The "perfect" protagonist

[TheArsonist]

part of the path to the happy ending is his learning to be less of an arse.

Certainly Darcy has his flaws, but so does Elizabeth, and the happy ending involves them both growing:

“We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to that evening,” said Elizabeth. “The conduct of neither, if strictly examined, will be irreproachable; but since then we have both, I hope, improved in civility.”

She has grounds for her initial bad impression of him, due to overhearing his conversation, but while it was rude, it seems clear that it was not meant for her to hear, and that it's a blunt truth: Lizzie's beauty is at least debatable ("more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form"). Also, at that time class distinction was extremely important, and the social inferiority of the Bennetts and the rest of Meryton society was simply a fact.

“His pride,” said Miss Lucas, “does not offend me so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.”

“That is very true,” replied Elizabeth, “and I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”

We also learn that Darcy doesn't enjoy this sort of gathering and is generally standoffish with strangers, only comfortable among people he knows. (And this is not just snobbery, as he is pleasant to his servants and tenants.)

However, once he actually meets Elizabeth he very quickly falls in love with her, and his behavior towards her changes markedly, while he still remains skeptical of her family (with good cause!). Elizabeth, having formed a prejudice against him from that initial meeting, refuses to revise her opinion as she learns more about him and his good qualities, and pays back his one-time rudeness with a biting tongue. She is eager to be taken in by Wickham's lies because they justify her antipathy.

There are six Bennett women, all with very different personalities. That particular accusation would be fair towards Mrs. Bennett, Lydia and perhaps Kitty, but it's way off the mark for Lizzy and Jane. (And Mary wouldn't know a feminine wile if she tripped over one.)

Darcy mistakes genuine affection between Jane and Bingley for manipulation, partly because Jane's a shy soul who doesn't make a big show of her feelings and - not having taken the time to know this woman - he misinterprets that for coldness. (But surely an actual gold-digger would have been happy to make a big show of love? Darcy should be the first to understand that still waters can run deep.)

It's worth remembering that in that day and age, women of that social stratum were expected to take a hard-headed approach to marriage that would probably look a bit "gold digger" to modern eyes. They couldn't just go out and get a job to pay for their own living expenses (governess maybe?) and in many cases, as with the Bennetts, they couldn't inherit; their options were basically to marry somebody who could provide, or to depend on charity.

At the time, people's standing came largely from their family, and the actions of family members reflected back on their relations with very real consequences. The problem Darcy has with the Bennetts is not that they are eager for a match, but that they – and especially Mrs. Bennett – are vulgar and indiscreet about it, showing bad character, and that they have little to offer. He considers that marrying Jane would be a poor choice both as a family to marry into and as a love match. He suspects that Jane, a nice and pliant girl, does not love his friend, but is going along with her mother's scheme for the good of the family.

Elizabeth is fully aware that the behavior of her mother and two youngest sisters (abetted by a father who favors his two oldest and is ignoring his responsibilities, when not outright abusive) is disgraceful. And of course it leads to a near catastrophe that would have ruined them all if not for Darcy's intervention. So while he misjudges Jane's feelings, Darcy was perfectly right to warn Bingley against forming a connection with the Bennetts.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Certainly Darcy has his flaws, but so does Elizabeth, and the happy ending involves them both growing:
...
Elizabeth is fully aware that the behavior of her mother and two youngest sisters (abetted by a father who favors his two oldest and is ignoring his responsibilities, when not outright abusive) is disgraceful. And of course it leads to a near catastrophe that would have ruined them all if not for Darcy's intervention. So while he misjudges Jane's feelings, Darcy was perfectly right to warn Bingley against forming a connection with the Bennetts.

What makes Austen so great a writer (in my arrogant opinion) is exactly this: none of her characters are perfect, nobody's mistakes are unmotivated and there just to move the plot, and almost none of her characters are pure villains (maybe Wickham). Mr. and Mrs Bennett are far from perfect, but they do mean well, for instance.

--Annie

 

[Bramblethorn]

Certainly Darcy has his flaws, but so does Elizabeth, and the happy ending involves them both growing:



She has grounds for her initial bad impression of him, due to overhearing his conversation, but while it was rude, it seems clear that it was not meant for her to hear, and that it's a blunt truth: Lizzie's beauty is at least debatable ("more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form"). Also, at that time class distinction was extremely important, and the social inferiority of the Bennetts and the rest of Meryton society was simply a fact.

One could argue that he's just telling the unvarnished truth, or one could argue that he's just acknowledging the social realities of his time. But these two arguments conflict with one another: one of the other social realities of his time was that speaking blunt truths was very often an unacceptable thing to do.

Darcy is well aware of this principle. It's why he holds his tongue for far too long on the blunt truth of Wickham's villainy, and if he can keep his mouth shut about that it's not unreasonable to expect that he should also be able to hold his tongue on the Bennetts' inferiority for a few minutes.

P&P isn't exactly Das Kapital, but in its own subtle way it has plenty of implicit criticism of the social order of the time. I don't think anybody who reads it closely is likely to come away it thinking that Jane Austen approved of the entail system, or the high status that society granted to odious people like Lady Catherine, or the cover that it gives to a sexual like Wickham. It's fact that most of the characters in the book accept that order (tautologically so: it's only a social "fact" because they accept it as one). But it doesn't follow that Elizabeth is unreasonable to resent it, and in particular to resent having it thrown in her face so tactlessly.

(And yes, some of what Lizzy takes for rudeness is shyness, and one of the points Austen makes through characters like Lady Catherine is that there are far worse things than bluntness. Darcy is a much better person that Lizzy initially takes him for, but that doesn't mean her initial reaction is unreasonable in the context of what she's seen of him.)

Elizabeth is fully aware that the behavior of her mother and two youngest sisters (abetted by a father who favors his two oldest and is ignoring his responsibilities, when not outright abusive) is disgraceful. And of course it leads to a near catastrophe that would have ruined them all if not for Darcy's intervention.

If I may reframe:

Lydia is a girl of fifteen, being groomed by a man almost twice her age who has done this kind of thing before (and as it turns out, is simultaneously trying it on with another fifteen-year-old, Mary King). Yes, attitudes about adulthood and consent were different in Austen's day, and Lydia would have been considered marriageable, but even in that age people understood that this kind of behaviour was villainous.

Mrs. Bennett is not a sensible woman, both she and Mr. Bennett ought to have raised Lydia better than they did, and both of them could have been more skeptical of Wickham. But they don't know his background; they have no particular reason to believe ill of him beyond the wariness one might show towards any young man. Even if they had been better parents, it's not obvious that they would have prevailed against him - after all, he very nearly succeeded with Georgiana.

But Darcy? He knows exactly what Wickham is and the threat he poses to somebody like Lydia or Mary King, and yet he keeps that knowledge to himself long enough for Wickham to do some grave harm that is only very partially mitigated by Darcy's eventual intervention. (It's also a somewhat self-interested intervention, given his attachment to Lydia's sister; had Wickham instead eloped with Miss King, or one of the Merryton tradesmen's daughters alluded to later, it's not clear what if anything Darcy would have done about it.)

Had he been as willing to speak "blunt truths" about Wickham as he was about Elizabeth, Lydia would've had at least a chance to grow into adulthood and develop a little more sense. She might have ended up with something slightly better than being married off to the man who groomed her. No fifteen-year-old deserves that kind of punishment for being the victim of a calculated predator.

Obviously the greatest part of the blame here falls on Wickham himself, but this episode taken as a whole doesn't give Darcy any grounds for feeling superior to the Bennett family.

 

[TheArsonist]

One could argue that he's just telling the unvarnished truth, or one could argue that he's just acknowledging the social realities of his time. But these two arguments conflict with one another: one of the other social realities of his time was that speaking blunt truths was very often an unacceptable thing to do.

That supposed conflict seems like sophistry to me, but let that pass. If Darcy thought that Elizabeth could hear him, he was certainly being unspeakably rude, to an extent that seems out of character. I therefore conclude that he did not. And speaking bluntly about a third person to a friend was clearly not beyond the pale: characters do so all the time throughout the book.

P&P isn't exactly Das Kapital, but in its own subtle way it has plenty of implicit criticism of the social order of the time. I don't think anybody who reads it closely is likely to come away it thinking that Jane Austen approved of the entail system, or the high status that society granted to odious people like Lady Catherine, or the cover that it gives to a sexual like Wickham.

Perhaps. I'm not especially qualified to comment on Austen's social and political views, though I note that having conservative politics is cited as evidence of respectability and perhaps of good character in Sense and Sensibility (IIRC).

In general, I think as outsiders to the author's milieu we may project ideas of social criticism onto elements of mere social realism. Or to put it another way: someone can agree that a system has bad apples without necessarily coming to the conclusion that there is something wrong with the system.

But Darcy? He knows exactly what Wickham is and the threat he poses to somebody like Lydia or Mary King, and yet he keeps that knowledge to himself long enough for Wickham to do some grave harm that is only very partially mitigated by Darcy's eventual intervention. (It's also a somewhat self-interested intervention, given his attachment to Lydia's sister; had Wickham instead eloped with Miss King, or one of the Merryton tradesmen's daughters alluded to later, it's not clear what if anything Darcy would have done about it.)

Had he been as willing to speak "blunt truths" about Wickham as he was about Elizabeth, Lydia would've had at least a chance to grow into adulthood and develop a little more sense.

While they are both in Meryton, Wickham stays out of Darcy's way; then very soon afterwards Darcy goes away to London and then on to Pemberly. He never has any reason to suspect a liaison between Wickham and Lydia (or Miss King), and probably hasn't even heard about Elizabeth's regard for him. And what could he actually do? He cannot reveal the details of Wickham's misdeeds without exposing his sister. At the same time, he shows how he feels about Wickham very clearly by snubbing him in the street, and Miss Bingley does in fact warn Elizabeth about him based on vague information from Darcy.

Then he does eventually tell Elizabeth the whole story, well before Lydia's elopement. It is Elizabeth and Jane who decide not to tell anyone else, as Wickham will soon be safely away (as they think). So no, I cannot accept that Darcy bears much responsibility for the Wickham affair and Lydia's disgrace.

But I feel we're getting quite a ways off topic. I don't think I was wrong to link the common romance trope of forming an unreasonable dislike against a love interest with Pride and Prejudice, and I don't think litigating the rights or wrongs of Darcy's actions really gets us any further. As I've repeatedly said, he definitely has his flaws, but nevertheless Lizzie's antipathy is IMO excessive, and her stubbornness in holding on to it unreasonable. (Of course, the reader may suspect that underlying it there is not just injured pride but an element of thwarted attraction. Hell hath no fury, the lady doth protest and all that.)

Actually, in checking some facts for this reply I came across Elizabeth's wry judgment of herself, and who could put it better?

“And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one’s genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying anything just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.”