Pride and Prejudice is a comedy about love, or an existential comedy about the incongruity of love. Elizabeth Bennet’s friend, Charlotte Lucas,28, marries a ridiculous vicar she does not esteem because she has no suitors and wants a home of her own. Twenty-year-old Elizabeth, the spirited, witty heroine, is not seduced by money or status. She nobly declines to be charmed by Mr. Darcy after he is rude to her at a ball.  Darcy is impossibly handsome, impossibly rich, and impossibly snobbish.  He concedes that Elizabeth has fine eyes and that her older sister Jane is pretty but despises their mother, the ineffably silly Mrs. Bennet.  

Elizabeth may resist the love of lucre, but everything comes with a price tag in Pride and Prejudice. Every income and/or estate is analyzed down to the last penny. Mrs. Bennet is joyous when Mr. Bingley, a well-to-do young man, rents Netherfield and brings a small party, among them his best friend Darcy and his own two sisters. Mrs. Bennet hopes fantastically to marry off one of her daughters to Bingley.

Soon the whole town is buzzing about the money. 

We learn:

“Mr. Bingley inherited money to the amount of nearly a hundred thousand pounds.”

His two unpleasant sisters “had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and associating with people of rank.”

And then there is Darcy, the hero of this love story.  Everyone at the ball is impressed “with Darcy’s fine, tall person, handsome features noble mien, and the report which was in circulation within five minutes of his entrance of him having ten thousand a year.”

He alienates the people of Meryton by refusing to dance with the local girls.  After all, money can go only so far in gaining esteem.  Elizabeth continues to hate him, even after he changes his mind about her and begins to make overtures of love.

During this fourth or fifth reading, I questioned whether Darcy is “Pride” and Elizabeth “Prejudice.”  Darcy and Lizzie both seem to me to personify both qualities. Who is proudest, who is most prejudiced? Lizzie is pert and abrupt with Darcy, misunderstanding his character on the word of an attractive soldier who spreads vile rumors about him.  And when Darcy proposes to Lizzie, he is so rude that he actually say he has tried to defeat his love for her because of her deplorable mother and family connections.. Who would not say “No” to that? Darcy’s social skills are terrible!

But Darcy comes to the rescue when the youngest and silliest Bennet sister, Lydia, elopes with a libertine. Only later does Lizzie learn that Darcy negotiated with and paid the man to marry Lydia after he had tracked them down.

And then, ZOWIE! Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle vacation in Derbyshire and decide to tour Pemberley, Darcy’s estate. Elizabeth can’t help but think she could have been the mistress of this great house.  And when they run into Darcy, let us just say there is chemistry between Darcy and Elizabeth.

There is more comedy to come, because everyone is confused about Elizabeth’s relationship with Darcy. No one, not even her older sister Jane, believes Elizabeth should marry Darcy.  Mr. Bennet strongly advises her to think again.  He believes she is marrying for money.  “My dear Lizzie, I would- I do congratulate you – but are you certain?  Forgive the question – are you quite certain that you could be happy with him?”

And “Are  you out of your mind to be accepting this man?  Have you not always  hated him?”

All this is hilarious, of course, though it raises certain issues: penniless Elizabeth and rich Darcy are in love, but Darcy has paid for her esteem by helping Lydia.  Yet it is a completely satisfying ending of a marriage plot. Austen wickedly leaves us with a few questions, but this is a gentle comedy.