Elizabeth Bennet
A heroine whose liveliness is also a risk of being too sure.
Realism & Victorian · Novel · 1813
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Elizabeth Bennet misreads Mr. Darcy, and he misreads her family. A courtship plot becomes a double education in class, wit, and the revision of first impressions.
Comedy of manners
Characters
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Pride given a fortune, then a conscience.
Mr. Collins
The comic future Elizabeth refuses, and a whole social world in one bow.
Themes
Judgment
Prejudice is a plot device and a moral habit to be broken.
Marriage and money
Feeling must negotiate entail, entailment, and the market of matches.
Motifs
Prose that forces rereading—of a man and of oneself.
Public rooms where private estimates are made too fast.
Echoes
Other works that share a motif with this one.