P&P Essay- Prompt 5

Christina DeSario DeSario,1
Mr. George- AP English 11
12•05•09
Prompt 5
The Delay of Elizabeth and Darcy’s Felicity
Love is something that does not take place all at once, despite how fairy tales or dreams express it. Love happens gradually and, sometimes, unexpectedly. It opens like a flower bud, slowly but surely. Nothing can start out perfectly beautiful, and a bud is the ugly duckling of the flower bed. Buds, the small promise of something to come, is a metaphor for the first meeting between a man and a woman who will grow to love each other. Sometimes, buds do not open. They stay closed tightly; afraid, or dead. Other times, they open proudly, displaying their lively and awe-inspiring colors to the entire world. Love, in the case of Pride and Prejudice, happened between a girl who hated a man, and a man who wanted nothing more than that girl’s affection. It took Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy a long, hard time to become happy, like the coldness of winter passes slowly to those who wish for spring. Because of Elizabeth’s hatred towards Darcy, despite his constant and outright displays of affection for her, she was the one at fault for delaying their life-long happiness.
Elizabeth prides herself on being able to tell anyone’s character. She believes that she can see through others as if they were a stained-glass window. She is proud of being able to tell that they are just windows, while everyone else is simply so entranced by the person’s pictures and colors that they can not see the window beneath their façade. She believes that she knows things about others that nobody else knows. She says to Jane, “‘and yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason’” (Austen 172). She admits one of her greatest faults: her pride in the ability she thought she had, but did not. Instead of being correct in her assumption, she was mistaken in her belief, and ended up letting the greatest chance of her life slip away with a long mouthful of harsh words to the man who loved her. The worst move she makes in delaying her happiness, and almost putting an end to any chance of it
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whatsoever, was when Lizzy rejects Mr. Darcy after he proposes.
Darcy comes to Lizzy, overcome, and professes his love for her. Instead of saying yes, she says, “‘I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry’” (148). She rejects him because of different reasons, even though he loved her. She refused to marry him, and, although this was no fault of hers with the information she had, it placed her in a terrible position later on. Elizabeth further delays her and Darcy’s matrimony with her grudges.
Mr. Darcy comments on Lizzy, claiming that she was, “not handsome enough to tempt me [Darcy]” (7). Lizzy overhears this rude, but minuscule, insult, and holds onto it like a child wearing their favorite shirt every day and night. She refuses to let it go, even after he has long since forgotten about it. He never verbally attacks Lizzy again, and yet she believes him to hate her looks and continues to despise him. After she rejects his proposal, she continues to hold onto this, “‘my beauty you had early withstood’” (291). Although it is no longer in a malicious or bitter way in which she thought of the comment, she had not at all forgotten it. The reason she even brought it up was because it was still bothering her. If it did not, she would have let it go. Lizzy, for the first time in the book, begins to fall for a man- she begins to fall for the evil and vengeful Mr. Wickam.
Mr. Wickham had great and admirable manners. He could charm anyone, and was good at hiding his true nature. Lizzy, whlo thought she could see through anyone, could only see the picture Wickham displayed. Her mind was occupied with thoughts of Wickham, and not Darcy. Even though she mentions Darcy more than almost anyone else, her interactions with Wickham turn her attentions from Mr. Darcy and towards Mr. Wickham. Wickham got her tooth, nail, and sinker: “Elizabeth... listened with all her heart” (59). She spent time with him, instead of with Darcy. Had Mr. Wickham not shown up, she would have been free to see Bingley, whom she and
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Jane were very fond of. Bingley and Darcy were always together, and she would have seen Darcy more, which would have increased her liking of him. Instead of spending time with Darcy, she spends it with Wickham, and listens to him as though his words were absolute truth.
Mr. Wickham tells Lizzy that Mr. Darcy was a terrible person who forced him into the regiment. This Lizzy holds onto, and it adds to her hatred of Darcy considerably. Wickham lies through his teeth, and Elizabeth is deceived: “‘Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickam’” (147). She refuses to believe that Darcy is anything other than evil and conniving. Caroline, and even her sister Jane, tell her differently. Thinking only that Caroline would lie and that Jane had been manipulated, she throws these valid arguments out of mind, and thinks of them no more. She holds on to Wickham’s false account from many months ago, although she could have made a new opinion of Darcy within that time period, as she saw him many times.
One of those times specifically shows Darcy’s character was not as bad as Elizabeth had originally believed: “‘I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,’ said Darcy ‘of conversing easily with those I have never met before” (135). Lizzy disliked his character from the start because of his quietness and perceived pride, when it was just shyness. However, she does not get rid of her notion that he is stricken with intense pride, and goes on to believe all of the wicked lies of Mr. Wickham. Lizzy could even be sure that Darcy is not lying when he says this. It would not be the first time that Darcy explains himself so honestly: “‘No... I have faults enough... My temper I dare not vouch for. -It is I believe too little yielding” (43). Elizabeth should have known from experience with Darcy that he would not lie, and so she has no reason not to believe him. The grave mistake she makes here is to not connect it with her first meeting with him at the ball. She does not see that his shyness was what made him act superior. She still hold onto the belief that Darcy was embarrassingly prideful. Elizabeth hates Darcy even more
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after he keeps Jane’s arrival in London a secret from Mr. Bingley.
The reader can easily sympathize with Lizzy on this point. Darcy did not tell Mr. Bingley that Jane, Lizzy favorite sister, was in town. When Jane returned home to Longbourn, she was sullen and loveless. She was left to believe that Bingley had fallen out of love with her, and in love with Darcy’s younger sister, Georgiana. She was then resolved to forget about him. Lizzy tells Darcy that, “‘I have every reason in the world to think ill of you’” (146). She assumes that Darcy is out to spite her family. Even though she is completely in the right to assume it, she does not even give Mr. Darcy the chance to explain his reasoning. She continues to twist the conversation and backs him into the corner until he can not even defend himself: “And this... is your opinion of me!” (147). She only tells him that, “‘you cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other... and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind’” (146). She never asks for specifics, only attacks him. She infuriates and wounds him to the point where he could not attempt to defend his reasoning even if he wanted to. Darcy is far too logical a character to speak of something so delicate and personal when he believes to he is too emotional. Lizzy does not find out until his letter that there was a just reason Darcy acted the way he did. By the time she did find his reasons out, she had already rejected him, and it was too late. Lizzy puts off their happiness further by then expecting Mr. Darcy to make another move after her harsh rejection.
The thought of making the first move never even occurs to Lizzy. She waits for Darcy, even after crushing him, in hopes that he will chase after her like a puppy chases a bike. She does not even try to give him any hope of her reciprocating his love. Instead of giving him some sort of hint or hope to encourage him, she simply says to herself, “‘if he does not come to me, then, ‘ said she, ‘I shall give him up for ever’” (259). She waits for Darcy, while he is trying to forget his love for her because he believes she hates him. She drops no hints for him. At the rate she was
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going, there would have been no chance for love had it not been for Darcy’s meddling relatives.
Darcy worked hard to get Elizabeth to like him, and after he was rejected, he worked just to make her happy, but Lizzy ignored and hated him, putting her at fault for the delay of their felicity. It took her most of the story to even realize that she loved Darcy, even though he was the prominent figure on her mind throughout it. She rejected his proposal of marriage, and later realized her true feelings for him, after it was too late for her to speak to him without being humiliated. It took Darcy’s second proposal to make her express her love for him. Had she just put aside her pride and prejudice from the beginning, she would have found happiness far earlier than she really did, and her love would have blossomed from the beginning, instead of staying tight in a bud over the harsh winter.














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Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. United States: Oxford University, 1990