novel of manners · 1813
Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
1813 novel by Jane Austen
- 1813
- novel of manners
- satirical fiction
- psychological fiction
- romantic fiction
Summary
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by English author Jane Austen. Written when she was aged 20–21, it was her third novel scribed and became the second to see print when it was published in 1813. A novel of manners, it follows the character development of Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the book, who learns about the repercussions of hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between superficial goodness and actual goodness.
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Historical Background
Jane Austen began the novel as "First Impressions," written between 1796 and 1797 at Steventon, when she was in her early twenties. Her father offered the manuscript to a publisher in 1797, but it was rejected unseen. Austen revised the work extensively over the following years, and it was eventually published anonymously in January 1813 by Thomas Egerton as "Pride and Prejudice," her second published novel after "Sense and Sensibility" (1811). The novel emerged from the world of the English landed gentry and the marriage market that governed women's economic security, since women of Austen's class could rarely inherit property and depended on marriage for financial stability. This context of entailed estates, limited female inheritance, and social rank shapes the novel's central concerns. Austen wrote within the tradition of the novel of manners, drawing on and gently parodying the sentimental and Gothic fiction popular in her youth, including the works of Frances Burney and Samuel Richardson. Published during the Regency era, the novel reflects the codes of courtship, class distinction, and domestic life among the English gentry, rendered through Austen's characteristic irony and free indirect discourse.
The Story
The novel follows Elizabeth Bennet, the second of five daughters in a genteel but financially precarious family, whose estate is entailed away from female heirs. When the wealthy Mr. Bingley leases nearby Netherfield Park, he brings his proud friend Mr. Darcy, whose aloof manner at a local ball offends Elizabeth and sets the pattern of misjudgment that gives the novel its title. Elizabeth's growing prejudice against Darcy is compounded by the charming officer Wickham's false account of past injury at Darcy's hands, while Darcy struggles against his own pride of rank in his growing attraction to Elizabeth. Darcy's first proposal, delivered with condescension, is angrily refused; his subsequent letter, however, reveals the truth about Wickham and about his role in separating Bingley from Elizabeth's sister Jane. Elizabeth's visit to Darcy's estate, Pemberley, and his generous intervention when Elizabeth's youngest sister Lydia elopes with Wickham, gradually reveal his true character. Meanwhile, the absurd clergyman Mr. Collins and the haughty Lady Catherine de Bourgh provide comic and social counterpoints to the central romance. As both protagonists overcome their initial faults of pride and prejudice, misunderstandings dissolve, Jane and Bingley are reunited, and the novel closes with the marriages of Elizabeth and Darcy and of Jane and Bingley.
Themes
- Pride and self-knowledge
- Prejudice and first impressions
- Marriage and economic necessity
- Class and social rank
- Reputation and propriety
- Individual judgment versus social convention
- Love and personal growth
Literary Devices
- Free indirect discourse — narration blends with characters' inner thoughts, especially Elizabeth's, to render irony without direct commentary
- Irony — the famous opening sentence establishes a sustained satirical tone toward social pretension and matchmaking
- Epistolary interludes — letters (notably Darcy's) reveal information and interiority unavailable through dialogue
- Foil characters — pairs such as Jane/Elizabeth and Darcy/Wickham sharpen moral and temperamental contrasts
- Wit and epigrammatic dialogue — conversation, especially Elizabeth's, drives characterization and social critique
- Structural symmetry — parallel courtships and reversals of judgment organize the plot's balance
Symbolism
- Pemberley — Darcy's estate symbolizes his true character and taste once seen apart from social performance
- Letters — symbolize truth-telling and self-revelation that spoken social exchange conceals
- Dancing and balls — symbolize the rituals of courtship and social negotiation among the gentry
- Entailment of the Bennet estate — symbolizes the structural vulnerability of women's economic position
Critical Interpretation
Criticism of Pride and Prejudice has long debated Austen's relationship to the social order she depicts: some readers, following early responses such as Walter Scott's, praised her realism and command of "commonplace things," while twentieth-century critics like Marvin Mudrick and Q.D. Leavis explored her irony as a mode of moral and social critique rather than mere comedy of manners. Feminist criticism, including work associated with Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, has examined the novel's engagement with women's constrained economic and social choices under primogeniture and the marriage market, reading Elizabeth's wit and resistance as a limited but real form of agency. Marxist and historicist readings emphasize the novel's grounding in property, rank, and class mobility. Other critics have focused on Austen's narrative technique, particularly her pioneering use of free indirect discourse to shape reader sympathy. The novel's popular reception as a romantic comedy has sometimes been contrasted with more skeptical academic readings that stress its ironic distance from sentimental convention.
Quotations
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
The narrator's ironic overture establishes the novel's satirical view of marriage and social expectation.
I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.
Elizabeth reflects on Darcy after his slight at the Meryton ball, naming the novel's central tension.
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
Darcy's proposal, delivered with wounding condescension, precipitates Elizabeth's refusal.
Till this moment I never knew myself.
Elizabeth's admission after reading Darcy's letter, marking her turn toward self-knowledge.
Influence
Pride and Prejudice helped establish the novel of manners and the marriage plot as a durable literary form, shaping the romantic comedy tradition in English fiction. Its use of an ironic, psychologically attuned narrator influenced later novelists' development of free indirect discourse, from George Eliot to Henry James. The enemies-to-lovers courtship pattern centered on Elizabeth and Darcy became a template widely echoed in later romantic fiction and popular culture. Austen's blend of social satire with sympathetic characterization also shaped the development of domestic and social realism in the nineteenth-century British novel.
Adaptations
- Pride and Prejudice (1995 BBC television miniseries, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth)
- Pride & Prejudice (2005 film directed by Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley)
- Pride and Prejudice (1940 MGM film, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier)
- Bridget Jones's Diary (novel and film loosely inspired by the plot)
Related Works
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
- Emma by Jane Austen
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- Evelina by Frances Burney
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Curator's Notes
- 1The novel was originally titled 'First Impressions' before Austen revised it for publication in 1813.
- 2Austen sold the copyright to her publisher Thomas Egerton for £110 and did not retain further profits from its sales.
- 3Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously, credited only to 'the Author of Sense and Sensibility.'
- 4The opening line is among the most frequently quoted first sentences in English literature.
For the Exam
UGC NET English frequently tests Pride and Prejudice on Austen's use of irony and free indirect discourse, the novel's place in the tradition of the novel of manners, its treatment of marriage, property, and women's economic dependence under entailment, and character analysis of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Questions may also address the novel's narrative technique, its opening line, its relation to Austen's other novels, and feminist or historicist critical approaches to the text.