Pride and Prejudice Essay Example
Study Questions
1. Jane Austen’s original title for the novel was First Impressions. What role do first impressions play in Pride and Prejudice?
C1: Pride and Prejudice is, first and foremost, a novel about surmounting obstacles and achieving romantic happiness. For Elizabeth, the heroine, and Darcy, her eventual husband, the chief obstacle resides in the book’s original title: First Impressions. Darcy, the proud, prickly noblewoman’s nephew, must break free from his original dismissal of Elizabeth as “not handsome enough to tempt me,” and from his class-based prejudice against her lack of wealth and family connections. Elizabeth’s first impressions, meanwhile, catalogue Darcy as arrogant and self-satisfied; as a result, she later accepts slanderous accusations against him as true.
Both Elizabeth and Darcy are forced to come to grips with their own initial mistakes. Structurally, the first half of the novel traces Darcy’s progression to the point at which he is able to admit his love in spite of his prejudice. In the second half, Elizabeth’s mistaken impressions are supplanted by informed realizations about Darcy’s true character. Darcy’s two proposals to Elizabeth chart the mature development of their relationship. He delivers the first at the mid-point of the novel, when he has realized his love for Elizabeth but has not yet escaped his prejudices against her family, and when she is still in the grip of her first, negative impression of him. The second proposal—in which Darcy humbly restates his love for her and Elizabeth, now with full knowledge of Mr. Darcy’s good character, happily accepts—marks the arrival of the two characters, each finally achieving the ability to view the other through unprejudiced eyes.
C2: First impressions and separation of social classes plays a very active role in the whole theme of Pride and Prejudice. In this novel by Jane Austen, we don’t only see how first impressions effect relationships, but we also how the
1. Jane Austen’s original title for the novel was First Impressions. What role do first impressions play in Pride and Prejudice?
C1: Pride and Prejudice is, first and foremost, a novel about surmounting obstacles and achieving romantic happiness. For Elizabeth, the heroine, and Darcy, her eventual husband, the chief obstacle resides in the book’s original title: First Impressions. Darcy, the proud, prickly noblewoman’s nephew, must break free from his original dismissal of Elizabeth as “not handsome enough to tempt me,” and from his class-based prejudice against her lack of wealth and family connections. Elizabeth’s first impressions, meanwhile, catalogue Darcy as arrogant and self-satisfied; as a result, she later accepts slanderous accusations against him as true.
Both Elizabeth and Darcy are forced to come to grips with their own initial mistakes. Structurally, the first half of the novel traces Darcy’s progression to the point at which he is able to admit his love in spite of his prejudice. In the second half, Elizabeth’s mistaken impressions are supplanted by informed realizations about Darcy’s true character. Darcy’s two proposals to Elizabeth chart the mature development of their relationship. He delivers the first at the mid-point of the novel, when he has realized his love for Elizabeth but has not yet escaped his prejudices against her family, and when she is still in the grip of her first, negative impression of him. The second proposal—in which Darcy humbly restates his love for her and Elizabeth, now with full knowledge of Mr. Darcy’s good character, happily accepts—marks the arrival of the two characters, each finally achieving the ability to view the other through unprejudiced eyes.
C2: First impressions and separation of social classes plays a very active role in the whole theme of Pride and Prejudice. In this novel by Jane Austen, we don’t only see how first impressions effect relationships, but we also how the