Olivia Cheek

Stacy Knight

P&P FRQ

February 7, 2023

In her novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen tells the story of a girl, in her twenties who

falls in love with a man of whom she earlier had sworn to be the most disagreeable man in the

world. In this novel Austen uses Elizabeth withholding information from her family about Darcy,

to highlight the internal conflict Elizabeth is having about her feelings towards Darcy, ultimately

revealing the complicated consequences that can happen when one lacks the courage to be

completely honest with oneself and one’s family.

Elizabeth is reluctant to tell her family that Darcy paid Wickham to marry Lydia because

she doesn’t want her telling her family to lead to them finding out about her feelings towards

Darcy. Mrs. Gardener had told Elizabeth in her letter that Darcy had paid Wickham to marry

Lydia because he felt bad for revealing all the horrible things Wickham had done (even though

they were true). Elizabeth was led to believe that this alibi of Darcy’s was true, though “her

heart did whisper, that he had done it for her” (218). Consequently, Elizabeth, not wanting the

family's knowledge of Darcy’s paying for the marriage and of his true motives to result in the

discovery of her own hidden fondness towards Darcy, Elizabeth keeps the information to

herself.
 Elizabeth does not tell her father, after he enquires further about the situation with

Lady Catherine or about her previous knowledge of Darcy’s alleged proposal because she

herself is unsure of Darcy's feelings towards her and believes that acknowledging “the

substance of” her and Lady Catherine’s “conversation [is] impossible” (241). Elizabeth feels that

since Lady Catherine is Darcy’s aunt that “it is natural to suppose that he [thinks] much higher

of her Ladyship” (242) than herself. This causes Elizabeth worry that if Lady Catherine were ever

to “meditate an application to her nephew” (242) with her arguments of the “enumerating...

miseries of a marriage with one, whose immediate connections were so unequal to his own”

(242) that Darcy too would “take a similar representation of the evils attached” (242) to

Elizabeth. She knows that even if he had “been wavering before... the advice and entreaty of so

near a relation might settle every doubt” (242). Elizabeth decides that if Darcy “is satisfied to

regret [her]” (243) that there is no reason to continue to discuss and dwell on the situation for

she will “soon cease to regret him at all” (243). Therefore, when her father continues to pry her

for an explanation, Elizabeth acts as if she is just as clueless as him, though only truly being able

to “force one most reluctant smile” (244) and “[reply] only with a laugh” (245), for “Elizabeth

had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not” (245).

Elizabeth lies to her family about where she went off to with Mr. Darcy because she is

“anticipat[ing] what [will] be felt in the family when her situation [becomes] known” (251). She

is aware without a doubt, of the embarrassment she will feel when having to admit to her

family that she is in love with the man whom they all thought she so heartily disliked and is also

“aware that no one like[s] him but Jane” (251), yet, Elizabeth feels she has “other evils before

her” (251). Elizabeth fears, not the fact that no one likes him, but that her family's “dislike” for
Darcy was not one “which... all his fortune and consequence might do away” (251). Because of

this, in order to prevent these fears of hers from occurring before the appropriate time,

Elizabeth’s response to her mother’s inquiry of where they had been, was simply that “they had

wandered about, till she was beyond her own knowledge” (251).

Elizabeth ran into many situations in which she had to deceive her family into thinking

her indifferent to Darcy because she did not have “the courage” (218) to understand or accept

her own feelings, as well as the consequences that came with them. Luckily for Elizabeth, the

man whom she was hiding her feelings from was even more in love with her. If Darcy had been

any less interested in Elizabeth than he was and had not gone out of his way to make sure she

knew he still loved her, Elizabeth might have had to live the rest of her life regretting and

despising herself for not having “the courage” (218) to accept her own feelings and show Darcy

she felt the same.