"I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun"

Pride & Prejudice | Week 10: Final chapters | on pollution, unexpected visits, and aunts who see it all so clearly

Welcome to the Closely Reading book club, where we closely read classic literature together and discuss assigned chapters each week.

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This week, we’re discussing the end of Pride and Prejudice. Can you believe it?

Thank you!

As we close our first close reading of 2025, I want to send a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has read along, followed the journey, or even just checked in to share the love for this amazing story over the past ten weeks.

This is such a meaningful, passion-driven project for me, and I’m so happy that despite my feelings when I first started dreaming it up years ago, I do not have to go it alone. We get to do this wild ride of reading closely together, and every time we do, I feel like I’m right back in my favorite place: the lit class! That place where great ideas bounce all around the room like ping-pong balls. No question is too small, no inkling is too out there. There’s room for it all here, as we figure out our own readings, make up our minds, change them again, and help each other along the way.

Your choice to show up here each week has transformed my own beliefs about the power of closely reading. I already knew it was a special brand of magic. And now I know it is also a community maker and a guiding light that can bring us together — and also bring us home to ourselves in so many ways.

Thank you for reading with me.

Welcome to week 10 of our Pride & Prejudice read-a-long

Finish the novel before reading today’s guide, lest ye meet the biggest spoilers of all!

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This week, everything comes together — but not without a final struggle.

In chronological order, here are some highlights from this week’s reading (with new characters in bold):

• Lady Catherine visits the Bennet home and verbally attacks Elizabeth, claiming Darcy is obviously already engaged to Catherine’s daughter Anne — and accusing Lizzy and her family of “industriously circulating” a false rumor about Lizzy and Darcy to drive up the Bennet family reputation

  • There’s something to that word “industrious” — more on that in my “favorite quote” section today!

• Elizabeth holds her own against Lady Catherine and shows a level of cool maturity that I aspire to

• Darcy visits the Bennets and confesses to Elizabeth that he still loves her and hopes she (finally) loves him back; they get secretly engaged on the walk back to the house

• Mr. Bennet and Mr. Darcy meet, and Mr. Bennet’s flabbers are gasted that Elizabeth has any desire to marry the man they all have loathed for 350 pages

• Elizabeth reassures her father that it’s not just the money or the huge house (though let’s be honest: she tells Jane it all began that day lol) and that Darcy isn’t really that grumpy after all—and the celebrations commence

• Jane and Bingley marry; Lizzy and Darcy marry

• All is happily ever after (except for those few tragic sentences about how Lydia is always asking for money because Wickham is, always and forever, the wooooooorst)

  • Mrs. Bennet’s fidgeting comes back as she literally runneth over with excitement that Bingley isn’t even close to being the wealthiest son-in-law she has

• Darcy and Lizzy discuss their love story and reflect on how they ended up together

• THEN THE NARRATOR USES THE WORD “I” FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE ENTIRE BOOK IN THE LAST CHAPTER.

  • This was my turn to be flabbergasted. I looked like Mr. Bennet during the Darcy meeting, I’m sure. More on this in the bonus post, later this week!

Wow.

There is so much to say!

The end of this novel really brings everything together—tying up all the loose ends in a series of very pretty and very satisfying bows.

The main thing that caught my analytical eye this week was Catherine’s appeals to Elizabeth during their tense walk about the grounds of Longbourn together. Lady Catherine weaponizes the language of control, rationality, and goodness against Lizzy—perhaps in an attempt to make Lizzy feel like a “bad” person—an “obstinate, headstrong girl!” (as if that were a bad thing…)—and guilt her into not marrying Darcy.

In a particularly painful moment of tension,

Lizzy asks: “if I am [his] choice, why may I not accept him”

Lady Catherine zings her: “Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest forbid it….You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”

Lady Catherine truly pulls out all the stops in this desperate conversation with Lizzy. She is in full defense of The Old Way of thinking about marriage, family, lineage, and the concentration of power within single family units—a world where property, capital, and social power are concentrated, and controlled, by a few wrinkly hands.

Look at all of these horrific threats!

• Lizzy’s character will be determined to be: dishonourable, without decorum, imprudent, disinterested

• She will also be socially punished: censured, slighted, despised

• She will, eventually, be irrelevant: never even mentioned by those in highest society

These are social threats that are all about perception, reception, and circulation—the very currency that we know, from the first line of the novel, is so deeply tied to the practice of marriage.

In this litany of threats, Lady Catherine attempts to make Elizabeth feel that she has no social future if she will not disdain the impetuous rumor and vow never to marry Darcy. If we thought Lydia Bennet and Miss Bingley had portrayed some signature Mean Girl behavior, then Lady Catherine really becomes the Queen Bee of Cruelty here.

Beyond her major Regina George vibes, Lady Catherine strikes me as not unlike certain political figures of today who refuse to loosen their grip on the territories of power and influence that have been handed down to them by a perilously unfair system—and who’ll do anything, including character assassination and blanket networking threats to concentrate more power around themselves.

And yes, yes: it’s deeply ironic—meaningfully so—that Catherine is a Lady whose family has not been controlled by entail but who still attempts to drive her daughter and nephew into an arranged marriage, planned since their infancy, to combine the wealth, class standing, and cultural power of Rosings with Pemberley:

“My daughter and my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended on the maternal side, from the same noble line; and, on the father’s, from respectable, honourable, and ancient, though untitled families. Their fortune on both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses; and what is to divide them?”

Look at the language of power, class, and control here:

• “formed for each other” — Lady Catherine attempts to naturalize their marriage as beyond the whims of choice, love, or desire by leaning into the language of creation, even Biblical allusions to their being “formed for” one another. Her statement begs the unstated implication that would reveal Lady Catherine’s underlying beliefs about the class system in which she sits so comfortably: formed by whom? To what end?

• “the same noble line” — Lady Catherine leverages the language of nobility to sanction the connection that will concentrate power and sustain the “nobility” of the class system she benefits from existing within; the monarchical vibes are strong here.

• “respectable, honourable, and ancient families” — Here, Lady Catherine triples down on the language of class and social standing. Anne de Bourgh’s father, as well as Darcy’s father, come from “untitled” families, but that’s okay when they have the strength of the ages behind them (as well as wives whose lineage fits under “nobility”).

  • The word “ancient” is doing a lot of work: it’s not enough to be respectable and honorable for a few generations to earn Lady Catherine’s distinction of class. Like Miss Bingley’s never-ending requirements for a young lady of accomplishment, it seems there is a never-ending list of requirements for a family to be truly considered worthy of entering the small circle of the obscenely wealthy. (How different are the rules today? Remember the nouveau riche class of Wharton’s novels?)

• “Their fortune on both sides is splendid” — Lady Catherine centralizes the issue of “fortune,” to the complex equation here, making the fact of monetary value key to the equation. But “fortune” also carries other connotations: seeming even to suggest other intangible elements of magic, fate, or The Gods that she presumes no one, including obstinate Lizzy, would dare argue against.

• “They are destined” — Ah ha! Here, Lady Catherine explains what she means by “fortune” by adding “destiny” overtly into the mix. These are profound concepts of cosmic forces, meant to make Elizabeth feel smaller and smaller with every word.

• “What is to divide them?” Lady Catherine asks rhetorically, at the end of her bitter diatribe. Is the Great and Powerful Lady Catherine really supposed to let an untitled, headstrong brat from Longbourn with a neurotic, ignoble mother, an impulsive younger sister married to a disgraced officer, and embarrassingly checked-out father, pollute the shades of pristine, perfect, clean, amazing, destined-for-Anne Pemberley?!

Look at the language here: of class, of monarchy, of untested power. Lady Catherine uses these building blocks of language to systemically rip apart Elizabeth’s foundations—her sense of self, of family, of respect, of her own muddled class position (recently tormented by Lydia’s “patched-up” marriage to Wickham). She attempts to dismantle Elizabeth; she never expects to embolden her.

None of this tired, bloated, classist rhetoric works on Lizzy at all.

And of course it doesn’t work.

It’s so lovely that none of it works. I love Elizabeth.

Your invitation this week is to set yourself up for a reflection session. Here are the steps I’d follow:

1. Set up a cozy station for yourself. Somewhere you can write comfortably. Light a candle, make a drink, turn on some favorite instrumental music. Set the scene.

2. Thumb through your copy of the novel. Hold it as an object. Observe it. Feel the weight of it in your hands. Flip through the pages; notice your annotations and bookmarks and tabs.

3. Now, open up to a few random spots and re-read. Notice how readily you can ground yourself back in that moment of the story; notice, perhaps, things you didn’t notice before. Let yourself get caught up for a few pages, if you like.

4. Then write.

5. Write what it feels like to have finished the novel. Write about this book you’ve covered in your notes and highlights and thoughts. Explore the conversation between Austen and yourself. Recall your favorite scenes; flip back to them as you write.

What memories, ideas, new concepts, inspirations, or other mind maps have formed in your mind as you’ve closely read Pride & Prejudice over the last ten weeks?

• How have you changed as a reader?

• How have you evolved as a thinker?

• How have you grown as a writer?

Every week, I share my favorite sentence. And I invite you to do the same in the comments.

“Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”

This dig is hilarious. And Dame Judy Dench says it best in the 2005 film adaptation.

BUT ALSO: This is such a revealing moment.

Way back, ten or twelve weeks ago, when I first invited us all into this novel together, I was thinking about this quote and how much it has shaped the way I read this novel as a novel about the class anxieties of 19th century Britain.

For all of Lizzy’s commentary about equality and passion and marrying for love and desire, there is a harsh blowback—socially, culturally, politically—against her worldview. In fact, we might wonder about how Lizzy’s own staunchness in her opinions (especially early in the novel) comes from the fact that she’s up against so much opposition. That there are so many people, like Lady Catherine, who refuse to perceive Elizabeth as an equal.

• Here it is most plain:
  Lady Catherine views Elizabeth as a pollution.
  Lady Catherine views Pemberley as a clean, pure, perfect space.

In other words: Lizzy is a dangerous tainting of the purity that Lady Catherine fantasizes her own class status to be. This is the language of pureblood; of lineage; of monarchy. It suggests fears of intermixture; it is tinged with racism, classism, and even sexism (despite Lady Catherine’s own status as an empowered woman without the fear of entail).

There are many ways Lady Catherine could hurt Lizzy. But in the 19th century—when Industrialization runs rampant, when London’s city air was fogged up with grime and muck that made people so sick they died, and when cleanliness was a sign of wealth, health, and status—it matters that this is the metaphor Lady Catherine chooses to debase Lizzy. It matters that Lizzy insists on her equality, even as she walks in the rain and shows up to dinner with a hem six-inches deep in mud.

Elizabeth disrupts a purity fantasy that seeks to exclude anyone who does not fit the stringent, cruel, limiting requirements of the Old Order.

There is so much more to closely read here…

We have a handful of final questions, and they’re all so much fun!

Question
In most pre-early 20th century novels that I've read, I tend to notice mentions of horse carriages: the many styles, variations, and class and status signifiers associated with them. Why are there so many variations? I guess we would liken this to brands and styles of cars on the road today? In P and P, I have noted these types of horse carriages: chaise and four, hack chaise, phaeton, gig, barouche box, carriage, and post chaise. The mention is always accompanied by some implicit or explicit reference to the socio-economic status and reputation of the passengers. Not really a question, but wanted to share as a funny fascination of mine, and wondering if you have any thoughts about the various types of carriages, economy, class, and overall value they hold in a novel such as this. Thank you for this readers' community! I love it.

Answer
Thanks for this question! (I love the community here too!)

This is a fantastic observation—and you’re spot on. Carriages, and in general the modes of transport in the novel, are clear signs of class and socioeconomic status.

The thought I’d add on here is that they’re not only used as signs of someone’s existing status; they’re also used strategically by characters to make impressions or to make things happen: as when Mrs. Bennet denies Jane the carriage to Netherfield during a rainstorm (so that Jane catches cold and has to stay with Bingley for weeks to recover…). Quite a scheme…

Question
Mrs. Bennet has some level of general competitiveness about her, but she is focused on the Lucases above all others. She makes comments throughout the book that show she thinks the Bennets are better than the Lucases. From the size of their park being larger than the Lucases to the soup the Bennets serve being "fifty times better" than what they had a Lucas Lodge, Mrs. Bennet does not miss a chance at a dig. Do you think this is down to proximity? Competition with close friends?

Answer
Dang, I love this question. You’re so right that Mrs. Bennet totally zeroes-in on the Lucases! I love how you’ve started to open up the question to motive: is it just because the Lucases are near by? Is it a kind of natural competition with friends?

I don’t have answers; only friendly additions to your list of possible motives: Is it boredom? Mrs. Bennet has to marry off all those girls…but we know that’s her main and only business. I wonder how much of her behavior (including a lot of her nervous energy!) might be connected to her not having any kind of genuine outlet; perhaps the Lucases make easy targets? I also wonder about how Mrs. Bennet uses the Lucases as a point of comparison: maybe as a benchmark against which to assuage her concerns about all five daughters being unmarried; as long as that spinster Charlotte Lucas is still unwed at 27, maybe there is hope for her girls, yet! (Maybe? What else? I love this question; my wheels are turning!)

Question
The novel has me thinking of my own relationship with my mother. Unfortunately I see some parallels to her and the narcissistic behavior of Mrs. Bennett. If Mrs. Bennett were a modern character in today’s world, how would you describe her and how would she act?

Answer
Whewwwwwwww. First of all: narcissism is no small thing to be up against (this novel often makes light of it; but we also see how profoundly it impacts the Bennet girls’ own self-awareness and fears about making good social connections). So, it’s brave of you to even recognize the pattern. This is one of the more unexpected outcomes of closely reading: it often invites us to read our own lives, and see the patterns in our own stories, with more detail. That can be a painful—if also quite freeing—experience.

If Mrs. Bennet were written today…

That’s such a beautiful thought exercise. (I hope you’ll dedicate some free writing to it!)

For myself, if I were to freewrite a little bit…

I picture her as someone who’d be really obnoxious on social media. I think she’d spend a lot of time scrolling and painfully comparing herself and her girls to others. She’d post about her daughters without realizing she was embarrassing them and giving away too much information about their personal lives.

I think she’d fill entire dinner conversations by telling the family about what the Lucases were posting about earlier in the day, and I bet she’d make fawning compliments to anyone who helpfully asserted her worldview or validated her daughters’ beauty and charms on TikTok. I think she’d be running some truly wild online dating schemes to get her daughters introduced to the “right” men.

I also wonder if she’d be inspired at all by the wealth of other types of lives that can be led by women today. Perhaps, in a dream world, she’d find herself during her usual social media scroll…and find a link to someone perfecting their sourdough recipe and get inspired to try it herself and start spending more time having a hobby that isn’t “the marriage business,” or she’d see a beautiful painting and the artist explaining how they made it and she’d pick up some long-dormant desire to be an artist herself and try it; or maybe she’d stumble across a link to a Substack where she’d be invited to join a book club, and through close reading…could start disentangling her own identity from that of her husband and daughters. That’d be so sweet.

Question
I was fascinated by the fact that Lizzy and her aunt and uncle could just drive on up to Pemberley and expect a tour of the house. Was this common then? Perhaps one of the obligations of the landed gentry was to open their estate to the public! I imagine not everyone was allowed inside - just those of the same class or just below. (I don’t see a working class Londoner like something out of a Dickens novel allowed in!)

Answer
This is a fantastic question!! I didn’t know the answer, but after some internet sleuthing, I’ve learned that it was a common practice because while there were museums at this time, there were also many private art collections in homes like Darcy’s, out in the countryside for travelers to experience. It sounds like many of these experiences included some form of payment for the housekeeper and gardeners who provided the touring services — so, it sounds like a kind of local tourism economy.

Very cool! Thanks for sparking us in this direction. Who knew there was a “travel economy” bend to this novel?! I’m sure there’s more to learn here, and I hope you’ll follow the trail, if you’re so inclined, to uncover more of these connections!

Question
What WAS Wickham’s plan? Was he just horny and dumb? Lydia makes sense, but wickham has always puzzled me.

Answer
Okay, I’m so here for this question because what was he thinking?! He’s just about the clumsiest fool we meet in the novel (Mr. Collins may be a close second, but at least he actually wants to be a clergyman?) I think you’re right: Wickham was super horny and super-duper dumb. And I think many of us know what a horrific combination that can be!

There is a pretty strong implication that he meant to blackmail the Bennet family by holding Lydia—and their reputation—basically hostage until an income for a marriage arrangement could be secured. But, as we learn in the final pages, not even that is enough to sate the gaping maw of his endless hubris. He ends up bankrupting himself and Lydia repeatedly, and relying on “sisterly affection” to cover their debts. What a loser.

Question
Jane Austen leaves open-ended the futures of the Darcys, the Bingleys, and all the others, but a quick internet search reveals several attempts by authors to continue the story or create back stories for the secondary characters. I even saw that BBC is adapting a series about Mary from one of these novels. At first look, none of these seem compelling to me. I'm not even sure how I feel about appropriating classic characters as the basis of new works. Thoughts on, or recommendations for any of these?

Answer
I love this beautiful question as our final one in the read-a-long!

You know: I am actually pretty staunchly against adaptations of this kind. I do have a major soft spot for sweet retellings or reimaginings, like the Bridget Jones’ Diary series, which take the basic format of the story and reworks it (and stars Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy again).

But taking existing characters and reworking them into new plot lines, not written by the original author, never quite lands for me. This does not mean there aren’t excellent works out there that do precisely this—just that I may not be the ideal person to recommend them, because I’m not the audience for them :)

If you’re reading this and do have some recommendations, please share them in the comments!!

Celebrate!

You’ve completed the novel and now it’s time to revel in the achievement of sitting down, closely reading, and taking it all in from cover-to-cover. If you’re desperately searching for more closely reading to do, have no fear! You can:

• Browse my book recommendations on Bookshop.org

• Review upcoming readings in our book club and get your books ordered!

• Check out these Pride and Prejudice-inspired Fictional Therapy posts from Emma Hemmingford, who uses the novel to give people life advice

  • On extended family not getting along

  • On tough chats with mom

  • On general life advice

Okay, okay: let’s dive into the comments — I cannot wait to read your final thoughts on the novel’s ending!

‘Til next time…happy reading