In life, things are not always as they seem. Often, we will believe very much in something only to find out later that we were completely wrong. In Pride and Prejudice, one of the things that Austin does is prove to us how true this really is. More specifically, she takes elements of pride and prejudice, mostly from Elizabeth and Darcy, establishes them firmly, and then uproots them completely after Darcy's letter to Elizabeth, a main turning point in the novel. The specific elements that will be examined are prejudice in Elizabeth and pride in Darcy. Elizabeth's negative prejudices can be broken up into three major groups: in favor of Wickham, in favor of her own family, and against Darcy, which includes Darcy's pride. In short, Elizabeth's apparent prejudices and Darcy's marked pride are reversed in our eyes with Darcy's letter. .
Elizabeth is prejudiced towards Mr. Wickham in a negative way. She idealizes him instead of seeing him for what he is. This is a negative slant because she misjudges him instead of seeing him for what he really is, and then sticks to the original bad judgment. "[Wickham] is the most agreeable man I have ever saw," says Elizabeth. (Austin, 124) Although this little speech might have made Wickham very proud, the same sort of sentence also makes Elizabeth very embarrassed later on in the novel. Darcy's letter alerts Elizabeth of her own prejudice. In his letter, Darcy reveals Wickham's true character to Elizabeth. When Elizabeth realizes how she, who had prided herself in her positive prejudices, had fallen an easy victim to Wickham's charm, she is "Absolutely ashamed of herself" (Austin, 177). "How despicably I have acted!" she exclaims. "I could not have been more wretchedly blind" (Austin, 177-78). At this point, Elizabeth's negative prejudices in favor of Wickham evaporate, and she is able to see Wickham for what he really is, based on Darcy's letter.
Besides Wickham, a member Elizabeth's family through marriage only, Elizabeth is also prejudiced towards her family proper.
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