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Introduction

The most conspicuous qualities of Pride and Prejudice are its infectious,

high-spirited gaiety and a certain emotional hardness towards characters

themselves sharply outlined without the more sympathetic subtlety which

is conspicuous in almost all Miss Austen's work. These are emphatic-

ally the qualities of youth; and though Nortbangcr Abbey is certainly

nearest in form and subject-matter to the burlesques of her girlhood, Pride

and Prejudice seems to have been written in the very spirit of youth not

so entirely dominating any other novel.

In certain obvious, though comparatively superficial, characteristics

Elizabeth Bennet is Jane Austen herself. The independent judgment,

the alert observation, the readiness to laugh at herself and everything

save 'what is wise and good,' and her loving admiration for the incurable

sentimentalities of her more sweet-tempered elder sister may be regarded

as the author's apologia, for work that 'is rather too light and bright and

sparkling,' for ' the playfulness and epigrammaticism of the general style.'[1]

I suspect, moreover, that Miss Austen was quite as likely as Miss

Bennet to have been taken in by the engaging softness of George

Wickham, his agreeable 'person, countenance, air, and walk,' his

'happy readiness of conversation.' She, too, would almost certainly

have been prejudiced against Darcy's complacent arrogance, and con-

firmed in her dislike by the slight carelessly inflicted upon herself.

So far, however, we find only what is common to all the novels:

qualities in the novelist which she retained through life. It is the unre-

strained absurdities of Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins, the lack of any

softening humanity in them or in others towards them, and a similar

inhumanity provoked by quite other failings, towards Lydia, which

arc peculiar to Pride and Prejudice.

Some have claimed for Collins the poet's vision, and it is true that

he is wholly engrossed in the contemplation of nobility without the

least regard for the realities of life. He is one of the happiest of human

beings, because entirely unaware that any concerns, any point of view,

save his own actually exist. Jane Austen, however, thought no more

of him than as a peg on which to pile one preposterous pomposity after

another, exposing the poor creature to our merciless contempt, granting

him no scrap of common decency or feeling for which to call him kin.

[1] A half-serious judgment of Pride and Prejudice, actually written in

one of her own private letters.

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