How to Read Pride and Prejudice: Themes, Structure and Questions to Ask

What Pride and Prejudice is, and why it is still read

Jane Austen drafted the novel in 1796 and 1797 as First Impressions, revised it, and published it in January 1813 as Pride and Prejudice, without her name, credited to the author of Sense and Sensibility. It is a novel of manners: a comedy about a gentry family in rural Hertfordshire, the Bennets, whose five daughters need to marry well because the family estate, Longbourn, will pass to a male cousin when Mr. Bennet dies.

It follows Elizabeth, the second daughter, and her slow recognition that her low opinion of the wealthy Mr. Darcy is wrong, alongside his recognition that his pride has been just as blind. It is read today for its comic dialogue and ironic narrator, and because beneath the courtship plot it is exact about money, rank and the narrow choices open to women without fortunes. Its opening sentence, about a single man in possession of a good fortune, is among the most quoted in English fiction.

How Pride and Prejudice is structured: three volumes, 61 chapters

Austen published the novel in three volumes, and many modern editions keep the division while numbering chapters straight through from 1 to 61. Each volume moves the action somewhere new: Hertfordshire for most of Volume 1, Kent for the heart of Volume 2, Derbyshire at the start of Volume 3.

The center of the book is three chapters in Volume 2: Darcy's first proposal in chapter 34, his letter in chapter 35, and Elizabeth's reaction in chapter 36, when she sees how blind she has been. Everything before builds the misjudgment; everything after tests whether both of them have changed, at Pemberley, in the Lydia crisis and in Lady Catherine's visit.

The main themes of Pride and Prejudice

Austen rarely states a theme outright; she lets scenes and conversations show it. Each theme below names where to look. Turning one into an argument is the job of a clear thesis statement.

Key characters in Pride and Prejudice

Most characters matter for how they misjudge, or are misjudged by, someone else. Note who each one is wrong about.

• Elizabeth Bennet: the second daughter, quick, witty and confident in her own judgment, which is exactly what fails her.
• Fitzwilliam Darcy: a rich, reserved Derbyshire landowner whose manners in Hertfordshire make him disliked; his conduct later tells another story.
• Jane Bennet: the eldest, gentle and slow to think ill of anyone; her reserve nearly costs her Bingley.
• Charles Bingley: Darcy's easygoing friend, who rents Netherfield and lets Darcy talk him out of Jane.
• Mr. and Mrs. Bennet: a sardonic father who retreats to his library and a mother consumed by marrying off her daughters.
• Lydia Bennet: the youngest, fifteen at the start, whose elopement threatens the whole family's reputation.
• George Wickham: a charming officer raised alongside Darcy, whose account of him is false.
• Mr. Collins: the pompous clergyman cousin who will inherit Longbourn, devoted to his patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
• Charlotte Lucas: Elizabeth's practical friend, who accepts Collins for a home of her own.

How to read Pride and Prejudice: a volume-by-volume plan

Read by volume with a pause after each, and keep a log of every judgment one character makes of another. The same log works for other novels in which a heroine sizes up a proud, difficult man, such as Jane Eyre.

1. 1Before you start, look up three things: what an entail is, why militia regiments were stationed in country towns, and how income was described as so much a year.
2. 2Volume 1: after each ball or visit, write one line on what Elizabeth thinks of Darcy and one on Wickham, with the evidence she actually has.
3. 3Volume 2: read chapters 34 to 36 in one sitting, then go back to Wickham's story in Volume 1 and test it against Darcy's letter.
4. 4Volume 3: note each place where Darcy behaves differently from Volume 1, with the Gardiners, with Lydia and with Elizabeth, and what caused it.
5. 5List every letter in the novel and what it changes; letters carry most of the plot's turns.
6. 6Finish by rereading chapter 1 and deciding whose voice its first sentence really belongs to.

Questions to ask about Pride and Prejudice

Use these for discussion or essay planning; the guide to writing a literary analysis shows how to build an answer into an essay.

• Who is proud and who is prejudiced, and do the answers change between Volume 1 and Volume 3?
• Is Charlotte Lucas wrong to marry Mr. Collins, and does the novel think so?
• Why does Elizabeth believe Wickham so readily?
• What makes Darcy's first proposal offensive, beyond his manner?
• How much does seeing Pemberley change Elizabeth's feelings, and does that trouble you?
• Is Mr. Bennet a good father?
• What does Lydia's elopement reveal about the family's position?
• Why does Darcy keep his help to Lydia secret?
• Does the ending reward Elizabeth for changing, or for being right about some things all along?
• How would the novel change if Elizabeth narrated it in the first person?

Choosing an edition of Pride and Prejudice

Look for an edition that marks the original three volumes even if it numbers chapters 1 to 61, since critics cite both ways, and that has notes on money, the entail, the militia and forms of address a modern reader will not know. Read the introduction after the novel.

Avoid abridged or retold versions for study; the irony lives in the narrator's sentences, which are the first thing an abridgment cuts. In translation, choose a complete one with notes, and compare the first sentence across versions if you can; how a translator handles its irony is a quick test. Watch film adaptations after reading, noticing which scenes each one adds.