as far beyond them all [the other officers] in person, countenance, air, and walk, as they were superior to the broad-faced stuffy uncle Philips, breathing port wine, who followed them into the room.'
'and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation ... made her [Elizabeth] feel that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.'
'but his manners recommended him to everybody. Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done gracefully.'

Am I wrong, or is there in general some imputation of higher character along with physical beauty?


I love this, from the meeting of Bingley and Darcy with the Bennet daughters: 'Mr. Darcy ... was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes on Elizabeth ...'



From the meeting of' Darcy and Wickham: 'Both changed colour, one looked white, the other red.'

So who do we think turned white, and who red? I say Darcy turned white.

There is some really biting sarcasm here in describing the efforts to accommodate Mr. Collins' 'compliments' and apologies.

Well, I'm all discombobulated with the revelations from Mr. Wickham about Mr. Darcy. The plot is definitely thickening.

I was thinking about the division of the characters. We have characters who are almost entirely likable:

Elizabeth
Jane
Mr. Bingley
Charlotte
Mr. Wickham (though in this case, I think it is based entirely on observations made about him, not on what we directly observe him doing or saying)


We have characters who are almost entirely unlikable:

Miss Bingley
Mrs. Hurst
Mrs. Bennet
Mary Bennet
Mr. Collins

We have a couple of mixed characters in my view:

Mr. Bennet (who is clever and intelligent but can be cruel)
Mr. Darcy (who is complex and interesting but can be condescending, rude and arrogant)

I thought I had a point to that, but I'm not sure now that I do.

[Frelga]

Ethel, I am humbled by your erudition. And the bit about cattle is priceless.

Cerin, I enjoy your observations very much.

Once again, I'm not sure I would have quite picked up on the ridiculousness of Mr. Collins right away, without the benefit of Elizabeth's and Mr. Bennet's comments directly after the reading of his letter.

Can he be a sensible man, sir?
Love that line. And it shows Lizzy's priorities.

Mr. Bennet remarked that he thought this ridiculousness promised well. Is that because he thinks he'll be able to manipulate Mr. Collins in some way?

Personally, I think Mr. Bennet is so self-absorbed, he cares of nothing beyond his own amusement. He expects Mr. Collins to entertain him and that is all he asks for.

I wonder what Elizabeth will have to say about Mr. Collins plans to marry her?!

You have some delicious reading ahead of you is all I will say. But you know that.

I have to confess that with the repeated references to Mr. Collins' prattling about his house and gardens, I wondered if he might be gay.

Never thought of that. I think he is trying to advertise what a splendid husband he will make for one of the daughters. Plus, he's a prat.

So who do we think turned white, and who red? I say Darcy turned white.

I thinks so, too.

[Primula Baggins]

Lady Catherine's daughter can inherit because the property was not entailed—meaning, the estate was not tied specifically to the male line, which meant a distant cousin like Mr. Collins would inherit rather than any daughter. The entail could be "cut off" if both father and son made a legal agreement to do so, I gather (Ethel probably knows), but Mr. Bennet had no son to agree to this and thus had no power to control how Longbourn estate was left. He could only divide among his widow and daughters the very limited amount of money that presumably was under his own control.

[Ethel]

Lady Catherine's daughter can inherit because the property was not entailed—meaning, the estate was not tied specifically to the male line, which meant a distant cousin like Mr. Collins would inherit rather than any daughter. The entail could be "cut off" if both father and son made a legal agreement to do so, I gather (Ethel probably knows), but Mr. Bennet had no son to agree to this and thus had no power to control how Longbourn estate was left. He could only divide among his widow and daughters the very limited amount of money that presumably was under his own control.

We don't actually know whether Lady Catherine's estate was entailed. If there were no other male heirs in the line of Lady Catherine's husband, the daughter would still inherit. Similarly, if Mr Collins did not exist and there was no other male heir in Mr Bennet's line, the Bennet girls would have inherited (equally - primogeniture only applied to males.)

Prim is correct that if Mr Bennet had had a son, and if the son when of legal age agreed, the entail could be broken. Of course that's asking a lot of a son - to agree to split his inheritance equally with his siblings when he is entitled to the whole thing. I think this did not often happen.

Prim is also correct that, upon the death of Mr Bennet, Mrs Bennet and the girls are likely to be in a very bad way. Hence Mrs Bennet's concern for getting the girls married well.

There's more than you ever wanted to know about entails here.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, at one point I think Lady Catherine says something like "No need was seen to leave the estate from the female line in Sir Lewis DeBourgh's family." So I think it was not entailed.

Thanks for the link, Ethel! I've poked around Pemberley, but never found my way to that page, and it's useful.

[vison]

Entails are very confusing. Even Lady Catherine de Bourgh was confused. Obviously her husband's estate was NOT entailed, since her daughter appears to be the heiress. However, her daughter will NOT inherit the title. Lady Catherine was the widow of a baronet, perhaps even a knight. I doubt very, very much that Lady Catherine's husband's estate was very magnificent or old, because if it had been it is almost 100% certain that it would have been entailed on the male line, despite her remark.

An entail has legal limits: I can't recall exactly, but it could only be entailed on the life of the next heir, or 21 years after the birth of HIS son, so generally entails were renewed in each generation. This was not always so. Primogeniture was often a beastly unfair system, but it did keep the big estates intact. It was next to impossible to mortgage entailed land, so that was one plus factor. Land inherited under entail could not be sold by the heir as long as the entail was in force for the next generation. As in the case of the Bennetts (or rather their hopes), entails can be ended by agreement. The reversion of the estate can be bought and sold, if everyone agrees. But it is very, very complicated and difficult.

Here is a more or less simple explanation of the "Entail": Traditionally, a fee tail was created by words of grant in the deed: "to A and the heirs of his body." The crucial difference between the words of conveyance and the words that created a fee simple, "to A and his heirs," is that the heirs "in tail" must be the children begotten by the landowner. It was also possible to have "fee tail male," which only sons could inherit, and "fee tail female," which only daughters could inherit; and "fee tail special," which had a further condition of inheritance, such as that only the owner's children by a particular spouse could inherit it. Land subject to these conditions was said to be entailed or in tail. The restrictions themselves were entailments.

Generally speaking, the entail applied only to "the family estate", whatever its original form was, generally the initial grant of land by whatever monarch, some pre-dating the Conquest. Families could and did acquire huge holdings in land and could and did add them to the estate, or they could be left to others than the entail required. Land passed by entail without a will. The "owner" had only a life interest in the property and that was all that could be passed on.

Very rarely a title passed to a female: the first Duke of Marlbourough had no son, so his daughter became Duchess after his death. This was done as an extraordinary favour to the Churchills, due to the tremendous service John Churchill performed to the country. It was felt important to keep his title alive.

The title was separate from the estate. There are nobles walking about among us now whose families lost their land generations ago, but as long as there is an heir, the title will not die.

An interesting novel about inheritance is Ralph the Heir, by Anthony Trollope. Or, Is He Popinjoy? by the same author.

A question for our Austen Virgins: how do you think the words of the title apply to what you have read so far? How does "pride" figure into the story, and on whose part, especially? How does "prejudice" figure into the story, and on whose part, especially?

Well, okay, it is three questions.

[samaranth]

Can I post now? Because I see I’ve arrived just in time for Mr Collins, and I've been sitting on my hands for the past couple of days waiting for Alatar and Padme, but it’s so hard to resist!

In most cases in P&P we build our understanding of a character by hearing what they say and seeing what they do. We are very rarely given an insight into their hearts and minds. When it does happen almost exclusively it is confined to Darcy and Elizabeth. It’s a brilliantly economical mode of writing, which works particularly well with Mr Collins and how behaves (and how people react to him).

I wonder if Mrs. Bennet would have been as pleased with the idea if she was bright enough to perceive his idiosyncracies, or if the need to have the daughters provided for would blind her to his faults?

Mrs Bennet’s mission in life is to have her daughters married off, and as well as she can manage. It is somewhat suprising to me, then, to see how easily dismissed Darcy and his large fortune is from her mind. From the first chapters she has been dismissive of, and rude to him, and yet an income of £10,000 per year and a large estate in Derbyshire would be excellent incentives for her to overlook any perceived character faults. It could suggest that Mrs B is a romantic at heart, who holds a candle for the idea of a love match, or at least her idea of what that means. However, nothing so far suggests that the wish for Love outweighs the imperative of a good income.

I have to confess that with the repeated references to Mr. Collins' prattling about his house and gardens, I wondered if he might be gay.

I don’t think he is dwelling on the beauty of the house or furniture or Park as aesthetically pleasing in a design sense, but from a particularly mercenary point of view. It’s a form of constant self-aggrandisement, either trying to show himself in a grand light, or Lady Catherine (and thus himself by association).

I share Lizzy’s humour at Mr C’s willingness to christen/marry/bury his parishioners as required. Becoming a man of the cloth didn’t necessarily equate with a true vocation, or love of his fellow man. It was a living, often by default. And Wickham was also going to go into the Church, but ended up in the Militia as many second sons did at that time.

I have a certain sneaking sympathy for Mr Collins: my great+ grandfathers were in the Church at this time (in Yorkshire), and so depended on patronage, and on livings as a way of eking out their existence. I’m hopeful that, at the least, they were more sensible men. An interesting account of the life of a curate in the Church of England just prior to Austen’s time are the diaries of James Woodforde, published as ‘The Diary of a Country Parson’.

Am I wrong, or is there in general some imputation of higher character along with physical beauty?

It’s slightly more than imputation – Elizabeth notes more than once that someone whose countenance may vouchsafe them for being ‘amiable’.

Thank you for all the information about the entail – it’s fascinating just how convoluted it all is. (No wonder Mrs Bennet is confused. )

[Primula Baggins]

Thanks, vison, for all the details on entails! I am learning a lot in this thread!

Lizzy's remarks about good appearance and amiability have always struck me as satirical. Certainly there was a literary and probably a social convention that virtue = beauty and vice versa, but I always thought of Lizzy as seeing through it, even as she mocked her own tendency to believe in the convention.

[vison]

I was gobsmacked to learn that Chatsworth stood in for Pemberley in the new P & P movie, and Burghley House for Rosings. This is absurd. Even in Jane Austen's time Chatsworth was the vastly palatial seat of the Dukes of Devonshire and even though Mr. Darcy was wealthy he was not anywhere near wealthy enough to live in Chatsworth. Burghley House is Elizabethan, it is the home of the Cecils, and was in Jane Austen's day as well! The new movie is giving the viewer a much inflated idea of the wealth of the two characters, I can tell you that. Mr. Darcy with his 10,000 pounds a year would be a piker next to Devonshire, whose income was more like 100,000 pounds. And while Lady Catherine was a Lady, she was not a Lady whose family had lived in Burghley House for centuries. I know it really doesn't matter, but it irks me more than hearing that pigs ran through Mrs. Bennett's kitchen.

Lord Martin Cecil (a courtesy title) is a founder of a "cult" known as Emissaries of the Divine Light. They have a commune in my neighbourhood known as Edenvale, and they also own most of 100 Mile House and environs in the BC Cariboo. The first Earl Burghley was that William Cecil who was Elizabeth the First's main man. He built Burghley House, it is the most magnificent place imaginable and as much above Lady Catherine's touch as Buckingham Palace is above mine.

[Alatar]

What a complete tosser! The very thought of pairing Elizabeth with Mr. Collins is as appalling as I'm sure Ms Austen intended it to be. He is a genuine fool of the highest order and I'm impressed with Mr. Bennets assessment of him and playful teasing of him for the education and amusement of his daughter. He reminds one most of one of those obnoxious little lapdogs.

Wickham is hardly better. I suspect that he will turn out to have behaved dreadfully against Darcy in some way and that Darcy being a gentleman handled the matter in a way that allowed him to retain his dignity and that this only deepened his resentment. Of course, I'm coming to this with modern plot convolutions and I may well be mistaken, but he seems an obvious set up to me. I'm a little disappointed in Lizzies lack of judgement and her willingness to berate Darcy to a complete stranger.

These last few chapters have felt remarkably like plot driven chapters rather than character driven chapters and I think they suffer a little for it. I much prefer the character driven pieces. They feel truer and less contrived.

Back to read the other comments now.

[Frelga]

I'm a little disappointed in Lizzies lack of judgement and her willingness to berate Darcy to a complete stranger.

So was I. I think it indicates that Lizzy was not so entirely unaffected by Darcy's rude rejection of her at their first meeting.

[vison]

Elizabeth is the "heroine" of the tale, but she is not perfect. She is not above speaking without thinking, in fact she prides herself on her outspokeness. Jane, for instance, would never have spoken in that fashion.

I think Elizabeth was somewhat stung by Darcy's rudeness, but I don't think it was that that made her speak as she did to Wickham. Wickham skilfully drew her on, did he not?

People plunged into intimacy very quickly, I think, in those days. Couples often became engaged after a few dances and sharing a glass of wine. It was largely because they seldom met people outside their own order, I guess.

The intimacy was very different than ours, being more of surface thing, composed of manners and expectations more than actual knowledge of character. A "gentleman" was supposed to be a gentleman, and a "lady" a lady, with specific and well-known characteristics and qualities.

[Ethel]

Mega post warning!

Well, it seems we are proceeding without waiting for Padme. Jump on in when you get here, Padme! Some responses...

-------------------- Cerin --------------------

Mr. Bennet remarked that he thought this ridiculousness promised well. Is that because he thinks he'll be able to manipulate Mr. Collins in some way?

No. It's because he is entertained by ridiculous people. Remember, he is a very clever man married to a very stupid wife, and there's no TV to watch.

I wonder what Elizabeth will have to say about Mr. Collins plans to marry her?!

I wonder if Mrs. Bennet would have been as pleased with the idea if she was bright enough to perceive his idiosyncracies, or if the need to have the daughters provided for would blind her to his faults?

Here I must say something in defense of Mrs. Bennet, though it goes against the grain. She is quite unable to appreciate the superiority of mind of her husband and second daughter. They just annoy her. Her greatest fear is the death of Mr. Bennet and the subsequent destitution it would visit on her and her daughters. If the inheritor of Longbourne should marry one of her girls though... problem solved! She does not care for her husband, and knows he does not care for her. She doesn't think that matters. As Golde says in Fiddler on the Roof (another story with five daughters!): "A husband is not to look at. A husband is to get!" Mrs. Bennet, like Golde, is a woman of her time and class.

I have to confess that with the repeated references to Mr. Collins' prattling about his house and gardens, I wondered if he might be gay.

What a delicious idea! But I don't really think so. I think he's just very, very, very impressed with his great patroness and her largesse.

Am I wrong, or is there in general some imputation of higher character along with physical beauty?

You are not wrong, but I think the attribution of good character has more to do with Wickham's "pleasing address" than his handsome face. He is a gentleman-like man. He is clearly no fool. The Bennet girls have lived all their lives in a country town, and he's about the most charming fellow who has ever shown up there - barring Mr. Bingley.


-------------------- samaranth --------------------

In most cases in P&P we build our understanding of a character by hearing what they say and seeing what they do. We are very rarely given an insight into their hearts and minds. When it does happen almost exclusively it is confined to Darcy and Elizabeth. It’s a brilliantly economical mode of writing, which works particularly well with Mr Collins and how behaves (and how people react to him).

Oh, brilliantly observed!

I wonder if Mrs. Bennet would have been as pleased with the idea if she was bright enough to perceive his idiosyncracies, or if the need to have the daughters provided for would blind her to his faults?

Mrs Bennet’s mission in life is to have her daughters married off, and as well as she can manage. It is somewhat suprising to me, then, to see how easily dismissed Darcy and his large fortune is from her mind. From the first chapters she has been dismissive of, and rude to him, and yet an income of £10,000 per year and a large estate in Derbyshire would be excellent incentives for her to overlook any perceived character faults. It could suggest that Mrs B is a romantic at heart, who holds a candle for the idea of a love match, or at least her idea of what that means. However, nothing so far suggests that the wish for Love outweighs the imperative of a good income.

I think it suggests the opposite - a dry eyed practicality. Mrs. Bennet has given up on Mr. Darcy because he has openly expressed contempt for her girls. No point wasting time on him. Mr. Collins, however, is definitely interested, so Mrs. Bennet is interested back.


-------------------- Primula --------------------

Lizzy's remarks about good appearance and amiability have always struck me as satirical. Certainly there was a literary and probably a social convention that virtue = beauty and vice versa, but I always thought of Lizzy as seeing through it, even as she mocked her own tendency to believe in the convention.

Yes, Prim, I think you have touched on an important element of Lizzie's style. She accepts conventional wisdom even as she mocks it. She sees that it is both true and not true. Like Jane Austen herself, Lizzie's chief vein of humor comes from irony.

-------------------- Alatar --------------------

What a complete tosser! The very thought of pairing Elizabeth with Mr. Collins is as appalling as I'm sure Ms Austen intended it to be. He is a genuine fool of the highest order and I'm impressed with Mr. Bennets assessment of him and playful teasing of him for the education and amusement of his daughter. He reminds one most of one of those obnoxious little lapdogs.

Mr. Collins is indeed a fool - but what a delicious fool. I find I enjoy him nearly as much as Mr. Bennet does. Jane Austen's father was a clergyman; so were two of her brothers; she loved them all. It is not that she does not respect men of the cloth per se. Only that she had a very clear-eyed view of some of the follies to be observed in that line of work.

Wickham is hardly better. I suspect that he will turn out to have behaved dreadfully against Darcy in some way and that Darcy being a gentleman handled the matter in a way that allowed him to retain his dignity and that this only deepened his resentment. Of course, I'm coming to this with modern plot convolutions and I may well be mistaken, but he seems an obvious set up to me. I'm a little disappointed in Lizzies lack of judgement and her willingness to berate Darcy to a complete stranger.

These last few chapters have felt remarkably like plot driven chapters rather than character driven chapters and I think they suffer a little for it. I much prefer the character driven pieces. They feel truer and less contrived.

Well, I can't say more about Wickham at this point for fear of spoilers. I will say this, though: I understand that you feel these last few chapters have been plot- rather than character-driven, and I don't disagree. Still, a novel needs a plot, does it not? Jane Austen never neglected that necessity. But I promise you there is much more character revelation to come.

Regarding Lizzie's "lack of judgment" (as you put it) though... I think you are a little hard on her. She is 20 years old. She's had a fitful education at best. She is clever but not worldly. She has lived all her life in a tiny country town, and has hardly met any charming gentlemen at all. Would you really expect a clever but innocent young woman, ill acquainted with the larger world, to judge coolly of the first really pleasing young man she meets? Wickham is handsome, intelligent, and - above all - very interested in Lizzie. And after all: what is more fascinating than a really good gossip about someone you don't like?

[Cerin]

It is such a pleasure reading everyone's insightful comments! They really help me to understand the characters and society in a fuller way.

[vison]

As Ethel has said, we mustn't be too hard on Mrs. Bennett. The only "career" open to her daughters is marriage. There is literally nothing else. Whatever small "fortune" they will inherit upon their father's death will not be enough to keep them living in any genteel style. Where would they go, and what would they do? Any husband is better than starvation, or next to it.

Should Lizzie marry Mr. Collins, not only is Lizzie provided for, but Mrs. Bennett might be able to keep living in her home. Her future as a poor widow is pretty bleak, and while she is not a very lovable woman, I do feel sorry for her. Still, as Mr. Bennett famously observes, he might outlive her............

It is Mrs. Bennett's JOB to get her daughters married and she is fighting an uphill battle. Her girls have small fortunes and live in a small community with a dearth of eligible men.

[truehobbit]

I've finally managed to read up to chapter 16, and I want to say how very impressed I am with the astute observation of the first time readers here!

vison, thanks for the post about entails, I'm awed by your understanding of that - I must admit that the vocabulary of that subject does something to make my mind switch itself off - I took part in a seminar on medieval nobility in England a few years ago, and words like "fee simple" and "tail male" had the same effect on me then (probably because I don't know what they mean ), so I never understood the stuff - but I will try to make an effort to understand it some of these days!

Also many thanks for the link to Pemberly, Ethel!

Some additional points:

I liked it that Austen gives us an explanation for the origins of Collins's dim-wittedness - knowing that, I don't condemn him all that much as I would otherwise have done, I'm sure.

I was wondering about Mrs Philipps's calling out of the window to the officers to stay. Is that good manners? It sounds like a vulgar thing to do to me (being rather insecure about my manners myself ).

I was also shocked by Lizzy calling Darcy "disagreeable" to a stranger. I don't really think people got intimate more quickly in those days, on the contrary, I think in spite of the omnipresent gossip, expressing your real feelings on something, especially if negative, would be something one doesn't do.
Or maybe it's not as bad a condemnation as I think to call someone "disagreeable" and quite a normal thing to say in company?

I'm also not sure if her youth and ungenteel education are enough of an excuse, if the remark is indeed rude. Has she said anything rude in company before? I think the origin of the remark is, as someone said, a real pique with Darcy's slight of her and also that she is quite smitten with Wickham and all his fine air - she guesses he doesn't like Darcy either and she wants to hear the story behind it, so she makes it clear she's not going to be on Darcy's side.

[Cerin]

A question for our Austen Virgins: how do you think the words of the title apply to what you have read so far? How does "pride" figure into the story, and on whose part, especially? How does "prejudice" figure into the story, and on whose part, especially?

Interesting question(s), vison! Pride and prejudice seem intertwined throughout the story thus far. I think Darcy comes to mind most prominently with respect to pride. His pride, which I see as a need to comport himself by certain standards according to what he values, separates him from people until his prejudices about them -- which are based on their failing to meet those superficial standards -- are overcome, as with Elizabeth, and as one might imagine also happened with Bingley, with his less than Darcy-standard of circumpsection and understanding.

In the same way, I see both pride and prejudice interact in Elizabeth, thanks to the comments made about the fact that her pique at his initial rejection may have contributed to her sweeping judgments about him. Her injured pride (perhaps) caused her to be prejudiced against him, and take his superficial qualities of haughtiness and aloofness (which are in part due to his lack of ease among people he doesn't know well) to be indications of deeper character flaws, which we have had stated more explicitly now by Mr. Wickham, but whom we seem to be suspicious of.

I think it is interesting that both Alatar and myself, though given every incentive to embrace Mr. Wickham and his condemnations of Darcy, are hesitating to do so, and that others have remarked upon Elizabeth's surprising readiness to condemn Darcy to someone she hardly knows. Is it because we've seen enough to admire in Darcy that we aren't willing to write him off? Or is it because we haven't seen enough of Mr. Wickham for ourselves to trust his word? (Or perhaps it is distant recollections of the screen version filtering up from our subconscious.)

[vison]

Interesting answers, Cerin. It's odd how people sometimes make assumptions about those words "Pride and Prejudice". Some assign Pride to Mr. Darcy and Prejudice to Lizzie, based solely on their knowledge that those two are the main characters in the novel.

Jane Austen knew what she was doing, that's for sure. It's very, very neat to read your comments and Alatar's. I've read this book so often! Yet there is always something to be seen anew, or even something to be seen for the first time.