Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet\'s

Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet's Epiphany in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Often, short stories are organized around an epiphany, that is, a moment of blinding insight, gradually built up to by the author through previous action, and then experienced by a central character, in what seems to the reader like a moment of blinding insight for that character. In that same respect, it seems fair to suggest that Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice (1813), although a novel and not a short story, is similarly built around an epiphany: Elizabeth Bennet's epiphany, or moment of blinding insight, after being misled by others and allowing herself to be misled, of Darcy's true nature.

Of all five Bennet sisters within Pride and Prejudice (and the characters in the novel overall) Elizabeth Bennet is the most engaging and appealing. Elizabeth is clever, conversant, quick-witted, observant, and highly intelligent, more so than any of her sisters. In her intelligence, Elizabeth seems to be her father's (the cool and detached Mr. Bennet, the patriarch of the family) equal, although she is not remote, as he is. Perhaps Elizabeth's most endearing quality is that she seems above and beyond the pettiness of her society. It is not that her younger sisters' bad behavior, and the antagonistic attitudes of other females she meets, on route to finally recognizing her actual love for Darcy do not bother her. It is, rather, that Elizabeth is above and beyond such pettiness.

Elizabeth, however, despite her many positive qualities, tends at times to be outspoken and erroneous in her judgments about others; quick to (incorrectly) assess them, and difficult to convince otherwise. Nowhere is this more clear than in her mistaken attitude about Darcy, her (eventual) true love. Elizabeth's epiphany about Darcy, then, comes when she figures out that Wickham's indictment of Darcy's behavior is a lie, and that it has in fact been motivated Wickham's self-interested wish for revenge.

Leading up to (and following) Elizabeth's epiphany, Pride and Prejudice is essentially about how Elizabeth and Darcy slowly overcome their misconceptions; misunderstandings; weaknesses, and mistakes, to at last find love and happiness together. Both "pride" (personal and social, that is) and "prejudice" (the pre-judging, or perhaps more accurately, the misjudging, of one person by the other) create, before that point, considerable roadblocks to the love the two eventually find together. For example, based on her misconceptions, Elizabeth firmly rejects Darcy's first proposal of marriage, and does not realize her error in judgment for quite some time.

Fortunately for Elizabeth, the strength of her own character, and her intelligence, wit, and personal charm allow her to retain Darcy's interest up until the time of her epiphany. Meanwhile, also, Elizabeth experiences many distractions, e.g., her mother; her sisters, their suitors, and all of their various actions and intrigues (including Lydia's mysterious disappearance); her father's remoteness, which likely cloud her thinking, but also, in a more positive sense, enable her to later make more favorable comparisons between Darcy and others she knows, particularly her sisters' suitors, so that she may then more clearly see Darcy for who he really is.