Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.

What manner of degradation and subjugation could lead someone to feel lucky for securing a husband like Mr Collins? Nevertheless, Charlotte is unswervingly loyal to her new husband. Elizabeth can’t help looking at her for signs of discontentment, but sees very little.

[Elizabeth] looked with wonder at her friend that she could have so cheerful an air with such a companion. When Mr. Collins said anything of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear.

Charlotte and Elizabeth have a giggle over the ridiculous Mr Collins in the 1980 adaptation

To me, this just makes it all the more horrible. She can’t complain about him to her friends, nor tweet nor blog of her troubles. Rather, she must express gratitude to her husband and of course his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and avoid giving any signs of her discontentment. What she does say, for example about encouraging Mr Collins to spend time in his garden, is in a kind of code.

Charlotte appears 'cheerful' and 'content' at Hunsford in the 1995 BBC and 2005 movie adaptations

This all has the potential to be very dark, but in the major adaptations the filmmakers have generally tried to keep it fairly light. In the 1980 adaptation, Charlotte and Elizabeth even share a giggle over the former’s new husband. Extra little comedic scenes with Collins are added to lighten the mood, when it would surely have been more interesting to explore the reality of such a life. It is, after all, a future that Elizabeth only narrowly avoided through her own strength of will. In my view, the 1995 and 2005 adaptations both do the same to an extent, with the 1995 series coming closest to recreating the tone of the book.

Jane is understandably sickened by the creepy Mr Collins in Lost in Austen

Marriage to Mr Collins was, as critic Robert M. Polhemus put it, ‘a kind of socially respectable prostitution in which Charlotte acquiesces.’ Her plight is just one example of how the main story – so ‘light and bright and sparkling’ – nevertheless flirts with many darker themes. It’s interesting that, of all the dramatizations, it’s Lost in Austen that presents life with Mr Collins in the darkest and most uncompromising manner. They do this by transforming Collins into an almost unrecognizable middle-aged slimely, fetishistic letch, which lessens some of the impact.  In the book, so much is left unsaid between her and Elizabeth that it only adds to the sense of gloom.

Darcy

Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain united in their dislike of Pride and Prejudice

Early critical reception for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was good, but for Lady Jane Davy, writing in 1813, the book was found wanting. Written for mere amusement, in her view, the novel nevertheless largely failed to amuse:

‘Pride and Prejudice’ I do not like very much. Want of interest is the fault I can least excuse in works of mere amusement, and however natural the picture of vulgar minds and manners is there given, it is unrelieved by the agreeable contrast of more dignified and refined characters occasionally captivating attention.

Charlotte Bronte was another fierce critic, annoyed at the lack of wilderness, open air and the elements contained in the novel. A kind of mirror image of Mr Collins, with his endless lectures on the smallest details of Lady Catherine’s estate, it seems that Ms Bronte wanted more on the weather, the trees, the hills and the streams.

Why do you like Miss Austen so much? I am puzzled on that point… I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers – but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy – no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.

Charlotte Bronte’s review was positively glowing next to Mark Twain’s, who’s contempt for Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice took his imagination to quite extraordinary places:

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin bone!

Later, Winston Churchill critiicized the book from a different angle. Its world was too small and isolated, and its characters insular to the point of self-obsession:

What calm lives they had, those people! No worries about the French Revolution or the crashing struggle of the Napoleonic Wars. Only manners controlling natural passion as far as they could, together with cultural explanations of any mischances.

So there we have it. If Pride and Prejudice had more refined characters, less refined wilderness, more on the Napoleonic Wars and generally less to encourage Mark Twain to pick up his spade, then everyone would be happy!

Jane Davy, Charlotte Bronte and Mark Twain are quoted in Robert Morrison’s Pride and Prejudice; A Sourcebook (2005) available from Amazon.

Lucy Brier's Mary Bennet infinitely prefers a book to a ball!

To me, there is a certain meanness in the writing of Mary’s character. Jane Austen writes very unsympathetically about her in the novel, but we have little control over our physical appearance, none over our natural musical ability, and only a limited amount over our way with words. Mary struggles to better herself in a commendable way; she doesn’t give up because of her lack of natural advantages, but rather doubles her efforts. Her comments are longwinded, and largely lacking in substance, but this hardly a capital offence. Her pomposity, for example when she is at the ball having to sit by herself as nobody has asked her to dance, can surely be forgiven. It is probably better to pretend that you do not wish to dance than suffer the humiliation of sitting longingly alone all evening.

Mary probably disappointed her parents from birth. A third daughter would have represented the dwindling chance of producing a male heir to inherit Longbourn. Again, since Mary had no choice over her gender, one would expect this to be a cause of sympathy rather than mocking. Nevertheless, along with the more deserving Lady Catherine and Mr Collins, Mary is generally used as a target of Jane Austen’s humor.

A cute and likeable Mary Bennet

While we all probably join Amanda Price in pining for the more civilized society and manners that her novels represent, in most ways I think we’re becoming gentler and more forgiving since Pride and Prejudice was written. Lucy Briers’ 1995 Mary is pretty close to Jane Austen’s vision, but in other cases she has been softened greatly for modern audiences. In the 1980 adaptation she is completely adorable. Tessa Peake-Jones’s Mary seems younger than Kitty and Lydia, is not at all ‘plain,’ and performs with such sweetness that all her pomposity can be put down to childish insecurity. The 1940 Pride and Prejudice, that seeks to make everyone likeable (even Lady Catherine de Bourgh), as nerdy and bespectacled, but sprightly and cute.

Likewise, in Lost in Austen, Ruby Bentall’s Mary is just about the cutest thing to appear on screen since Tiny Tim in the Muppet’s version of A Christmas Carol. She even gets excited about balls and joins in with her sisters’ silliness at every opportunity. In the 2005 movie, it’s hard to say much because Talulah Riley doesn’t get a lot to do, but in all the adaptations (save possibly for the 1995 version) Mary is a quirky, but likable young lady.

It seems that we’re not so comfortable with treating a character that hasn’t really done anything wrong so dismissively. We want to make her likeable, lovable even, while Jane Austen showed no particular need to do this herself. In our society we’re still incredibly judgmental and unpleasant of course, but I’d like to think that we’re less willing to aim our laughter so unambiguously at the misfortunes of others.

Your nerd in solidarity,

Lizzy

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie

Elizabeth’s independent spirit was out of step with the advice given to ladies in Fordyce’s very popular Sermons to Young Women and Rousseau’s Emile, both of which we’ve quoted at length on this site. Both of these texts were enormously influential, and in Jane Austen’s day there was of course extreme social pressure on young ladies to behave according to their ludicrous ideas.

However, there were also contrary voices at the time that educated ladies of the era could have accessed. Most famously, Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1792 book ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ even dared to describe women as ‘rational creatures.’  Here are a few extracts from her seminal work.

First, from the introduction, this is Wollstonecraft’s take on the dominant ideas of femininity in her day, that led to many women behaving like children:

Women are, in fact, so much degraded by mistaken notions of female excellence, that I do not mean to add a paradox when I assert, that this artificial weakness produces a propensity to tyrannize, and gives birth to cunning, the natural opponent of strength, which leads them to play off those contemptible infantile airs that undermine esteem even whilst they excite desire. Do not foster these prejudices, and they will naturally fall into their subordinate, yet respectable station in life.

It seems scarcely necessary to say, that I now speak of the sex in general. Many individuals have more sense than their male relatives; and, as nothing preponderates where there is a constant struggle for an equilibrium, without it has naturally more gravity, some women govern their husbands without degrading themselves, because intellect will always govern.

Caroline Bingley and Mary Wollstonecraft are at odds over the ideals of feminine excellence.

She goes on to tackle the argument of Rousseau and Fordyce that men and women, led by their respective natures, should aspire to very different characters:

To account for, and excuse the tyranny of man, many ingenious arguments have been brought forward to prove, that the two sexes, in the acquirement of virtue, ought to aim at attaining a very different character: or, to speak explicitly, women are not allowed to have sufficient strength of mind to acquire what really deserves the name of virtue. Yet it should seem, allowing them to have souls, that there is but one way appointed by providence to lead MANKIND to either virtue or happiness.

If then women are not a swarm of ephemeron triflers, why should they be kept in ignorance under the specious name of innocence? Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong passions and groveling vices. Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that has only prejudices to rest on, and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force. Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, OUTWARD obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.

While more traditional, patriarchal ideas would surely have dominated, there were at least sections of the population that were challenging the idea that ladies should be witless, servile and above all, ‘soft’ in their dealings with men. Who knows whether Elizabeth would have agreed with Mary Wollstonecraft – although she certainly wouldn’t have gotten much from Fordyce’s Sermons!

Darcy

Mr Bingley must be in want of a wife!

Irony and Radicalism

According to one view, Jane Austen used irony as a shield, which allowed her to express her radical ideas. Think of the authority figures and national icons that are savaged in the book: a vicar (Collins), an officer in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces (Wickham), and an aristocrat (Lady Catherine.)

D. W. Harding’s article, partly reprinted in Robert Morrison’s 2005 Pride and Prejudice Sourcebook, argues that:

[Jane Austen's] thesis that the ruling standards of our social group leave a perfectly comfortable niche for detestable people and give them sufficient sanction to persist would, if it were argued seriously, arouse the most violent opposition…

As well as the key villains of the story, consider also the treatment of the major social institutions of the day. Marriage, the family, aspects of the class system, and the entailing of property along gendered lines, all receive a mauling in the novel.

In maintaining this gentle, mocking tone while dealing with controversial themes, Mrs. Bennet’s role is particularly important. She can be seen as something of a Shakespearean fool in Pride and Prejudice. Ironically, she is (to an extent!) sane in an insane world. Her social ineptness allows her to speak the truth about the unfairness of the system that threatens her daughters with lives of poverty and humiliation. She speaks honestly and openly about throwing her girls into the paths of rich men, and of course she has a point. Marriage was the only hope for educated ladies of the era, but only Mrs. Bennet has the ability to talk openly about it. And yet she is condemned as a woman of ‘illiberal mind’ and ‘mean understanding.’

Irony and Conservatism

The other view is that irony comes from moderation, and is therefore more of a conservative literary tool. It reflects a kind of awareness of the less admirable aspects of the human condition, alongside a belief that such things are impossible to change. British satire has always had its conservative strand, which comes from skepticism about grand social statements and projects. As critic Alan Bloom, also cited in Robert Morrison’s Sourcebook, put it:

Irony flourishes on the disproportion of the way things are and the way they should be, while accepting the necessity of this disproportion.

As long as human nature remains what it is, we’ll continue to be preached to by idiots, defended by good-for-nothings and ruled over by tyrants. All you can do is approach this world with honesty, integrity and humor. It is, after all, the only one we have, and the only one we’ll ever have.

For Brits like me, irony is so integral to our national culture that it’s probably impossible to fully disentangle its purpose and effects. Certainly, it is often used as a default mechanism for avoiding talking openly about feelings and emotions. Irritatingly, my more arrogant country folk often repeat the mantra that Americans don’t understand irony. This is, of course, completely untrue. Speaking generally of course, they simply have the ability to communicate in other ways, whereas we tend to rely so heavily on irony – often to avoid addressing issues directly.

Sorry to end this post in so wishy-washy a manner, but I’m not sure what the purpose of the irony in Pride and Prejudice really is. It goes without saying that, independently of moral or political purpose, it makes for wonderful comedy. However, it’s hard to imagine that somebody with radical political tendencies would work so hard to drench them in such ambiguity. To leave generations of critics to bicker over one’s views would be a strange ambition indeed.

One can never be sure with irony, which is why it’s so rich and interesting a topic. Is there anything about Jane Austen’s life, outside of her writing, that suggests an answer? We’d love to hear from any of the many Austen-experts out there…

Darcy

By contrast, Mr Darcy’s admiration and love for Elizabeth is ignited by her wonderfully independent mind and spirit. We might take such a trait to be obviously attractive, but if you read the extract we posted from Fordyce’s Sermons, you’ll have seen that this wasn’t considered the case at the time.

Rousseau's 'Emile or On Education'

Fordyce’s widely read Sermons for Young Women recommended that women avoid being witty around their husbands, for fear of scaring them away to the local tavern. There, they would drink away the sorrows suffered at the hands of their terrifying spouses. His work was informed by the hugely influential Emile (1762), a treatise on education by the Romantic philosopher Jean-jacques Rousseau. Here is Rousseau’s view on the role of women and how they should conduct themselves:

Woman was made specially to please man; if the latter must please her in turn, it is less a direct necessity; his merit consists in his strength, he pleases by that fact alone. This is not the law of love I grant; but it is the law of nature, which is antecedent even to love. If woman is formed to please and live in subjection, she must render herself agreeable to man instead of provoking his wrath; her strength lies in her charms.

If all of this has you reaching for a bucket, then consider Rousseau’s warning:

Women do wrong to complain of the inequality of man-made laws; this inequality is not of man’s making, or at any rate it is not the result of mere prejudice, but of reason.

You are just being unreasonable!

As is obvious from the book, Darcy, who was a very powerful man from a traditional, established family, was being quite unconventional in choosing an outspoken wife like Elizabeth. Indeed, Mary Russel Mitford, a novelist writing in 1814, even went so far as to suggest that Darcy should have married Jane! Elizabeth, she wrote, suffering from an ‘entire want of taste’ was only fit for Wickham!

This is what our poor Lizzy was up against.

Jane Austen wrote nothing about the hair color of Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice (although she does have dark eyes), and was similarly silent about Darcy’s, Jane’s and Bingley’s barnetts, so where does this certainty come from?

A decidedly dark Elizabeth Bennet

Casting directors have seen it differently in the past. In the 1940 adaptation, Greer Garson’s Elizabeth has blonde hair, while Jane Bennet (Maureen O’ Sullivan) is a brunette. Also, in the 1980 series, Elizabeth Garvie has light brown hair and, again Jane’s (Sabina Franklin) hair is dark. However, from the 1995 BBC production the hair color has been fixed, as is evident in the 2005 movie and in the TV spin-off Lost in Austen.

Hair color is of course richly symbolic within our culture; blonde shades, like the color white, signify sexual and moral purity. Jane Bennet, for this reason, could never join the Pink Ladies. Also, blondeness – unfortunately for some (including me!) – still hasn’t lost its association with dumbness in our culture. Perhaps binding these together is our association of blondeness with childhood, puberty being the time when hair thickens and becomes darker.

Three Blonde Moments - A most definitely blonde Jane Bennet

Dark hair and features are of course more readily identified with moodiness, mystery and danger. It’s obvious, therefore, why it suits Elizabeth and Darcy’s fiery courtship. Perhaps it’s also considered more masculine. Andrew Davies did describe Elizabeth as something of a tomboy, because of her love of country walks, her very ‘unladylike’ habit of arguing with her superiors, and her willingness to get muddy. He said he thought it might be Jane Austen’s code for saying Elizabeth had lots of sexual energy (there he goes again!)

Tall, dark and handsome Mr Darcy

Dark hair is also symbolic of the generally more complex world of the adult. Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship is contradictory and complicated from the start. They both struggle to contain their emotions. Bingley and Jane’s relationship is far simpler. Theirs is such an innocent courtship that it’s hard to see it as adult at all. Bingley is indecisive and Jane is shy. Both are, of course, childlike traits.

The blonde and boyish Mr Bingley

In fact, it doesn’t take a major stretch of the imagination to see the relationships of Elizabeth and Jane, and Darcy and Bingley, as both containing Parent-Child elements. Elizabeth is both awed and saddened by the naivety of Jane’s worldview. She is like a parent with no way to protect her daughter from the cruelty of the adult world. Likewise, it’s only when Darcy ‘pretty much’ gives his permission for Bingley to marry Jane, that the former finally proposes. His words, therefore, must have carried greater authority than those of a typical friend. Moreover, despite trespassing on his younger friend’s hospitality at Netherfield, he speaks to Bingley with an abruptness that few friends would tolerate.

I’m sure there could be other reasons for the automatic way in which most of us associate Elizabeth and Darcy with dark hair and Jane and Bingley with blondeness, but these are what occurred to me. Did I miss any other hints in the book as to their appearance, or have we just filled in the gaps with our own cultural associations?

Lizzy

Getting this thoroughly unpleasant, early Darcy right is a major challenge for dramatizers. We have an entire novel to get used to his transformation, but making it plausible over a movie or TV series is a different matter. We have to dislike him, but not so much that we put down the book, leave the cinema or don’t bother to tune in the following week. Here is how Darcy’s offish exterior was treated in the 2005 movie and 1995 series:

Colin Firth (1995)

Colin Firth explains his character’s behaviour as follows:

I agree to go to this party with my friend Bingley. He encourages me: ‘Come on, it’ll be a great party with lots of women.’ I arrive. I’m terribly shy – terribly uneasy in social situations anyway. This is not a place I’d normally go to, and I don’t know how to talk to these people. So I protect myself underneath a veneer of snobbishness and rejection. Bingley immediately engages with the most attractive girl in the room, and this makes me even less secure.

As Firth explains, Darcy was, by the terms of the day, Bingley’s superior. Therefore, having his friend suggest that the he make do with the plainer sister would have compounded Darcy’s foul mood.

Matthew Macfadyen (2005)

Director Joe Wright’s explanation of Lizzy and Darcy’s early relationship is a little simpler:

In the beginning, Darcy can’t deal with the fact that he fancies Lizzy. They are like children in the playground – in the way that kids pull hair because they don’t know how to express their feelings. He needs her to tease him and to be able to lighten up with her.

In Matthew Macfadyen’s own take on the early Darcy, he mentions the proposal scene, set of course in the pouring rain in the 2005 film:

He is a serious young man, with huge responsibilities for his estate, and he has never met a young woman like her. When he proposes to her, first explaining how unsuitable a match she is, he makes that explanation out of integrity, not arrogance.

It’s interesting that in each of these explanations, there is an attempt to justify (or at least rationalize) his behavior, to link the early Darcy to the gentlemen that Lizzy bumps into at Pemberley. By contrast, Jane Austen was content to paint a pretty simple picture of his character after the ball scene:

[Mr Darcy's] manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

So this is how Darcy’s apparent inconsistency has been explained by dramatizers. Please add your thoughts below!

A cad and a rake, or just misunderstood?

However, Wickham did extort the equivalent of more than one million dollars from Mr Darcy, which he gambled and otherwise wasted away. He also lied to anyone who would listen about his dealings with the gentleman. When the militia moved to Brighton, Wickham left with another mountain of debt, having conned his way into credit agreements with various traders.

Mr Wickham’s decision to elope with Lydia was a strange one. The Bennets have no money, so his motivation could not have been financial. He had no intention of marrying Lydia, it is said, so perhaps he was being led purely by his sexual desire. If so, then why run off with a gentleman’s daughter? Less troublesome encounters would surely have been possible for an officer stationed in a famous ‘gay bathing place’ like Brighton?

In any case, at the end of the book, where Jane Austen describes the future of Lydia and Mr Wickham, there is little to redeem his character. They stay together of course, but in time become bored with one another. They live a restless life, never able to live to their means and dependent on the charity of Mrs Elizabeth Darcy.

So while it’s a nice idea in Lost in Austen, in the novel the cracks of ambiguity in Wickham’s moral character are very slight indeed. I do find his elopement with Lydia a little hard to rationalize, but overall he’s pretty much a straightforward 19th Century villain – a superficially charming, yet amoral hedonist.

Are you willing to believe, like Jane, that Mr Wickham ‘is not so undeserving’ as we might have thought. Or is he, as we always believed, in possession of ‘neither integrity or honour?’

Lizzy

Nevertheless, its interesting to see some of these matter-of-fact character descriptions together. Looking at them in turn, I was quite struck at the harshness of some of Jane Austen’s descriptions of the appearances of certain women.  It’s amusing that, even though most are just a few lines long, casting directors still can’t seem to stick to these descriptions!

In any case, here, in no particular order, are some key character quotes from Pride and Prejudice:

Mr. Bennet

Mr. Bennet has been interpreted widely across the major adaptations, but this is the only direct authorial description we are given:

Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character.

Mrs. Bennet

Again, Mrs Bennet’s character has been interpreted widely in the dramatizations. The most sympathetic is Priscilla Morgan’s portrayal in Cyril Coke’s 1980 adaptation. Alison Steadman plays Mrs Bennet with utmost shrillness in the 1995 version.

She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

Elizabeth Bennet

Jane Austen didn’t write much about Elizabeth directly, but we learn of her vibrancy and wit through her wonderful dialog, the praise of her father, and of course, Mr. Darcy’s unshakeable attraction. Here are a few things Jane Austen wrote about her heroine:

…there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody…

…easy and unaffected…

…she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.

Mary Bennet

Mary is not supposed to be bad at the piano, nor particularly stupid, yet she lacks the charm and good taste of Elizabeth:

Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached.

Lydia Bennet

Lydia, Mrs Bennet’s favorite daughter, is described in an unusually lengthy descriptive passage:

Lydia was a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine complexion and good-humoured countenance; a favourite with her mother, whose affection had brought her into public at an early age. She had high animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the attention of the officers, to whom her uncle’s good dinners, and her own easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance.

Mr. Collins

Mr. Collins, usually portrayed by older, and generally shorter men, is described as thus:

He was a tall, heavy-looking young man of five-and-twenty. His air was grave and stately, and his manners were very formal.

Mr. Bingley

Mr. Bingley, though perhaps suffering from a ‘want of resolution,’ is blessed with youth, unaffected manners and extreme good looks:

He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable…

Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners.

Mr. Darcy (at the Meryton Ball)

Mr. Darcy’s first scene at the Meryton Ball sees his status in the eyes of those present drop enormously, and we are shocked when he refuses to dance with Miss Elizabeth. Here is Jane Austen’s description:

Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year.

…he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

Mr. Wickham

Mr. Wickham turned a few heads on arriving in Meryton. He is a man ‘…of most gentlemanlike appearance…’ who:

… wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming. His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address. The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation–a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming…

Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Lady Catherine is not a pleasant lady, yet her appearance hints of forgotten beauty:

Lady Catherine was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked features, which might once have been handsome. Her air was not conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them such as to make her visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not rendered formidable by silence; but whatever she said was spoken in so authoritative a tone, as marked her self-importance…

Miss de Bourgh

Lady Catherine’s daughter, apparently destined for Mr. Darcy’s hand, did not appear to be an agreeable proposition:

Miss de Bourgh was pale and sickly; her features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very little, except in a low voice…

Some have, of course, been missed from the list so expect a Volume II in the future. Is there anything that strikes you as particularly notable? Also, to what extent do you feel the Pride and Prejudice adaptations have remained faithful to these descriptions?

Yours in the most ardent anticipatory fervor,

Fitzwilliam Darcy