2:52 AM

Lizzy's pride and Darcy's prejudice

Posted by Tatyana

The view about Pride and Prejudice I've often heard expressed by some aficionados of the book is that Lizzy represents prejudice because she's prejudiced against Mr. Darcy at the beginning, while Darcy represents pride, as initially he is too proud to confess his love to Lizzy.
 However, after watching the 1995 BBC TV series a second time recently I had an unexpected epiphany. In actuality it's the other way around. Lizzy is the proud one while Mr. Darcy is the prejudiced one.
  Think about Mr. Darcy and his motives, why does he do everything in his power to prevent his friend Mr. Bingley from marrying Jane? Obviously he makes some assumptions about Jane based on his knowledge of the social background of the Bennet family and his observations of their behavior in public. And what is prejudice if not assumptions made about an individual person based on the general ideas about the group they belong to? Then again he reveals his prejudice as he confesses his love to Lizzy, even at such an intimate moment he talks about the vastly different social background of their families and about the improper behavior of Lizzy's mother and sisters in public. Those things mean such an awful lot to him.
  By contrast Lizzy doesn't really jump to conclusions about people, she may detest Mr. Collins and at first is appalled by the news of Charlotte's acceptance of his marriage proposal but she still remains friends with Charlotte. At the same time when she turns down Mr. Darcy she displays a great deal of that don't-take-crap-from-nobody attitude , which can only be identified as pride. She's proud as hell, and though she may be sexually drawn to Mr. Darcy, she can't possibly accept his proposal after his spiel about the improprieties and low social background of her family. She won't be condescended to. Then later on in an even more spectacular display of verbal flipping of the proverbial bird, Lizzy essentially tells the revered lady Cathrine De Burg to stuff it. Lizzy doesn't take it lightly when either she or her family are called trash and unworthy of the likes of Mr. Darcy. In fact I suspect that on some level Lizzy's motive behind eventually marrying Darcy is to piss of lady Cathrine de Burg and her cousin Mr. Collins with her.
Thus pride is Lizzy and prejudice is Mr. Darcy

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