Pride and Prejudice

Summary

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

With that single sentence, Jane Austen announces exactly what kind of novel this is going to be—and then spends the next three hundred pages proving how much more complicated that truth really is.

This is Pride and Prejudice.

The Bennets

The year is 1813. The place is the English countryside, in a small estate called Longbourn. The Bennet family has a problem: five daughters and no sons. In a world where property passes only to male heirs, this means that when Mr. Bennet dies, his wife and daughters will be thrown out of their home. Their only hope is marriage.

Mrs. Bennet is obsessed with this fact. She is silly, vulgar, and relentless in her pursuit of wealthy husbands for her girls. Mr. Bennet, by contrast, has retreated into ironic detachment. He married a beautiful woman, discovered she was foolish, and has spent the last twenty years amusing himself at her expense. He loves his two eldest daughters—sensible Jane and sharp-witted Elizabeth—but has essentially given up on the rest.

The five Bennet sisters are a study in contrasts. Jane is the beauty, gentle and good, incapable of seeing ill in anyone. Elizabeth, our heroine, is clever and quick, with “fine eyes” and an even finer tongue. Mary is plain and pedantic, forever moralizing. Kitty is nervous and easily led. And Lydia, the youngest at fifteen, is wild, thoughtless, and boy-crazy.

Into this household comes extraordinary news: Netherfield Park, the great house nearby, has been let at last—to a young man of large fortune.

Enter Mr. Bingley

Charles Bingley is everything a romantic hero should be: handsome, cheerful, wealthy, and absolutely delighted with everything he sees. He attends the local ball and dances with every pretty girl in the room. He falls in love with Jane Bennet at first sight.

But Bingley has not come alone. He has brought his two sisters—proud, snobbish women who look down on the local gentry—and his friend, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Darcy has twice Bingley’s fortune. He owns a great estate in Derbyshire called Pemberley. He is tall, handsome, and universally admired—for about half an hour. Then the assembly discovers that he is also proud, silent, and apparently disgusted by everything around him.

Bingley urges Darcy to dance. Darcy refuses. He looks at Elizabeth Bennet and dismisses her: “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.”

Elizabeth overhears. She is not devastated—she is amused. She tells the story with great spirit, laughing at his arrogance. But she does not forget.

First Impressions

The novel’s original title was “First Impressions,” and it is a book about how wrong those impressions can be.

Elizabeth’s first impression of Darcy is that he is insufferably proud. Darcy’s first impression of Elizabeth is that she is beneath his notice. Both are wrong—and both are a little bit right.

Darcy is proud. He has been raised from birth to believe in his own superiority. But beneath that pride is a deeply principled man, loyal to his friends, devoted to his sister, and capable of great generosity. His problem is that he shows none of this to strangers.

Elizabeth is prejudiced. She prides herself on her ability to read character, but she sees what she expects to see. When a charming militia officer named George Wickham tells her that Darcy has treated him abominably—cheating him out of a promised inheritance—Elizabeth believes every word. Wickham is handsome and flattering. Darcy is cold and rude. The choice seems obvious.

Meanwhile, Jane and Bingley fall deeper in love. They dance together at every opportunity. They gaze at each other with barely concealed feeling. Everyone expects an engagement.

And then Bingley leaves for London and does not return.

Mr. Collins

Enter one of the great comic creations in English literature: Mr. Collins, the clergyman who will inherit Longbourn when Mr. Bennet dies.

Collins is pompous, obsequious, and staggeringly lacking in self-awareness. He has come to Longbourn to choose a wife from among his cousins, thus healing the breach caused by the entail. His patroness, the great Lady Catherine de Bourgh—who is, not coincidentally, Darcy’s aunt—has recommended marriage.

Collins chooses Elizabeth. She refuses him. He cannot believe it. He explains, at length, that she has no fortune, that she may never receive another offer, that her refusal is merely the “usual practice of elegant females.” Elizabeth refuses him again. He still cannot believe it. Mrs. Bennet is furious.

Collins proposes to Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas the very next day. Charlotte accepts. She is twenty-seven, plain, and practical. She does not love Collins—she does not even like him—but she wants a home of her own. Elizabeth is horrified, but Charlotte explains: “I am not romantic. I ask only a comfortable home.”

It is one of the novel’s most unsettling moments. Charlotte has done nothing wrong. She has simply calculated the odds and made a rational choice. But Austen wants us to feel, with Elizabeth, that something precious has been lost.

The Letter

Elizabeth visits Charlotte at her new home, which happens to be near Rosings, Lady Catherine’s grand estate. There she encounters Darcy again.

To her surprise, he keeps appearing wherever she is. He stares at her in silence. He asks strange, probing questions. Elizabeth cannot understand it.

And then he proposes.

It is one of the worst proposals in literature. Darcy declares his love—and in the same breath, details all the reasons he should not love her. Her family is vulgar. Her connections are inferior. He has struggled against his feelings. He expected to feel differently. But he cannot help himself.

Elizabeth is stunned. And then she is furious.

She refuses him. She accuses him of ruining Jane’s happiness by separating her from Bingley. She accuses him of destroying Wickham’s future out of spite. She tells him that even if he were the last man in the world, she would not marry him.

Darcy is shattered. He leaves. And the next day, Elizabeth receives a letter.

In that letter, Darcy explains everything. He did separate Bingley from Jane—but only because he genuinely believed Jane did not love Bingley. He was wrong, but his intentions were honorable. As for Wickham: the man is a liar. Darcy did not cheat him of an inheritance. Wickham squandered the money he was given and then tried to seduce Darcy’s fifteen-year-old sister, Georgiana, for her fortune.

Elizabeth reads the letter. And she is forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: she has been wrong about almost everything.

The Journey

The middle section of the novel is a journey—literally and figuratively. Elizabeth travels to Derbyshire with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, and they visit Pemberley.

Elizabeth expects to find a cold, formal place, a monument to Darcy’s pride. Instead, she finds a house of great beauty and taste, where the servants speak of their master with genuine affection. The housekeeper tells her that Darcy has never spoken a cross word to anyone in his employ, that he is the best landlord and the best master who ever lived.

Elizabeth begins to wonder if she has misjudged him entirely.

And then Darcy himself appears, unexpectedly returned from London. He is transformed. Where before he was cold and proud, now he is warm and attentive. He introduces Elizabeth to his sister. He invites the Gardiners to fish on his estate. He is, in every way, the opposite of what Elizabeth expected.

For the first time, she allows herself to feel something other than contempt.

The Catastrophe

And then disaster strikes.

A letter arrives: Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister, has run off with Wickham. They are not married. They may never marry. In the world of Regency England, this is not merely a scandal—it is ruin. Lydia’s disgrace will destroy the reputation of all her sisters. No respectable man will marry any of them now.

Elizabeth is devastated. She tells Darcy what has happened, certain that this is the end of any possibility between them. His family would never accept a connection to such a scandal.

But Darcy does not flee. Instead, he tracks Wickham down in London. He pays Wickham’s debts. He bribes him to marry Lydia. He does all of this in secret, asking nothing in return, because he knows it will make Elizabeth happy.

Elizabeth’s uncle, Mr. Gardiner, eventually reveals the truth. And Elizabeth finally understands what kind of man Darcy really is.

The Proposal

Bingley returns to Netherfield. He proposes to Jane. She accepts.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh arrives at Longbourn in a fury. She has heard a rumor that Elizabeth is engaged to Darcy and has come to demand that Elizabeth promise never to accept him. Elizabeth refuses. Lady Catherine threatens. Elizabeth still refuses.

Lady Catherine reports this conversation to Darcy. He takes it as a sign of hope.

He proposes again. This time, Elizabeth accepts.

What It Means

Pride and Prejudice is often called a romance, and it is—a perfect one. But it is also something deeper: a novel about how we know other people and how we know ourselves.

Elizabeth Bennet is one of the most intelligent heroines in English literature, but her intelligence leads her astray. She trusts her own judgment absolutely, and that judgment is wrong. She believes Wickham because he is charming. She condemns Darcy because he is not. She sees the surface and mistakes it for the depth.

Darcy’s pride is real, but it is the pride of a man who has never been challenged, never been forced to see himself as others see him. Elizabeth’s refusal is the first honest assessment he has ever received. It humiliates him—and it transforms him.

The novel is also about class and money. The Bennets are respectable but not wealthy. The entail that threatens their home is a real legal instrument that disinherited women throughout England. Charlotte Lucas’s pragmatic marriage is not a failure of imagination—it is a rational response to a brutal system.

And yet, Austen believes in love. She believes that Elizabeth and Darcy deserve each other, that their marriage will be a partnership of equals, that wit and virtue and genuine feeling can triumph over snobbery and self-interest.

“How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” says one of Austen’s characters. Pride and Prejudice has been in print for over two hundred years, and we have not tired of it yet.