Elizabeth, Family & Random Speculation

[reposted from wordpress]

There is a rather fascinating comment towards the end of Pride and Prejudice, after Elizabeth’s engagement to Darcy, particularly re: the insistence on the Bennets as a warm and affectionate family.  (You know, Mr Bennet really loves his wife and only mocks his daughters because [ . . .], actually they are friendly, loving, just chaotic (–> natural).  The book shows nothing of the kind; if it did, Elizabeth would probably be a much less attractive character – and I know a few Victorian critics took serious umbrage at her detachment from them, even as it is.)

By the end of the novel, she is no longer taking offence at Darcy’s palpable discomfort around her family; rather, she attempts to protect him from them.  But that’s not the line I’m thinking of, though I find it significant and darling and an awesome reversal of gender-roles.  I’m thinking of the one which follows it – that Elizabeth’s family makes life so impossible for her that she has almost no enjoyment of her own engagement, and can only long for her escape from ’society so little pleasing to either [herself and Darcy]‘.  She feels not the slightest regret at leaving her home or her family behind, even though it entails a separation of several hundred miles from her beloved father and sister – she wants only to be gone to Pemberley.

 

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