Pride and Prejudice Second Draft

Jonathan Neumann
Mrs. Baniaga
Honors Literature

9 February 2012

         Pride and Prejudice is about the life of a family where pride and prejudice is a huge issue that affects the relationship between the characters. Through the work of Austen, there is a focus on the main character, Eliza, and her family issues and relationship with a seemingly prideful man, which all reflects to how society is today.  One of the major issues that cause such a huge issue among society today is the possession of money and the different social classes that are thus created. Austen shows how pride and prejudice affects the relationship between the different social classes.
            The relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy is a relationship that shows how pride and prejudice affects the different social classes. They both lived completely different lives; Elizabeth was from a lower class, was fairly well off but when compared to Darcy, she was way out of his league. When these two first met at a ball, Darcy was seen as an arrogant, prideful man. This was due to his refusal to dance, saying that Elizabeth is “not handsome enough to tempt me” (Austen 8). With this, Darcy insults Elizabeth and thus a hatred for him is developed in her. However, later on Darcy actually realizes that he loves her and tries to flirt with her plenty of times. But Elizabeth is prejudiced against him and is too proud to try to get to know him and change her thoughts about him. Also all she listened to was the bad that people spoke about him. For example, when she first met Wickham, he told her how Darcy had pretty much betrayed him because of his pride (66-70). Throughout the book, pride and prejudice blinks the lower class Elizabeth from knowing who Darcy really is and causes her to misinterpret Darcy as a prideful and selfish rich man.  

           Another relationship that shows the effects of pride and prejudice on the relationship between different social classes is Miss Bingley and the Bennets. When she is first introduced, she seemed to be very nice to Jane, however, to Elizabeth, she was rather rude. Later on it is revealed that she ridicules the Bennet family due to the fact that they are not as wealthy as her family and Darcy. She reveals her true prideful nature when Elizabeth came to visit her sick sister Jane and was walking in the rain. She was commenting on her appearance when she came. She also went on saying that because Jane had such unusual parents and had “low connections,” there was not much chance that she would be married to someone rich (29-30). Another thing that Miss Bingley does is mock Darcy and Elizabeth and the love-hate relationship they have. She tries to steal away Darcy’s attention from Elizabeth because she thinks that she is better due to her wealth, yet it all backfires because Darcy just pays more attention to Elizabeth thus causing Miss Bingley to be more prejudiced against Elizabeth. She thinks that just because she has wealth, she is allowed to speak freely about others and looks down on the Bennets although her brother and a family friend love two of the girls in that family. Because of Miss Bingley’s pride and prejudice, bitterness between her and Elizabeth is formed.
           With the different relationships between two different social classes, Austen is able to reveal to us that pride and prejudice play a huge role in how we treat, see, and react to each other. Pride and Prejudice causes a person to become blind to another person’s feelings, beliefs, and way of life. She points out that, regardless to social status and wealth, pride and prejudice is evident in the lives of all humans.


Work Cited:
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Bantam Dell,1981. Print.