Pride and Prejudice - Narrative Method

Written by Ng Yi-Sheng, 1A01A, 5 Aug 1997.

[Context passage: Chapter 53 or Vol III, Chapter 11. From "It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married" to "the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a year."]

Mrs Bennet's speeches in the passage point to her ignorance, which is part of Austen's narrative technique of letting characters reveal themselves through their speech. The effect is particularly comic due to Mrs Bennet's utter ignorance, which manifests itself in moral insensitivity, as seen in her belief that Lydia is "well married" in her disgraceful union with Wickham, and in lack of simple knowledge, as seen in her commenting that Newcastle is "a place quite northward, it seems." Because of this, she manages to be obsequiously polite yet quite rude, as we can see from the contrast between her invitation for Bingley to shoot birds on Mr Bennet's manor "When you have killed all your own birds" and her insult to Darcy that Wickham has "not so many [friends]as he deserves." Austen uses a similar treatment for Mr Collins, whose sycophantic language is even used when he is criticising Elizabeth's class in his proposal to her, and whose excessive praise makes him utterly ridiculous. The length of Mrs Bennet's speeches betray[s] the fact that although she says much, she thinks and means very little, a technique which is repeated in Mr Collins's speeches and letters and on Lady Catherine's argument against Elizabeth marrying Darcy on her visit to Longbourn. This is emphasised here by the fact that she is the only one quoted in direct speech as speaking aloud in the whole passage. Despite Elizabeth's sense, her own feelings are kept to herself while her mother chatters away indiscreetly on anything that enters her mind.

Elizabeth's poor reasoning as she listens to her mother disgrace herself shows the extent of her shame and misery. Although this scene is largely seen from the viewpoint of Elizabeth, Austen sometimes speaks as the omniscient narrator to reveal little ironies about Elizabeth herself. For example, after Elizabeth feels that "The first wish of my heart... is never more to be in company with either of them", which the reader should know to be silly, especially with regard to Darcy, and that "years of happiness could not make Jane or herself amends, for moments of such painful confusion", Austen comments that "the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no compensation, received soon afterwards material relief" simply from seeing that Bingley was still attracted to Jane. Although Elizabeth is a thinking character and can laugh at the ridiculousness of unthinking characters, Austen is able to turn the tables on her heroine once in a while when emotion overcomes her, demonstrating the fact that Elizabeth is not a creature of pure reason and showing us the folly of valuing emotion over reason. A similar example of Elizabeth's fallibility is given in a later visit by Bingley and Darcy, at which she is tormented by her feelings for Darcy but is "a little revived... by his bringing back his coffee cup himself."

As Austen does not wish to actually focus on Jane or Bingley, neither being very interesting characters, she describes the renewal of their relationship by summing up their actions and conversation rather than reporting it in a detailed fashion. This method of describing their relationship is common to the entire book, even as Elizabeth notes at the beginning of their relationship that Jane's "uniform cheerfulness of manner" makes the expression of her love noticeable only to her closest friends. This is an example of Austen using Elizabeth as the principal character for a limited omniscient style of narration, and changes shortly afterward to a view through Mrs Bennet's eyes. Austen's use of changing viewpoints allows her greater freedom to provide information and opinions of characters, such as the Bingleys' opinion of the Bennets as narrated shortly after the first ball at which they meet.

Austen also tends to refer to past events in the plot, which makes the story in its entirety more cohesive. Here, Mrs Bennet refers to a year-old promise of Bingley's to dine with them, which was indeed made in the course of the book, and Bingley's reaction, looking "a little silly" and saying he was "prevented by business" implicitly recalls how Darcy and Bingley's sisters persuaded him to cut off his ties with Jane, causing him some guilt in this instance. This reminds the reader of the complete situation in the story, and is used again more heavily in Elizabeth's last few conversations with Darcy, in which the[y] recall the events which brought them together.

The ending of the passage, with its focus on Mrs Bennet planning for the coming dinner with Bingley, exemplifies on[e] of the methods Austen tends to use to end chapters. She summarises the feelings of a particular character with regard to the event which has just taken place, while giving the reader impetus to read on by promising another interesting event to follow. In this case, the promise of the dinner with Bingley and Darcy also includes a reference to a previous dinner, as Mrs Bennet's feeling that not "anything less than two courses could be good enough for a man... who had ten thousand a year." This equation of income and courses shows her narrow-mindedness, and was also mentioned in her plans for the dinner for Bingley which was cancelled when he left for the city, in which she had felt "two full courses" would be necessary.

Thus, this passage displays many of the narrative techniques which Austen uses in the novel as a whole, and reveals her level of skill in being able to express her ideas through the narrative while still remaining entertaining and readable.

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