Pride and Prejudice: Elizabeth and Darcy: Misjudgement and Change
Explore how Elizabeth and Darcy learn to judge more carefully, and how other couples test the limits of their change.
Two confident misreaders
Source A
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
[1] “Which do you mean?” and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till, catching her eye, he withdrew his own, and coldly said, “She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
[2] Mr. Bingley followed his advice. Mr. Darcy walked off; and Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings towards him. She told the story, however, with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.
Notes
Chapter 3. Numbers identify supplied paragraphs, not printed lines.
Source B
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
[1] “No,” said Darcy, “I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding; certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.”
[2] “That is a failing, indeed!” cried Elizabeth. “Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”
[3] “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
[4] “And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”
[5] “And yours,” he replied, with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”
Notes
Chapter 11. Numbers identify supplied paragraphs, not printed lines.
Study all 61 chapters of Pride and Prejudice. Use chapter numbers to locate whole-novel evidence across editions.
At the Meryton assembly in chapter 3, Darcy's first judgement is public, rapid and socially confident. He refuses Bingley's invitation to dance and calls Elizabeth “tolerable: but not handsome enough”. His withdrawal from dancing makes beauty, fashion and social ease seem like tests that he is entitled to apply. Elizabeth has good reason to resent the insult.
Yet Austen also shows how resentment becomes a method of reading. Elizabeth retells the slight "with great spirit" because turning Darcy into a ridiculous character suits her wit. A hurtful fact begins to organise her later interpretation of him. She does not invent his rudeness, but she becomes too ready to fit new evidence into the story she already enjoys.
Chapter 11 makes the pattern mutual. Their lively debate about pride, resentment and ridicule sounds like verbal equality, and attraction is already developing. However, each tries to define the other's character before either knows the other well. When Darcy says that Elizabeth's defect is “wilfully to misunderstand them”, he is partly teasing and partly perceptive; he notices her interpretive habit while remaining remarkably blind to his own.
The title qualities therefore cannot be divided into "Darcy has pride; Elizabeth has prejudice". Darcy prejudges through rank and manner. Elizabeth takes pride in her discernment. Their intelligence makes the errors more persuasive, not less.
The first proposal as a failed reading
Text
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
[1] “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
[2] Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority, of its being a degradation, of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
Notes
Chapter 34. Numbers identify supplied paragraphs, not printed lines.
The first proposal in chapter 34 brings both characters' errors into one room. Darcy speaks of strong love, but the narration places tenderness beside pride. He dwells on Elizabeth's “inferiority”, the supposed degradation of the match and the obstacles presented by her family. He also assumes that she will accept. His feelings are sincere, but sincerity does not correct the judgement built into his manner.
Darcy's interference with Jane and Bingley reveals the same habit on a larger scale. Jane's feelings are deep but reserved; Bingley's modesty makes him rely heavily on Darcy's opinion. Darcy mistakes Jane's reserve for indifference and treats his own reading as sufficient reason to separate them. Elizabeth is right to condemn both the interference and the class contempt behind his proposal.
Her refusal is not therefore evidence that both characters are equally wrong. She identifies a real moral failure when she says that he has not behaved in a “more gentlemanlike manner”: the phrase measures a gentleman by conduct rather than income or family connection. In a courtship culture where marriage could shape a gentlewoman's home and social position, rejecting a rich man is a consequential act of judgement.
Elizabeth's account is nevertheless incomplete. Her accusation about Wickham depends on Wickham's attractive story, not on evidence she has tested. In the same speech, she can judge Darcy's conduct accurately and his history inaccurately. Austen makes the disagreement productive because neither a confident feeling nor a fluent account is enough.
Here is a complete reasoning chain:
- Interpretation: Darcy treats his love as compensation for the social disadvantage of marrying Elizabeth.
- Evidence: the narration emphasises her supposed “inferiority”, while Elizabeth answers by questioning his gentlemanly conduct.
- Writerly choice: Austen contrasts tenderness with pride and structures the proposal as an expected acceptance that becomes a refusal.
- Meaning: social rank has distorted Darcy's judgement, but Elizabeth's Wickham charge shows that her own judgement still needs testing.
- Whole-text consequence: the failed proposal creates the need for Darcy's letter, Elizabeth's re-reading and a later proposal made on different terms.
The decisive method is not the label "contrast" by itself. It is what the contrast exposes: love cannot make a relationship equal while one person assumes that rank makes his judgement superior.
Re-reading changes the judge
Source A
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
[1] But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Wickham—when she read, with somewhat clearer attention, a relation of events which, if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself—her feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, “This must be false! This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!”—and when she had gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing anything of the last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not regard it, that she would never look in it again.
[2] In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would not do: in half a minute the letter was unfolded again; and collecting herself as well as she could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Wickham, and commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence. The account of his connection with the Pemberley family was exactly what he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Darcy, though she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own words. So far each recital confirmed the other; but when she came to the will, the difference was great. What Wickham had said of the living was fresh in her memory; and as she recalled his very words, it was impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the other, and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did not err. But when she read and re-read, with the closest attention, the particulars immediately following of Wickham’s resigning all pretensions to the living, of his receiving in lieu so considerable a sum as three thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be impartiality—deliberated on the probability of each statement—but with little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read on. But every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent as to render Mr. Darcy’s conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.
Notes
Chapter 36. Numbers identify supplied paragraphs, not printed lines.
Source B
Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
[1] She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.
[2] “How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameless distrust. How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.”
Notes
Chapter 36. Numbers identify supplied paragraphs, not printed lines.
Darcy's letter in chapter 35 does not settle the truth simply because it is written. It is his interested account of Jane and Bingley and of Wickham. What matters is the structure of Elizabeth's reading in chapter 36.
At first she reads rapidly and angrily, certain that Darcy can offer no valid explanation. She puts the letter away and declares that she will not look again. Then she unfolds it, slows down and compares its claims with details she already knows: Wickham's changing conduct, Colonel Fitzwilliam's information, Bingley's earlier defence of Darcy and the impropriety of Wickham telling an intimate story to a stranger. She later returns to the section on Jane and admits that Jane's deep feelings were not openly displayed.
This repeated reading turns a letter into a test rather than a command. Elizabeth does not replace belief in Wickham with blind belief in Darcy. She weighs accounts, notices corroboration and revises the significance of remembered events. Her conclusion, “Till this moment, I never knew myself”, is as much about her method as her mistake: vanity and wounded pride had directed what she found convincing.
Austen's third-person narration often stays close to Elizabeth's point of view. This is focalisation: readers receive much of the story through what Elizabeth notices, feels and infers, even though she is not the narrator. At moments the narration also carries the flavour of her own thought, a method called free indirect discourse. That closeness makes her early confidence enjoyable and her re-evaluation disruptive; readers may have to re-read with her.
Jane is important to the change. Elizabeth had treated Jane's candour as generous but naive. Now Jane's reluctance to condemn becomes a challenge to Elizabeth's pride in scepticism. Austen does not say that suspicion is always wrong. She shows that good judgement requires evidence strong enough to survive a second reading.
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