Random notes: Pride and Prejudice

KS Sivakumaran

These notes are primarily meant for Lankan teenagers to persuade them to enjoy and understand literatures in English at a basic level.

First, let us take a novel like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a classic, which is being studied at various levels from General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Level (A/L) to the Degree and Post-Graduate level.

As we know the primary characters in this novel are Darcy and Elizabeth. Their relationship is revealed through many minute details. These details look trivial, but when we finish reading the novel we could feel their significance. During their walk in Netherfield Park, Mrs Hurst leaves Elizabeth for Darcy to take the latter’s arm. This Darcy did not like. Again at the Rosings while Elizabeth was playing the piano Darcy was near Elizabeth standing.

If we were to find whether the characterization in the novel is near realistic, we must acknowledge the fact that Jane Austen was a psychological realist. She studies her characters sympathetically and objectively. They are almost perfect characters, but they are all paragons of neither virtue nor total villains. They are average human beings with pleasant or disgusting traits. At the same time some of her minor characters are flat, but her major characters are subject to change and gradually become matured. In a way they reveal that the characters are complex and dynamic.

The women characters have ego, vanity and even over-confidence but show capability to in their understanding their follies. By being disillusioned they begin to grow.

Jane Austen George Elliot

As we read the novel, we begin to realize that there are ironical situations in the novel. Darcy and Elizabeth are intricate characters and there is depth in their personalities. But paradoxically their dominant characters had been Pride and Prejudice. On the other hand Jane and Bingley are simple and this turns out to be a virtue. Another ironical situation: When Elizabeth was almost mesmerized by Wickham, Collins proposes to her and Darcy too proposes to Elizabeth exactly at the moment when she dislikes him most.

Again it is ironical that the bad characters Wickham and Lady Catherine were responsible for uniting Elizabeth and Darcy. As one critic put it correctly, “Jane Austen uses irony to shake her major characters of their self-deception and to expose the hypocrisy and pretentiousness, absurdity and insanity of some of her minor characters.”

Jane Austen did not much know about the lower classes. She could write only about the small section of society, the upper middle class. She understood the social relationship among them.

Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice has negative treatment of some of her characters. She disapproves of Mr Collin’s pomposity, Mrs Bennett’s silliness, Lady Catherine’s snobbishness, Mary’s self-absorption and above all Wickham’s selfish opportunism and deceit. All these characters are commented on adversely, sometimes openly, sometimes by implication.

On the other hand Elizabeth and Darcy are admired for their ability to learn. They are rewarded with happiness and wealth.

When we look for the meaning of the word 'Prejudice,' we will learn that it is to form a judgment too hastily. By her description the novelist introduces Wickham as an irresistible man of good appearance. She makes Elizabeth falls for him. But she does not show us the real character of Wickham at the beginning. Her purpose was to prejudice us in his favour so that we understand how her heroine Elizabeth is prejudiced. Later we discover that Wickham is not what he appears to be and that is part of the meaning of the novel.

We notice that at the beginning of the novel Mrs Bennett had not met Bingley, but she could speak about his status and his willingness to be pleased and take immediate action and his significance for other characters. Mr Collins is introduced through a letter he sends to Mr Bennett.

To understand Jane Austen and her novels we should read our own academic critic Yasmine Goonratne and Arnold Kettle, both of whose writing I thoroughly enjoyed.

There are film versions of this classic, but it are nothing like reading the novel ourselves and relishing the language she uses for her narration and description.

It is true present day writers write differently and the modern and contemporary novels incorporate many complex themes and simple style and yet, novels like Pride and Prejudice have withstood time as good literature. That is one reason why her book also continues to be prescribed for public examinations.

Among the earlier British women writers I like Emily Bronte, George Elliot, and Virginia Woolf

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