Book Review: Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen

Women, in Austen's world, are restricted beings, and a large measure of the conflict in the plot comes from the inability of Elizabeth and Jane, at times, to act on their own behalf, rather than through the intermediary of their mother or some man. But the aesthetic power of this is heavily offset by the other consequence of Austen's world: Elizabeth's inability to act makes her a sympathetic figure, true, but it also means that her actions must be--by virtue of her world's logic--largely inconsequential to the plot. It's difficult not to see Darcy as the superior partner in what is ostensibly a relationship between equals: Darcy acts on Elizabeth's behalf, true, in resolving some of the most serious subplots and complications, but what does Elizabeth do for herself? Why, she decides that Darcy isn't so bad after all, and she consents to marry him.

In order to resolve the plot, she decides to consent. Is this the kind of strong action we expect from a character who is virtually our narrator, whose viewpoint we come closest to sharing? There's something unsatisfying about Elizabeth's ultimately limited range of actions, and there's thus something that jars us with the benevolent, "all's-well-that-ends-well" tone of the conclusion. There's something unsatisfying at the very heart of Pride and Prejudice, a necessary irresolution to its central conflict.

And yet this irresolution raises deeper questions: should the failure of Elizabeth's final actions to satisfy really be laid at the feet of Elizabeth, or at her world? Yes, it would be nice to see Elizabeth rise up, take matters into her own hands, and prove her equality with Darcy via direct intervention in Darcy's masculine sphere. But, given the restriction of female influence that has driven most of the plot to this point, could we really believe in such a resolution?

Austen's primary virtue is her precision. Could we really ask her to be so imprecise in her ultimately grim portrayal of the world faced by eighteenth-century women? Is it really proper to offset the dark streak that runs through the conclusion of Pride and Prejudice--the incomplete satisfaction of our hopes, our expectations--with a happy ending that satisfies us on a plot level, but that ultimately obscures a darkness, a dissatisfaction present in Austen's reality itself?

This, beyond the simple charm of the prose, is perhaps the greatest proof the status of Pride and Prejudice as a classic. It can't be reduced to the charge of "romance novel," which has occasionally been levied against it. Austen's sense of truth feels obliged--or Austen's patriarchal world feels obliged--to shoot an happy ending quite subtly in the foot. Pride and Prejudice, in the imperfection of its conclusion, rises from the mechanics of a pleasant plot to the level of great art.