Pride and Prejudice - Themes

Themes: Pride and Prejudice

The two major themes in the novel Pride and Prejudice are summed up in the title. Pride and Prejudice contains a cherished love story between Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. As in many good love stories, the lovers must overcome and conquer several stumbling blocks, beginning with the tension caused by their own personal prides and prejudices.

          The pride is one of the foremost barriers that create an obstacle between Darcy’s and Lizzy’s relationship. Thanks to Darcy’s position in society he has a lot of pride which eventually leads him to scorn anyone outside of his personal social circle. Even the character flaw that causes Lizzy to dislike Darcy on their first meeting is pride. Her perception of him is a cold, an arrogant and a proud man, but yet Lizzy herself suffers from the same flaw: her own pride. Lizzy’s pride makes her misjudge Darcy on the basis of a poor first impression and then it also leads her to think ill of Darcy.

          Prejudice is another thing that causes trouble between Darcy and Lizzy. Darcy has prejudices against Elizabeth’s poor social standing which completely blinds him and Lizzy has prejudices about Darcy as a proud and an arrogant man. Both Darcy and Lizzy realize that they are wrong in their judgments towards one another. Darcy realizes that he’s wrong when he judges Lizzy after her social position and Lizzy realizes that her judgments and prejudices about Darcy were based on vanity and pride, rather than on reason. Darcy proves that Lizzy’s prejudices about him are wrong when he treats the Gardiners, who are a much lower class than him, with great civility.

          It’s also obvious that Lizzy’s prejudices about other characters have been incorrect. In fact her prejudices about different characters are only correct half of the time. Her judgments about Mr. Collins and how absurdly selfish he is and about Lady Catherine de Bourgh and how snobbish and proud she is turns out to be true, while her first impressions and prejudices about Darcy and Wickham steer her incorrectly. At first Wickham is thought to be a gentleman. His easy manner and good looks fool many people in his surrounding, including Lizzy. She even believes every word he tells her about Darcy. Lizzy’s prejudices about Wickham are proved wrong when she realizes that everything he has said about Darcy have been a lie.

          Jane Austen enclosures a happy ending when she shows us that there’s something about love that empowers it to overcome all the pride and prejudice that society throw in its way.

// Rebecka Belge