Pride and Prejudice Study Guide
Biography of Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at Steventon rectory in Hampshire, England. She was the youngest daughter of the parish's rector. She had six brothers, James, George, Edward, Henry Thomas, Francis William, Charles John, and one sister, Cassandra Elizabeth. Her father, Reverend George Austen (1731-1805), was from Kent and attended the TunbridgeSchool before studying at Oxford. Thereafter, he became rector at Steventon and married Cassandra Leigh Austen (1739-1827), a daughter of a patrician family. The Austen family resided at Steventon until 1801, when Reverend Austen announced his retirement from the ministry and moved the family to Bath. Upon her father's death in 1805, Jane Austen moved with Cassandra and her mother to live with her brother Francis. In 1809, they moved to a cottage at Chawton, where her wealthy brother Edward had an estate.
Like most women of the era, Austen did not have access to much formal education. Her father, however, had a particular interest in education – even for his daughters. Consequently, Austen was first educated at home and continued her studies with a relative in Oxford in 1783. She also attended the ReadingLadiesBoarding School in the Abbey gatehouse in Reading, Berkshire for a year (1785-1786). After returning home, Austen continued her education through reading, under the encouraging auspices of her father and brothers. Through the volumes in her father's library, Austen exposed herself to a wide variety of ideas and works.
From her teen years forth, Austen wrote poems, stories, and comic pieces for the amusement of her family. It appears that the younger children of the Austen family staged theatrical productions frequently at home – perhaps similar to those described in Mansfield Park. As she continued her experiments in writing, Austen became adept at parodying the sentimental and Gothic style of eighteenth-century novels. Among her early works, now called the Juvenilia, one finds a satirical novel with a deliberately misspelled title, Love and Freindship. It appears that Austen began work on what would later become Sense and Sensibility in the late 1790s. In 1798, she began Northanger Abbey, a satire of Ann Radcliffe's famous Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho.
In contrast to the stories told in the Gothic novels that she parodied, Austen led a quiet and uneventful life. After the family moved to Bath, in 1802, she received her only marriage proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither. Bigg-Wither was the younger brother of family friends and an Oxford graduate six years her junior. Although he was apparently unremarkable both physically and intellectually, his considerable fortune made him an attractive bachelor. Austen accepted initially, but changed her mind the following day and rescinded her promise.
In her era, unmarried women were not highly regarded. Women of high social rank were not permitted to work and thus remained dependent upon their families for financial support. For Austen, turning down the marriage proposal was an important decision, since marriage would have freed her from the embarrassing situation of being a "dependent." The marriage would also have provided a home for Cassandra – and could perhaps have helped her brothers secure better careers. As it turns out, Frank and Charles went to sea and eventually became respected admirals. Reflecting such a turn of events, many of Austen's novels contain admirable characters who find success at sea. One thinks, for example, of Fanny Price's brother William in Mansfield Park, or Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion.
Austen wrote throughout her life, continuing her work even after an onset of illness in early 1816. Most biographer's believe that she suffered from Addison's disease in her later years. She died in Winchester on July 8, 1817 and was buried at the city's famous cathedral. In total, Jane Austen published four novels anonymously during her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), MansfieldPark (1814), and Emma (1815). The two novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously, in 1817. Austen's legacy also includes two unfinished works, The Watsons and Sandition. Her novels, focusing on courtship and marriage, remain well-known for their satiric depictions of English society and the manners of the era. Her insights into the lives of women during the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century Regency period –in addition to her ability to handle form, satire, and irony – have made her one of the most studied and influential novelists of her time. As with many great authors, however, her death preceded her renown.
Austen's portrait – a colored sketch by her sister Cassandra – is available for viewing at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
About Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, is Jane's Austen's earliest work, and in some senses also one of her most mature works. Austen began writing the novel in 1796 at the age of twenty-one, under the title First Impressions. The original version of the novel was probably in the form of an exchange of letters. Austen's father had offered he manuscript for publication in 1797, but the publishing company refused to even consider it. Shortly after completing First Impressions, Austen began writing Sense and Sensibility, which was not published until 1811. She also wrote some minor works during that time, which were later expanded into full novels. Between 1810 and 1812 Pride and Prejudice was rewritten for publication. While the original ideas of the novel come from a girl of 21, the final version has the literary and thematic maturity of a thirty-five year old woman who has spent years painstakingly drafting and revising, as is the pattern with all of Austen's works. Pride and Prejudice is usually considered to be the most popular of Austen's novels.
Short Summary
Pride and Prejudice is set primarily in the county of Hertfordshire, about 50 miles outside of London. The novel opens at with a conversation at Longbourn, the Bennet's estate, about the arrival of Mr. Bingley, "a single man of large fortune," to NetherfieldPark, a nearby estate. Mrs. Bennet, whose obsession is to find husbands for her daughters, sees Mr. Bingley as a potential suitor. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have five children: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia.
The Bennets' first acquaintance with Mr. Bingley and his companions is at the Meryton Ball. Mr. Bingley takes a liking to Jane and is judged by the townspeople to be perfectly amiable and agreeable. Mr. Bingley's friend Mr. Darcy, however, snubs Elizabeth and is considered to be proud and disagreeable because of his reserve and his refusal to dance. Bingley's sisters are judged to be amiable by Jane but Elizabeth finds them to be arrogant.
After further interactions, it becomes evident that Jane and Bingley have a preference for one another, although Bingley's partiality is more obvious than Jane's because she is universally cheerful and amiable. Charlotte Lucas, a close friend of Elizabeth with more pragmatic views on marriage, recommends that Jane make her regard for Bingley more obvious. At the same time, Mr. Darcy begins to admire Elizabeth, captivated by her fine eyes and lively wit.
When Jane is invited for dinner at Netherfield, Mrs. Bennet refuses to provide her with a carriage, hoping that because it is supposed to rain Jane will be forced to spend the night. However, because Jane gets caught in the rain, she falls ill and is forced to stay at Netherfield until she recovers. Upon hearing that Jane is ill, Elizabeth walks to Netherfield in order to go nurse her sister. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst (Bingley's sisters) are scandalized that Elizabeth walked so far alone in the mud. Seeing that Jane would like Elizabeth to stay with her, Bingley's sisters invite Elizabeth to remain at Netherfield until Jane recovers.
During her stay at Netherfield, Elizabeth increasingly gains the admiration of Mr. Darcy. She is blind to his partiality, however, and continues to think him a most proud and haughty man because of the judgment she made of him when he snubbed her at the ball. Miss Bingley, who is obviously trying to gain the admiration of Mr. Darcy, is extremely jealous of Elizabeth and tries to prevent Mr. Darcy from admiring her by making rude references to the poor manners of Elizabeth's mother and younger sisters and to her lower class relatives. When Mrs. Bennet and her younger daughters come to visit Jane, Elizabeth is mortified by their foolishness and complete lack of manners. Bingley's admiration for Jane continues unabated and is evident in his genuine solicitude for her recovery. After Jane recovers, she returns home with Elizabeth.
A militia regiment is stationed at the nearby town of Meryton, where Mrs. Bennet's sister Mrs. Phillips lives. Mrs. Phillips is just as foolish as Mrs. Bennet. Lydia and Kitty love to go to Meryton to visit with their aunt and socialize with the militia's officers.
Mr. Collins, a cousin of Mr. Bennet who is in line to inherit Longbourn because the estate has been entailed away from the female line, writes a letter stating his intention to visit. When he arrives, he makes it clear that he hopes to find a suitable wife among the Miss Bennets. Mr. Collins is a clergyman, and his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (who is also Darcy's aunt), has suggested that he find a wife, and he hopes to lessen the hardship of the entailment by marrying one of Mr. Bennet's daughters. Mr. Collins is a silly man who speaks in long, pompous speeches and always has an air of solemn formality.
When the Miss Bennets and Mr. Collins go for a walk to Meryton, they are introduced to an officer in the regiment named Mr. Wickham. They also run into Mr. Darcy, and when Darcy and Wickham meet both seem to be extremely uncomfortable. Mr. Wickham immediately shows a partiality for Elizabeth and they speak at length. Wickham tells Elizabeth that the reason for the mutual embarrassment when he and Darcy met is that Darcy's father had promised that Wickham, his godson, should be given a good living after his death, but that Darcy had failed to fulfill his father's dying wishes and had left Wickham to support himself. Elizabeth, already predisposed to think badly of Darcy, does not question Wickham's account. When Elizabeth tells Jane Wickham's story Jane refuses think badly of either Wickham or Darcy and assumes there must be some misunderstanding.
As promised, Bingley hosts a ball at Netherfield. He and Jane stay together the whole evening, and their mutual attachment becomes increasingly obvious. Mrs. Bennet speaks of their marriage as imminent over dinner, within earshot of Mr. Bingley's friend Mr. Darcy. Darcy asks Elizabeth to dance with her and she inadvertently accepts. She does not enjoy it and cannot understand why he asked her. Mr. Collins pays particularly close attention to Elizabeth at the ball, and even reserves the first two dances with her.
The next day Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth. She refuses him, and after a while Mr. Collins comes to understand that her refusal is sincere, not just a trick of female coquetry. Mrs. Bennet is extremely angry at Elizabeth for not accepting, but Mr. Bennet is glad. Mr. Collins shifts his attentions to Elizabeth's friend Charlotte Lucas. He proposes to Charlotte and she accepts. Elizabeth is disappointed in her friend for agreeing to marry such a silly man simply to obtain financial security.
Bingley goes to London for business and shortly after he leaves his sisters and Darcy go to London as well. He had planned to return quickly to Netherfield, but Caroline Bingley writes to Jane and tells her that Bingley will almost definitely not return for about six months. Caroline also tells Jane that the family hopes Bingley will marry Darcy's younger sister Georgiana and unite the fortunes of the two families. Jane is heartbroken, thinking that Bingley must not really be attached to her. Elizabeth thinks that Darcy and Bingley's sisters somehow managed to convince Bingley to stay in London rather than returning to Netherfield to propose to Jane.
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, Elizabeth's aunt and uncle, come to Longbourn to visit. They invite Jane to come and spend some time with them in London, hoping that the time away will help to cheer her up. Elizabeth also hopes that Jane will run into Bingley while in London. Mrs. Gardiner, after observing Elizabeth and Wickham together, warns Elizabeth against the imprudence of a marriage to Wickham because of his poor financial situation, and advises Elizabeth not to encourage his attentions so much.
While in London Jane is treated very rudely by Caroline Bingley and comes to realize that she is not a sincere friend. She assumes that Mr. Bingley knows she is in London, and decides that he must no longer be partial to her since she does not hear from him at all.
Wickham suddenly transfers his attentions from Elizabeth to Miss King, who has recently acquired 10,000 pounds from an inheritance.
Along with Sir William Lucas and Maria Lucas (Charlotte's father and younger sister) Elizabeth goes to visit Charlotte (now Mrs. Collins) at her new home in Kent. On their way they stop to see the Gardiners. Upon hearing of Wickham's change of affections, Mrs. Gardiner is critical, but Elizabeth defends him.
While staying with the Collinses, Elizabeth and the others are often invited to dine at Rosings, the large estate of Mr. Collins' patroness Lady Catherine. Lady Catherine is completely arrogant and domineering. After Elizabeth has been at the Parsonage for a fortnight, Mr. Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam visit Rosings. Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam get along very well. Darcy also seems to be paying a lot of attention to Elizabeth, and often visits her and Charlotte at the Parsonage along with Colonel Fitzwilliam. He also purposely meets her very frequently on her usual walking route through the park.
While walking one day with Elizabeth, Colonel Fitzwilliam tells Elizabeth how Darcy recently saved a close friend from an imprudent marriage. Elizabeth concludes from this comment that it must have been Darcy's advice which convinced Bingley not to propose to Jane. She becomes so angry and upset that she gets a terrible headache and decides not to go to Rosings for dinner. While she is alone at the Parsonage, Darcy pays a visit. He tells her that in spite of all his efforts to avoid it because of her low family connections, he has fallen in love with her and wants to marry her. Elizabeth is shocked. She rudely refuses and rebukes him for the ungentlemanlike manner in which he proposed, as well as for preventing the marriage of Bingley and Jane and for ill-treating Wickham. Darcy is shocked because he had assumed she would accept.
The next day Darcy finds Elizabeth and hands her a letter then quickly leaves. The letter contains an explanation of his reasons for advising Bingley not to marry Jane and for his actions toward Wickham. He had prevented Bingley from proposing to Jane because it did not seem to him that Jane was truly attached to Bingley. Wickham was Darcy's father's god-son. Before his death, Darcy's father had asked Darcy to provide Wickham with a living if Wickham were to decide to enter the clergy. Wickham, however, did not want to enter the clergy. He asked Darcy for 3,000 pounds, purportedly for law school, and agreed not to ask for any more. Darcy gave Wickham the money and he squandered it all on dissolute living, then came back and told Darcy he would like to enter the clergy if he could have the living promised to him. Darcy refused. Later, with the help of her governess Miss Younge, Wickham got Darcy's younger sister Georgiana to fall in love with him and agree to an elopement, in order to revenge himself on Mr. Darcy and get Miss Darcy's fortune. Fortunately, Darcy found out and intervened at the last minute.
After reading these explanations in the letter Elizabeth's first reaction is disbelief, but after reflecting upon and slowly rereading the letter, she begins to see that Darcy is telling the truth and that she was only inclined to believe Wickham's story because he had flattered her with his attentions, while she was inclined to think ill of Darcy because he had wounded her pride on their first meeting.
Soon afterwards, Elizabeth returns home from her stay with the Collinses and Jane returns home from her stay with the Gardiners. When they return their mother and sisters are upset because the regiment stationed in Meryton will soon be leaving, depriving them of most of their amusement. Lydia receives an offer from Mrs. Forster, Colonel Forster's wife, to accompany her to Brighton, where the regiment will be going. Elizabeth advises her father not to allow Lydia to go, thinking that such a trip could lead to serious misconduct on Lydia's part because of the flirtatiousness and frivolity of her character and her complete lack of a sense of propriety. However, Mr. Bennet does not heed Elizabeth's advice.