Thursday, March 22, 2012

Pride and Prejudice Question

I have always assumed that in Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth is the person with prejudice (against the rich stuck-up people, and definitely against Darcy) and that Mr. Darcy is the one with pride (he definitely has that!). However, the other day I heard somewhere that Mr. Darcy had the prejudice (possibly against lower classes?) and Lizzy the pride (in…her freedom? Her quest for love?). What do you think?
Who is the proud one? Who is prejudiced? Both? One or the other? Vote in the polls on your right. Also, leave a comment and tell me what you think about who’s who.
Another question…is Mr. Darcy shy? Is he more shy than proud? Or vice versa? Is he just a little shy? Or a huge part? Again, vote in the poll about this. And comment!

Poll result 4/19/12 -- The results of the posted polls are as follows:

Is Lizzy proud or prejudiced? Both: 22, Prejudiced: 14, Proud: 4.

Is Mr. Darcy proud or prejudiced? Both: 26, Prejudiced: 1, Proud: 12.

Mr. Darcy is... Mostly shy: 4, Mostly proud: 13, Some of both: 24.

Results: Lizzy is proud and prejudiced, Mr. Darcy is proud and prejudiced, and Mr. Darcy is both proud and shy. :)

7 comments:

Miss Elizabeth Bennet said...

I've read in my copy of Jane Austen for Dummies (at least I think it was in there) that both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy have both Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth had pride because Mr. Darcy wounded it when he refused to dance with her and because her pride was wounded, she became prejudiced against him. Mr. Darcy was prejudiced against the people of Meryton since they weren't of his class and he was proud of his social status. I also remembered reading in Jane Austen for Dummies that other characters have bits of Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Bennet takes pride in Elizabeth and is prejudiced in favor of her, Mr. Collins is proud of Lady Catherine being his patroness, etc.)

Now for Mr. Darcy being shy or proud, I think he's both. He's shy because he didn't socialize with anyone at the Assembly Room ball, but that could also be because of his being proud of his status (maybe a mixture of the two in that case). I think he's shy not that he can't talk to anyone or can't hold a conversation with anyone, but that he doesn't go out of his way to socialize.

I'm hoping this all makes sense. It's more of a complicated topic than you would think.

Maria said...

I had a really long comment written out in my head but when I read Miss Elizabeth Bennet's I saw she said exactly what I meant to! It really is complicated.

Livia Rachelle said...

I think that they both have both pride and prejudice, but that Lizzie's greater problem was prejudice and Darcy's was pride.

Melody said...

Haha, I'm pretty much pulling my answer out of JA for Dummies, too. ;-)

The generally-accepted explanation is that Elizabeth was prejudiced and Mr. Darcy was proud, definitely not the other way around. Though I do think that Jane Austen intended the title to go for both Lizzy and Darcy. For instance, Mr. Darcy is obviously supposed by everyone to be proud - that's a main point of the story - but he was also prejudiced... like as to what he would find it Hertfordshire. The people there. He found out they were better than he thought they would be (and particularly Elizabeth. ;-))

However, I think it's mainly Elizabeth that had both the traits the most. (Ugh, bad sentence, but I'm in a hurry.) She was definitely prejudiced, as to Mr. Darcy--although, I must say her prejudice was founded from the very beginning, as he slighted her. ;) She was also quite proud, though. She just... was. Like Mr. Darcy said, "had not your pride been wounded..."

Anyways. In short. I think they're both supposed to be both. ;)

Analiese said...

Hmm...I think that they each have some pride and some prejudice. I don't really think that Lizzy had much prejudice, but I think that Darcy had both. And I think that the guy who acted Mr. Darcy in the 2005 one shouldn't have acted him as just being shy. I think that Jane Austen did mean him to be proud.

Miss Dashwood said...

Haha, I started writing a long comment in my head too, but now I'm just going to pull a "What she said." :-)

Charity U said...

Thanks, all, for your thoughts. Most interesting!