Pride and Prejudice - Elizabeth Bennet

Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet

At the beginning of the book when Elizabeth and Darcy meet, they do not like each other very much. They actually dislike each other. This dislike continues through a large portion of the book. Darcy feels his social and financial status puts him above Elizabeth and that is most of the problem. Elizabeth feels that Darcy and those like him are automatically snobbish and so she really didn't give him much of a chance in the beginning but his arrogant manner didn't help the situation.

Class and marriage plays an important part in Darcy's arrogant ways. At the time this book was written, love was hardly a reason why people got married. More than likely it was two people of the same social standings marrying to join their estates. If a woman of lower social standings married a man like Darcy, she was marrying up. She was moving up in social and financial settings.

Elizabeth drew her conclusions early about Darcy. His sister was also arrogant and looked down on the Bennet sisters. I feel that if Elizabeth took more time to get to know Darcy she would have found out he wasn't the man she thought he was.

Elizabeth's pride was wounded when she overheard Darcy speaking to Mr. Bingley about her. He said she was tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt him. He also said Mr. Bingley was already dancing with the only handsome woman in the whole place. He also later said that he wasn't drawn to her because of her low connections. This meant that she was low on the social standings.

So now we have Elizabeth who I felt always liked Darcy but always felt that socially he was out of her league. She has drawn a conclusion about him based on his social standings and also his perceived arrogant ways. The way she seems to deal with this is too try and distance herself from Mr. Darcy. I also feel that Elizabeth can't bring herself