"the usual practice of elegant females"

Pride & Prejudice | Week 4: End of Volume 1 | on misrepresentation, feelings, and rational creatures speaking from the heart

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

If you missed it: over the weekend, I shared some brilliant insights by my husband—an MFA in fiction who understands “free indirect discourse,” or the style of narration that Austen uses, better than anyone else I’ve ever known. He’s been a magnificent teacher for me, as I’ve delved back into this novel.

from a narrator's point of view

I’m really excited to share his insights on the art of narration with you.

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Welcome to week 4 of our Pride & Prejudice read-a-long!

This week, we’ve finished Volume 1 of the novel!

If you have not completed our chapters for this week yet, I encourage you to do so before reading today’s guide. A friendly reminder to avoid spoilers in today’s comments.

Or, you can leave a one-time contribution.

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

• Jane and Lizzy disagree on how to judge Wickham’s story about Darcy.

• The Netherfield ball is announced—and finally takes place!

  • Wickham does not show; we later discover he purposely avoided being in town so he wouldn’t have to see Darcy.

  • Mr. Collins asks Lizzy for the first two dances.

  • Mr. Darcy asks her for two dances later in the evening—and she shocks herself by saying yes; flirtatious and tense banter ensues as Lizzy confronts Darcy about Wickham and the plot thickens.

  • Caroline tells Lizzy that Wickham can’t be trusted, but Lizzy doesn’t trust Caroline. Who should she believe!?

  • Collins mansplains to Lizzy why he totally should interrupt Darcy’s evening and introduce himself and then he does and makes an idiot of himself.

  • Jane and Bingley are so happy 🥹

  • Mrs. Bennet embarrasses everyone again while Mary overstays her welcome on the piano forte.

• Later, Collins proposes to Lizzy and she says no. (Go girl go!)

• Like, eighteen hours later, Collins proposes to Charlotte Lucas and she says yes. (No girl no!)

• Lizzy is baffled and heartbroken for Charlotte; Charlotte is relieved to have an “establishment” for her future.

• Jane gets a damning letter from Caroline Bingley announcing that the Netherfield party—including Charles Bingley and Darcy—have left for London and will not be returning any time soon. Caroline implies that her brother is going to marry Darcy’s sister. (No girl no!)

• Jane becomes anxious. Mrs. Bennet becomes despondent. Lizzy becomes resentful.

• …And the emotional highs of the Netherfield ball come to a crashing low.

As I was taking notes this week, I was *stunned* by how much happens in that Netherfield ball chapter. All the little glimpses and blushes and side-eyes and sighs. So good — I can’t wait to hear about all of your favorite details.

With Valentine’s Day in the air, we simply have to discuss the proposals this week — as well as the question that seems to perfume itself throughout these chapters:

What does a girl marry for in this world?

Charlotte and Lizzy have very different views on what they need from a proposal in order to say yes.

Okay, I know. I know. I keep bringing up that darn first sentence — but have you ever seen a story hew so carefully to its opening line? In this week’s chapters, we get two proposals and neither are the ones we were perhaps anticipating.

This week, Lizzy speaks her truth during the first marriage proposal of the novel—and her truth, which is critically not “universally acknowledged,” or respected, is to say no to Mr. Collins, the man to whom the estate will fall if the girls fail to marry.

Lizzy, girl, this is a bold choice. And while we can all sit here in the year 2025 and cheer her on and say duh! Of course she shouldn’t marry that nut! We should also take a moment to remember how wildly brave her refusal really is.

After all, the entail is becoming an ever-louder, echoing anxiety in the world of the Bennet family. How do we know this? One way is quite literal: I counted how many times the word “anxiety” appeared in these chapters and caught it about five times (including variations, like “anxious”). “Nervousness” came in once or twice. And “feelings,” appeared a whopping 11 times—but I wasn’t watching for all variations, like “felt” or “feels.” It was perhaps more.

I note this to say that we’re getting a quite literal rise in the language of anxiety and feelings as the story unfolds. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? A tense, unwanted proposal. Flirtations and hopes bouncing off every surface. A high-stakes ballroom filled with so much potential for disaster. A mother going totally off-the-rails with false assumptions.

The language of these events invites us to experience them as more than mere plot points. These are resonant happenings in the individuals lives of the characters. Heightening emotions, blushing faces, and unexpected decisions: all of this invites us to care, to notice, to track the impact that these events have on people’s hearts and minds.

Why?

Well, that’s a good question to ask when we’re closely reading.

Last week, I said that everything these characters do seems to circle around the anxieties of their futures: “to secure proposals and future security,” for themselves and for their families.

This week, we see that Elizabeth is neither willing to secure her financial stability nor to hinge her future happiness on Mr. Collins.

(And can you blame her?! I swear, the long-ass paragraph when he explains to her how much she doesn’t understand how important he is and why he should introduce himself to Darcy, even though she warns him that Darcy won’t like it, and then he does it anyway and embarrasses himself and the Bennet family again as a result….UGH!!!!)

But it’s a big choice.

It’s not just a plot move.

It’s a choice that reveals something so deep about Lizzy.

I suddenly had a hankering to buy myself an “headstrong foolish girl” hoodie on Etsy, or something. Because this week, we finally got the Elizabeth Bennet of profound literary reputation. We met the fiery, driven, ambitious, and self-aware woman who is certainly no good for the senseless, tiresome Collins.

We got a woman who is willing to make impossible choices and to advocate for her own happiness—even with an entail on the line.

And as I have been reflecting this week, I realized that these chapters started to problematize the relationship between appearances and truth in a much more overt way—these chapters invited me to question my own reading of the story so far. As much as I see Jane hesitating to judge Wickham, Lizzy refusing to believe Darcy could have his reasons, Caroline running her brother away from the Bennet family, and Darcy doubling down on his ability to hold a grudge…I am being rendered just another character in this story, aren’t I?

I’m yet another layer in the narrative, bringing meaning and feelings and reactions to all these happenings. I feel invested. I have started to hope.

As we see Lizzy refuse to follow the primed pathway carved out by her mother’s schemes, and as we see her center her happiness at the core of her desires for a marriage proposal, we see that Lizzy isn’t hoping for the same kind of marriage that the first line of novel suggests is available to her. She is not content to take any single man in possession of a good fortune. She isn’t content for the universal.

No.

Lizzy wants the particulars of her own individuality. She wants to be happy. She wants to be heard. She wants someone who can see her not just as an “elegant female,” but as a “rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”

I’m telling you: if the scene weren’t so beautifully written as a comedic failure of Collins to listen to anyone but his own monologues, I think it’d be a horrifying scene to behold. Especially as we see the lengths Lizzy’s mother goes to in order to force Lizzy to marry a man she does not want to marry. Imagine this scene with a different dramatic or emotional treatment; it feels almost Handmaid’s Tale-esque in its disregard for Lizzy’s humanity.

We learn, in those painful moments, that Mrs. Bennet doesn’t actually want her daughters to be happy. She merely wants them married.

Charlotte Lucas wants nothing more than to be secure.

Mr. Bennet wants to be left alone to his library, dammit.

Kitty and Lydia just want to dance; Mary just wants to sing.

And Jane…oh, sweet Jane. What does Jane want?

I am starting to wonder about Austen’s project in telling us the “truth universally acknowledged,” and then putting us through the paces of understanding all the non-universal truths—and messy feelings, desires, confusions, needs, and whims—of these messy, confusing people.

That first sentence becomes more and more interesting to me the longer we spend with Lizzy, Jane, Collins, Darcy, and Bingley.

We’re reckoning now with the very real tensions between a social truth and an individual one; between the universe and the one.

Does Lizzy dare disturb the universe?¹

Your exercises for today are all about the questions above. We’re investigating wants, desires, and actions.

Here are your options.

1. Make a “perfect man” list from the perspective of Lizzy Bennet. Make another from the perspective of Charlotte Lucas. How do you know they want these things? How do you know what they don’t want?

   1. When do their wants become dangerous?

   2. How can a want become a problem? (When does Lizzy’s desire render her “headstrong” and “foolish”?)

2. Draw a diagram of the Netherfield ball scene. Or use the pieces on a chess board to map the scene. Or consider yourself a choreographer and watch the movement in the scene. Pay attention to both internal movements (thoughts changing, opinions forming) and external movements (onto the dance floor, away from one person to another). Notice the intricacies of the scene. Then, if you’d like to go deeper, try to see if there are any patterns to your observations. Are some folks magnetic in the scene, attracting energy or movement around them? Are others repellant?

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

“Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.”

As Collins pushes and pushes and pushes Lizzy to accept a proposal that she so obviously does not want, nor need, to accept, she urges him—from multiple angles, making varied pleas—to hear her.

I have a hard time believing any of Collins’ bemused comments back to her. He knows from the first moment she hesitates that she’s refusing him; his pride makes him unable to “hear” her, and so he hopes by badgering her into exhaustion with those “little elegant compliments” he’s so practiced in, that he can wear her down to a yes.

But Lizzy sees right through it—and finally calls him out on his inability to see her as not speaking from a coquette-ish role as an “elegant female,” but instead to believe her when she tells him her truth.

That Mr. Collins—and Mrs. Bennet—refuse to believe that Elizabeth knows what she wants and what is best for her is perhaps one of the best moments of realism in the novel, thus far. The rejected proposal scene becomes a microcosm for the larger problems women in this world face: that their beliefs, needs, desires, and wants are not heard nor are they meant to be heard.

And despite the fact that Lizzy knows this to be true, she insists on being heard.

I already really liked Lizzy. And now, on my second read of the novel, I think this is the moment I have started to love her and trust her in a whole new way.

We have two questions this week!

The first:

The question:

I find Austen's depictions of people reading-- books, letters-- very interesting. She is clearly interested in developing and judging characters through dialogue, but also through the written word. Interest in books is used to distinguish Lizzy and Miss Bingley in chapter 11, and we hear the Bennets' collectively analyze Mr. Collins letter in chapter 14. Is Austen teaching us how to be good readers generally? or how to read her book(s) in particular?

My answer:

What a fantastic question! My answer to this is not definitive, at all. My answer is: I think you could make a salient argument for both of these points, and I would happily read those arguments.

For my piece: I think Austen may be doing both of these things, at least on some level. She’s perhaps using her characters’ arguments about reading to show us different perspectives—and by aligning certain characters to certain traits, shows us which are virtuous and which are not.

I think you’re really onto something with the idea that she may be giving us a lesson in how to read this story, in particular. And I would totally read the essay you wrote about that, should you decide to do so!

The second:

The question:

These girls are basically teens or just older. I could do the googling but you probably already have the research at hand. What was their schooling like? Were they all home taught? Obviously they've not been coached in home making skills other than decorative arts. Are they aware of world events or just kept supremely sheltered?

My answer:

Excellent question! These girls span mid-teens (the youngest being 15 or so) to their early twenties (there’s a funny moment later where Lizzy doesn’t want to tell her true age because she’s still single, lol). Jane and Lizzy are probably no older than 22.

The girls’ schooling is something we’ll learn about later in the novel, so I won’t spoil any major details. But the gist is this: the girls live in the country and don’t attend any formal schooling. They’ve never had a governess; they perhaps had teachers for things like reading and writing. (And you can imagine the “school of life” lessons Mrs. Bennet would focus on: like you said, homemaking, decorative arts, reading, and music.) They have some of the traits of an “accomplished woman,” but they have not received any formalized education or the more advanced study in the realms of languages or music that would give them, say, the caliber of “accomplishment” held by Caroline Bingley.

As far as their awareness: this is a beautiful theme to track in the novel, and a really rich area to notice and observe how Austen crafts their world this way. I really love this question and would encourage you to keep the pulse on it.

What kinds of things are the girls aware of? What do they seem unaware of? What counts as “news” in their world? (“Netherfield Park is let at last!”)

I can look for additional resources for you on this—and again, we’ll get more as the story unfolds.

Want to submit a question for next time? Here is the form.

Next week, we head into Volume 2. Things have taken a somewhat gloomy turn with Bingley leaving town (poor Jane!) and Charlotte accepting Collins (impacting the Charlotte-Elizabeth friendship) — so what do you think will happen next?

Remind yourself to slow down and savor the experience as you go. I’ll post next week’s guide early next week, so you can reference it whenever you’re ready.

• Submit your questions here

• Try a free write

• Browse my book recommendations on Bookshop.org

The full schedule is available here:

our Pride & Prejudice read-a-long begins next week

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• What was your favorite part?

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‘Til next time…happy reading!

1. Extra credit points for you if you get this reference without Google :)