High School English · British Novels
Jane Austen, 1813. A study guide to the novel, its world, and its words.
Five sisters. No brother. A house that will be taken from them the day their father dies. When a rich young man rents the big house next door, the Bennet family’s future is suddenly in play, and their sharp-tongued second daughter, Elizabeth, is about to misjudge almost everyone she meets.
Pride and Prejudice is a love story, but it is also a comedy about money, manners and the danger of trusting first impressions. Austen’s working title, in fact, was First Impressions. This guide gives you the history you need, a map of who’s who, the plot volume by volume, the key lines (each checked word for word against the text), and two ways to test yourself.
Which edition? All quotations and chapter numbers come from the free Project Gutenberg eBook #1342, which reproduces the 1894 George Allen edition with a preface by George Saintsbury and illustrations by Hugh Thomson. It numbers the chapters 1 to 61 straight through. Many printed editions restart the count in each volume, so Volume II, chapter 1 in your book is chapter 24 here, and Volume III, chapter 1 is chapter 43.
You don’t need to be a historian to enjoy the book, but five facts make every chapter sharper.
Born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, where her father George was the rector. Like many women writers of her time she published without her name: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815). She died in Winchester on 18 July 1817, aged 41.
She wrote about the world she knew: country gentry, clergy, neighbours, and the money that held them together.
Mr. Bennet’s estate brings in “two thousand a year,” but it is “entailed, in default of heirs male, on a distant relation” (ch. 7). An entail was a legal arrangement fixing who would inherit land. With no son, Longbourn will pass to Mr. Collins.
Mrs. Bennet never understands it, and complains that Mr. Collins “may turn you all out of this house” (ch. 13).
A gentleman’s daughter could not easily earn a living. Each Bennet girl will have only “one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents” after her mother’s death (ch. 19), about £40 a year in interest. For Charlotte, the narrator explains, marriage was “the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune” (ch. 22).
| Mr. Darcy | £10,000 a year | ch. 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Mr. Bingley (inherited) | nearly £100,000 | ch. 4 |
| Mr. Bennet | £2,000 a year | ch. 7 |
| Georgiana Darcy | £30,000 | ch. 35 |
| Each Bingley sister | £20,000 | ch. 4 |
| Each Bennet daughter | £1,000 | ch. 19 |
“A year” means yearly income; the other figures are capital sums.
Rank mattered as much as money. The Bingleys’ fortune was “acquired by trade” (ch. 4), so the old-money Darcys are a step above them. Mrs. Bennet’s brother, Mr. Gardiner, lives “within view of his own warehouses” (ch. 25), and the Bingley sisters laugh at the family for having an uncle “somewhere near Cheapside” (ch. 8). Sir William Lucas left trade after being knighted (ch. 5). Clergymen like Mr. Collins depended on rich patrons such as Lady Catherine.
Austen wrote a first version, First Impressions, in 1796–97. Her father offered it to the publisher Thomas Cadell, who declined it. After revising it, she sold the copyright to Thomas Egerton for £110. It came out on 28 January 1813 in three volumes, “By the Author of Sense and Sensibility.”
The Regency itself ran from 1811 to 1820, when the future George IV ruled for his father, George III. Many scholars place the story in the 1790s, when Austen first drafted it: the militia camps it mentions, like the one at Brighton, belong to the war with France that began in 1793.
Austen’s people are sorted by households and incomes, so we’ve grouped them that way too.
A gentleman’s family in Hertfordshire: five daughters, no son, and an estate that will go to a cousin.
New money from the north of England, renting Netherfield Park near Longbourn.
Old landed wealth: Pemberley in Derbyshire and Rosings Park in Kent.
Neighbours, clergy and the militia.
The first readers met the story in three separate books. Notice where Austen chose to break the story.
Chapters 1–23. Hertfordshire, autumn and winter.
A rich young man, Mr. Bingley, rents Netherfield Park. At the Meryton assembly he admires Jane, while his friend Mr. Darcy refuses to dance with Elizabeth and calls her “tolerable.”
Mrs. Bennet sends Jane to Netherfield on horseback in the rain. Jane falls ill, and Elizabeth walks three miles through the mud to nurse her. Darcy is impressed; Caroline Bingley is not.
Mr. Collins, heir to Longbourn, arrives looking for a wife. Elizabeth meets the charming officer Wickham, who claims Darcy cheated him out of a living in the church.
The Bennet family embarrass themselves at the ball. Next morning Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth; she refuses, and her father backs her.
The Bingley party leaves for London. Charlotte Lucas accepts Mr. Collins. Jane hears nothing from Bingley.
Chapters 24–42. London, Kent, and back to Longbourn.
Caroline writes that Bingley will not return. Jane visits London and is coldly received by Caroline. Wickham turns his attention to a Miss King, who has just inherited money.
Elizabeth visits Charlotte at Hunsford and dines at Rosings with Lady Catherine. Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam arrive. The Colonel lets slip that Darcy separated a friend from an unsuitable match.
Darcy proposes, while making plain how far beneath him he thinks her family is. Elizabeth refuses him angrily, blaming him for Jane’s unhappiness and for Wickham’s wrongs.
Darcy gives her a letter: he did doubt Jane’s feelings for Bingley, and Wickham tried to elope with Darcy’s fifteen-year-old sister. Elizabeth rereads it and realises how wrong she has been.
Back home, the regiment leaves for Brighton and Lydia is invited along. Elizabeth warns her father, who lets her go anyway. The Gardiners’ tour is cut short to Derbyshire.
Chapters 43–61. Derbyshire, London and Longbourn.
Elizabeth tours Pemberley with the Gardiners. The housekeeper praises Darcy, who arrives unexpectedly and is courteous to everyone. He introduces his sister.
Letters from Jane: Lydia has run off with Wickham. Elizabeth tells Darcy and hurries home. News comes that the couple have been found in London and will marry.
Lydia lets slip that Darcy was at her wedding. Mrs. Gardiner explains that Darcy found the couple, paid Wickham’s debts and bought his commission.
Bingley returns and proposes to Jane. Lady Catherine storms into Longbourn and demands that Elizabeth promise never to accept Darcy. She refuses.
Darcy, given hope by his aunt’s report, proposes again, and Elizabeth accepts. The final chapter follows the families into the future.
Every line below is copied exactly from the Project Gutenberg text (eBook #1342), with its chapter number in that edition.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
The most famous first line in English fiction is a joke. It pretends to state a law of nature, but the next sentences show it is really the neighbours’ belief, and especially Mrs. Bennet’s. Irony starts on page one: it is the families who want the man, not the other way round.
“She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.”
Elizabeth overhears this at the Meryton assembly. One careless sentence gives her a first impression of Darcy that shapes the next thirty chapters.
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
Charlotte sounds cynical, and Elizabeth laughs at her. By chapter 22 we learn she means it, and her choice forces readers to ask what a woman without money can afford to want.
“My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.”
Darcy admits his own resentment. Elizabeth calls it “a failing, indeed!” The novel then tests whether either of them can change a judgement once it is made.
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
A comic rescue: Mr. Bennet backs Elizabeth’s refusal. But the joke also shows his habit of turning serious family problems into wit instead of action.
“I am not romantic, you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home”
Charlotte, twenty-seven and without fortune, explains why she will marry a man she does not love. Austen lets us feel both Elizabeth’s shock and Charlotte’s hard logic.
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
It opens like a love speech, but Darcy goes on to list Elizabeth’s family’s inferiority. Pride spoils the proposal from the inside.
“You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.”
Elizabeth turns down ten thousand a year. The refusal is brave, but it also rests partly on Wickham’s lies, which Darcy’s letter is about to expose.
“Till this moment, I never knew myself.”
The turning point of the novel. Elizabeth sees that she, who prided herself on judging others, was “blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.”
“to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!”
Looking across the valley at Darcy’s house and its natural, unfussy grounds, Elizabeth reads his taste and character in his estate. The line is half joke, half honest: money and character are tangled together here.
“He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal.”
Elizabeth answers rank with logic. Austen gives her heroine a sharp claim to equality, while still speaking the class language of 1813.
“You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once.”
Compare this with chapter 34. Now Darcy asks instead of announcing, and gives Elizabeth the power to say no.
It is tempting to say Darcy is the pride and Elizabeth the prejudice. In fact both are proud and both are prejudiced. Elizabeth’s pride is in her own cleverness: “I, who have prided myself on my discernment!” (ch. 36).
Count the marriages: Charlotte and Collins, Lydia and Wickham, Jane and Bingley, Elizabeth and Darcy, and the unhappy Bennets themselves. Austen asks what each one is built on: security, passion, kindness or real understanding.
Wickham charms everyone at first sight; Darcy offends everyone. Both impressions are wrong. Reading the novel is training in waiting for more evidence.
Lady Catherine has the highest rank and the worst manners; the Gardiners, in trade, behave best. Austen separates being a gentleman from being born one.
Austen’s narrator often slips into a character’s thoughts and words (critics call this free indirect speech). Ask: is this the narrator’s opinion, or Mrs. Bennet’s, or Elizabeth’s?
Eight lines a game, drawn at random from ten. Can you match each line to the person who said it?
Choose an answer to see if you’re right. Your score appears at the end.
Art: The Pemberley banner, family cameos, sealed letter and social image are original SVG illustrations drawn for Jugami in a Regency palette of Wedgwood blue, primrose and sage. They are not copies of the Hugh Thomson illustrations.