It is very
interesting how two words can have an opposite meaning but, at the same time,
we cannot think about them separately. In this book, the concept of pride means
having a high belief about one’s own importance and worth; whereas the concept
of prejudice means making unfair and unreasonable judgements about others
without having enough knowledge.
Although “Pride
and Prejudice” shows us the complicity of both concepts through the connection
of the characters perfectly created, it also shows the way Mr. Darcy and
Elizabeth see each other at first time. Mr. Darcy, for instance, can be
described as an upper-class man who shows too pride of his social position. An
arrogant and unfriendly member of the high society who, at the beginning of the
novel, showed to be aloof and looked down on the Bennets family due to their
lower social status. Here is where he also shows his levels of prejudice, since
he doesn’t mind making remarks about this family without getting to know them
enough.
The same
situation happens with Elizabeth, who doesn’t show her pride until it is hurt
by Mr. Darcy’s comment about her beauty in the first ball. However, it was the
main fact that triggered the strengthening of Elizabeth’s pride of herself,
especially of her origins. Therefore, every time that she felt offended by Mr.
Darcy’s comments, she immediately tend to think the worst thing about him, and
she especially bases her opinions on the different stories that she is told or
comments people make about him.
Eventually,
and as the novel continues, Jane Austen implies that both pride and prejudice
can be overcome. But it doesn’t mean that both characters had to change their
perspective about reality or their opinions about each other. We, as readers,
can think that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth changed, that his pride and her
prejudice disappeared. But Mr. Darcy’s change was only through the eyes of
Elizabeth. In other words, we could see what Elizabeth saw as long as she could
realize that he was not the arrogant and aloof man that everybody said. She
started to notice the human and caring side of this man, and that is how her
prejudices are gone.
Austen, J.
(1813). Pride and Prejudice.
It is very interesting what you've written, because in reality Darcy did not change at all, because what Elizabeth perceived in their first meeting was just the first impression who actually promoted Elizabeth to create a mental representation of what she saw and heard, but it was still a distorion of reality, that it really took a long time since Elizabeth decided to see the reality that was in front of her.
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