A Psychological Criticism of Pride and Prejudice

“The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.”
—Jane Austen

Lead Sentence Jane Austen lived a life marked by privilege and wealth, but also by sexism and tragedy. These motifs pervade her novel, Pride and Prejudice. Authors write about what they know, and Austen clearly draws ample inspiration from her own life. In Pride and Prejudice, Austen describes the life she has known, criticizes the world as it is, and imagines a world that might be—that in fact will be in over a hundred years. Beginning Paragraph Austen’s experiences show up in the lives of Mary, Elizabeth, and Charlotte Lucas. Thesis Statement However, the characters of Jane and Elizabeth—as well as the whole Bennet family—most prominently demonstrate how Jane Austen’s life impacted her writing.

Topic Sentence The most apparent parallel between Jane Austen’s life and Pride and Prejudice is the character who bears her name, Jane Bennet. Specifically, the relationship of Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley reflects that of Jane Austen and a man named Tom Lefroy. Austen became infatuated with Lefroy and wanted to marry him. In the same way, Jane Bennet is portrayed as one of the nicest characters, who always sees the good in everyone, including Bingley. Source Quotation Jane’s sister Elizabeth tells her, “You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I have never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life” (Austen 11). This is how Austen viewed herself when she was with Tom Lefroy. But the relationship did not last. She wrote a letter to her sister, saying, “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea” (Letters 7). Sadly, the relationship was cut short when Lefroy’s family arranged for him never to see Austen again and sent him away (Tomalin 123). The same thing happens between Bennet and Bingley. Bingley’s family intervenes and stops him from marrying for love. Austen in part wrote this story as an expression of her own experience but also as a description of love in a perfect world.

Middle Paragraphs The Austen family inspires much else about the Bennet family. Jane Austen had seven siblings—five brothers and two sisters. Transition However, she casts the Bennet family with five daughters and no sons. Austen chooses a family with all-female children in order to accentuate the barriers women face to education and career. Most of Austen’s brothers went to Oxford, whereas most of the Bennet daughters do not have formal lessons as children (Boyle). While Austen’s brothers went out to make careers for themselves, the Bennet sisters must seek good marriages or be doomed to spinsterhood and poverty. The Bennet sisters do as all women had to at the time—rely on each other. In the novel, Elizabeth and Jane share the same close relationship as Austen shared with her sister Cassandra. After Austen’s death, Cassandra wrote, “She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her, & it is as if I had lost a part of myself” (Record 267). In the same way, Elizabeth and Jane constantly write to each other and express loneliness when they are apart.

Not surprisingly, Austen grew up in a house of learning. Her father, like Mr. Bennet, spent much time in his library, and Jane Austen and her siblings had complete access to it as well. There, Jane would put on productions of Shakespeare and other renowned writers. Austen’s father regularly tutored her and her sister by using her brothers’ textbooks. In these ways, Jane’s father was a precursor to Mr. Bennett, who preferred his two eldest daughters and often encouraged their learning (Warren). Austen also studied in Oxford, where she learned the value of an education over status. Thematic Connections Indeed, in her time, well-read women were the exception rather than the rule, and Austen often reflects this in Pride and Prejudice by showing the casual sexism that the Bennet girls face each day.

Elizabeth Bennet’s life also reflects events in Jane Austen’s life. Austen met the love of her life, Tom Lefroy, at a dance, so it is no wonder that Elizabeth’s love life begins at a dance when she spies Mr. Darcy. At first, the stiff Mr. Darcy hates to dance, but he slowly learns to accept it as he falls in love with Elizabeth. In a letter to her uncle, Austen writes about her experience with Lefroy at the dance: “I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. . . . He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe” (Letters 1). Just like Darcy, Lefroy has a sharp tongue. After Austen’s death, Lefroy paid his respects, but his nephew writes, “My late venerable uncle . . . said in so many words that he was in love with her, although he qualified his confession by saying it was a boyish love” (Record 278). Lefroy’s statement reflects how Darcy treated Elizabeth in the beginning of their relationship, when he calls her “tolerable” (Austen 12). In this way, Darcy and Lefroy both show the same haughty attitude toward the focus of their love.

Just like Elizabeth, Austen also rejected proposals. A man named Harris Bigg-Wither, who had wealth and an estate, asked Jane to marry him, hoping not only for a wife but also a mother. Jane at first accepted the man’s proposal but rescinded her agreement the next day because she did not want a loveless marriage (Warren). In the same way, Elizabeth rejected the proposal from Mr. Collins, who would have been an excellent match based upon the common wisdom of the day. By contrast, Charlotte Lucas does accept such an excellent but loveless match. Elizabeth’s opinion of the marriage probably represents Austen’s own: “Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen” (Austen 109). Austen’s distaste shows her beliefs about traditional female roles. Rejecting the notion that a woman must marry for stability, position, and respectability, Austen instead chose the life of a single woman.

Pride and Prejudice reflects the life of Jane Austen in numerous other subtle ways. Austen starts the novel simply representing the world as she knows it, with strongly entrenched roles for men and women. She represents the personalities and positions of her own family members in the lives of the Bennets, especially Jane and Elizabeth. But then Austen moves on to provide a critique of the world as it is. She shows how Mr. Collins and Mrs. Bennet make fools of themselves by clinging so tightly to their expected social roles. Austen uses Mary Bennet to show how women must trade on their looks, and she uses Lydia to display the double standard between male and female roles. One wonders how much of this description and criticism is psychological therapy for Austen, a woman living a hundred years ahead of her time. Austen also writes to prescribe a better world. She creates her perfect ending in which her stand-in marries Tom Lefroy and class does not matter and women are equal to men.

Ending Paragraph Jane Austen is one of the best writers of all time, in part because she draws so powerfully from her own life experience. Most major events and characters in Pride and Prejudice somehow represent her life experience. The Bennet family, Jane, and Elizabeth stand in as surrogates for Austen’s own memories, frustrations, wishes, and hopes. This mixture of unvarnished reporting about life as it is and constant yearning for life as it could be makes Pride and Prejudice both an intimate story from one woman and also a universal story for all of us.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Millennium Publications, 2014.

Boyle, Laura. "Jane Austen's Brothers." The Jane Austen Centre, 16 July 2011, www.janeausten.co.uk/jane-austens-brothers/. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

Le Faye, Deirdre, Jane Austen's Letters. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2011.

---. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Cambridge UP, 2004.

Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. Google Books, https://books.google.com/books/about/Jane_Austen.html?id=X1YEOJOcYpIC. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.

Warren, Renee. “Jane Austen Biography: Even our most beloved storytellers have lives with their own stories to tell.” 30 Jun. 2017, https://www.janeausten.org/jane-austen-biography.asp. Accessed 12 Mar. 2018.