Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen's "Patrician Hero"

Author(s): Kenneth L. Moler

Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 , Summer, 1967, Vol. 7, No. 3,
Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer, 1967), pp. 491-508
Published by: Rice University

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 Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen's
"Patrician Hero"
KENNETH L. MOLER

IT IS GENERALLY AGREED that Pride and

Prejudice deals with a variant of the "art-nature" theme with
which Sense and Sensibility is concerned. Sense and Sensi-
bility primarily treats the opposition between the head and
the heart, between feeling and reason; in Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth Bennet's forceful and engaging individualism is
pitted against Darcy's not indefensible respect for the social
order and his class pride. Most critics agree that Pride and
Prejudice does not suffer from the appearance of one-sided-
ness that makes Sense and Sensibility unattractive. Obviously
neither Elizabeth nor Darcy embodies the novel's moral norm.
Each is admirable in his way, and each must have his pride
and prejudice corrected by self-knowledge and come to a fuller
appreciation of the other's temperament and beliefs. Ulti-
mately their conflicting points of view are adjusted, and each
achieves a mean between "nature" and "art." Elizabeth gains
some appreciation of Darcy's sound qualities and comes to see
the validity of class relationships. Darcy, under Elizabeth's
influence, gains in naturalness and learns to respect the innate
dignity of the individual.l
One of the few features of Pride and Prejudice to which
exception has been taken is Jane Austen's treatment of the
character of her Mr. Darcy. It is said that the transition
between the arrogant young man of the early chapters of the
novel and the polite gentleman whom Elizabeth Bennet mar-
ries is too great and too abrupt to be completely credible.3
Reuben A. Brower and Howard S. Babb have vindicated Jane
Austen to some extent, showing that much of Darcy's early
conversation can be interpreted in various ways, and that our

'The most detailed study of Pride and Prejudice in terms of the "art-
nature" dichotomy is Samuel Kliger's "Jane Austen's Pride and Pre-
judice in the Eighteenth-Century Mode," UTQ, XVI (1947), 357-370.
aSee, for example, the comments in Mary Lascelles's Jane Austen and
Her Art (Oxford, 1939), pp. 22 and 162, and Marvin Mudrick's com-
plaints about the change in Darcy in his Jane Austen: Irony as Defense
and Discovery (Princeton, 1952), pp. 117-119.

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 492 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

reactions to him are often conditioned by the fact that we see

him largely through the eyes of the prejudiced Elizabeth.3
Still there remain grounds for objection to Jane Austen's
handling of Darcy. His remark about Elizabeth at the Meryton
assembly is almost unbelievably boorish, and we have no
reason to believe that Elizabeth has misunderstood it. We
hear with our own ears his fears lest he should be encourag-
ing Elizabeth to fall in love with him, and the objectionable
language of his first proposal. Such things remain stumbling
blocks to our acceptance of Darcy's speedy reformation.
This essay is concerned with Jane Austen's rather unusual
treatment of a popular eighteenth-century character-type and
situation. Mr. Darcy bears a marked resemblance to what I
shall call the "patrician hero," a character-type best known
as represented in the novels of Richardson and Fanny Burney;
and it is rewarding to investigate the relationship between
Darcy and his love affair with Elizabeth Bennet and the
heroes of Richardson's and Fanny Burney's novels and their
relations with their heroines. Jane Austen's treatment of her
patrician hero has a marked relevance to the theme of the
reconciliation of opposites that plays such an important part
in Pride and Prejudice. And a study of Darcy's possible origins
helps to account for those flaws in his character for which
Jane Austen has been criticized.
Authority-figures of various sorts play prominent roles in
many eighteenth and nineteenth century novels. There is the
patriarch or matriarch-Fielding's benevolent Allworthy,
Godwin's terrifying Falkland, Dickens's Miss Havisham-
whose relationship with a young dependent acts as a metaphor
for the relationship between the social order and individual,
"natural" man. In the novels of Richardson the relationship
-prosperous, or, in the case of Lovelace and Clarissa, mutual-
ly destructive-between a young man of rank and fortune and
a girl who is naturally good but socially inferior performs a
similar function. This essay will be chiefly concerned with
the particular type of figure that Richardson's Sir Charles
Grandison represents.
Richardson's Lovelace is a lost soul; his Mr. B- has to be

3See Brower's The Fields of Light (New York, Oxford University Press,
1951), pp. 164-181, and Babb's Jane Austen's Novels: The Fabric of
Dialogue (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), pp. 115-118.

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 493

reformed by the virtuous Pamela.4 In Sir Charles Grandison,

however, Richardson depicted a perfect Christian aristocrat.
Sir Charles is handsome and accomplished, dresses exquisitely
(out of respect for his father's memory!), and has charming
manners. He is immensely wealthy, an owner of splendid
mansions and manors, and a powerful, important landholder.
Yet he is a man of the strictest Christian virtue, a just, benev-
olent, and super-efficient steward of his estates, a protector of
the weak, and a friend to the poor. As Richardson describes
him in the preface to Grandison, Sir Charles is "a man of
religion and virtue; of liveliness and spirit; accomplished and
agreeable; happy in himself, and a blessing to others."5
In the concluding note to Grandison Richardson admits
that "it has been observed by some, that, in general [Sir
Charles] approaches too near the faultless character which
some critics censure as above nature" (XX.327). The reaction
Richardson describes is not uncommon among readers of his
novel. "Pictures of perfection," Jane Austen once wrote,
"make me sick and wicked;" and most readers are wicked
enough to resent a character who demands so much admira-
tion as Sir Charles does. In addition to being annoyed by Sir
Charles's incredible glamor and goodness, one tends to be re-
volted by the sycophantic deference with which he is treated
by nearly every character in his history. Sir Charles's male
friends attempt to emulate his virtues. His female acquain-
tance worship him as "the best of men," take his word for
law, and all too frequently fall in love with him. His ad-
mirers-repeatedly, indeed ad nuseam-entrust their most
important affairs to him when they are living, and leave
their estates to his management when they die. Thus, Sir
Charles, at his sister's request, frees her from an unfortunate

'Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy is sometimes compared to Richardson's patri-

cian "villain-hero," Mr. B-. E. E. Duncan-Jones, in "Proposals of
Marriage in Pamela and Pride and Prejudice," N & Q (N.S.), IV, 76,
calls the proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice a reminiscence of Mr.
B-'s first honorable proposal to Pamela. More general resemblances
between Pamela and Jane Austen's novel are discussed in Henrietta
Ten Harmsel's "The Villain Hero in Pamela and Pride and Prejudice,"
CE, 23 (1961), 104-108. Although I do not think that it is entirely un-
profitable to compare Pamela and Pride and Prejudice, I believe, for
reasons that will be apparent later, that it is more rewarding to com-
pare Darcy to heroes modeled on Sir Charles Grandison.
'Samuel Richardson, Novels (London, 1902), XIV, p. x. All references
will be to this edition.

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 494 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

engagement; later he arranges a suitable marriage for her.

He extricates his uncle from the clutches of an unmanageable
mistress and, on the uncle's insistence, provides him with a
worthy wife. He sees to it that the relatives of Mr. Danby-
Mr. Danby having left his estate in Sir Charles's hands-are
provided with fortunes, employment, and matrimonial part-
ners, and arranges for the distribution of the remainder of
Danby's estate in charity. Indeed, it is a rare moment when
Sir Charles is not dispensing advice and assistance to half a
dozen of his family and friends simultaneously. At one point
in the story the lovelorn Harriet Byron, after giving a list
of some seven persons or families whose affairs Sir Charles
is at present re-arranging, declares in despair: "O Lucy!-
What leisure has this man to be in love!" (XVII.49-50.
Grandison, IV, Letter V).
Among the most fervent of Sir Charles's aficionados is the
heroine of Grandison, Miss Byron. Sir Charles is her oracle;
she treasures up his every word, and is embarrassingly grate-
ful when he condescends to give her advice. Her relationship
with him is like that of an adoring younger sister to an older
brother, or that of an infatuated pupil with a favorite teacher.
He is, to use her own word, her "monitor," as much as he is
her lover. Harriet is in love with Sir Charles long before she
knows that he cares for her; and when, after months of heart-
burning, she learns that he has decided to marry her, she is
overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. "0 my God !" she prays
shortly after their marriage, "do Thou make me thankful
for such a friend, protector, director, husband! Increase with
my gratitude to THEE, my merits to him" (XX. 316. Grandi-
son, VII, Letter LX).
As I have said, all of this deference, added to Richardson's
insistence on Sir Charles's perfection, tends to make the reader
react unfavorably towards both Sir Charles and his creator.
One is inclined, in spite of Richardson's insistence on his
humility, to think of Sir Charles as a stuffily superior, rather
supercilious character, rather than as the noble and magnani-
mous hero that Richardson envisioned. And one is inclined to
tax Richardson, as well as some of the characters in his novel,
with an unduly sycophantic attitude towards his high-born
hero. That Jane Austen reacted to Grandison similarly will
become apparent later in this essay.
All of the three novels that Fanny Burney published before

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 495

1813 deal, as Grandison does, with the relationships between

exemplary young authority-figures who are wealthy or well-
born or both and heroines who are in some respect their
social inferiors. Cecilia, however, is the Burneyan novel most
frequently cited as a source for Pride and Prejudice. Many
critics feel that Jane Austen's novel is simply a realistic re-
writing of Cecilia. R. Brimley Johnson, for instance, has re-
ferred to the "title and plot, the leading characters and most
dramatic scenes of Pride and Prejudice" as "frank appropria-
tions" from Cecilia.
Cecilia is certainly an important source for Pride and
Prejudice. In plot and theme it resembles Jane Austen's novel
more nearly than any other single work does. It is possible-
though not certain-that the title of Pride and Prejudice was
borrowed from Cecilia.7 It is often suggested that the first
proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice was influenced by the
scenes in Cecilia in which Mortimer Delvile states his objec-
tions to a marriage with Cecilia. And there are similarities be-
tween the scene in which Mrs. Delvile prevails on Cecilia to
give Mortimer up and the scene in which Lady Catherine de
Bourgh descends on Elizabeth Bennet. There are, however,
a number of significant points of resemblance between Pride
and Prejudice and novels other than Cecilia. In some respects
the situation of Fanny Burney's Evelina is closer to that of
Elizabeth Bennet than Cecilia's is. Both Elizabeth and Evelina
are relatively poor in addition to being inferior in rank to
their heroes, while Cecilia is rich. And both Elizabeth and
Evelina are surrounded by sets of vulgar relatives by whom
they are embarrassed in the presence of their lovers. More-
over, as I shall show later, some specific scenes in Pride and
Prejudice are certainly based on similar scenes in Evelina.
Some others, on the other hand, have their originals in Sir
Charles Grandison. I am certain that in Pride and Prejudice

'The quotation is from Johnson's introduction to Sense and Sensibility in

The Works of Jane Austen, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (London, 1950), p.
v. The relationship between Cecilia and Pride and Prejudice is more
fully discussed in Johnson's Jane Austen (London, 1927), pp. 124-127,
and in his Jane Austen: Her Life, Her Work, Her Family, and Her
Critics (London, 1930), pp. 137-139.
7Cecilia is not necessarily the source for the title of Pride and Prejudice,
since the terms "pride" and "prejudice" were very often used in conjunc-
tion in Jane Austen's day. R. W. Chapman's notes to the Oxford edition
of Pride and Prejudice and numerous articles in the TLS and N & Q
testify to the popularity of the expression.

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 496 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Jane Austen is not merely rewriting

a character-type and a situation made familiar to her audience
in various novels by Richardson and Fanny Burney-and in
numerous works by their imitators as well. The relationship
between Eveina and Pride and Prejudice has never been fully
explored; and since it seems to me that it is in some respects
very rewarding to compare Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy to Fanny
Burney's Lord Orville, I shall use Evelina to illustrate Fanny
Burney's treatment of the patrician hero.
While all of Fanny Burney's heroes resemble Richardson's
patrician hero somewhat, Lord Orville is Sir Charles Grandi-
son writ small. He is a picture of perfection, a paragon among
men-at least in the eyes of his heroine and his author. He
is handsome, well-born, rich; yet he is wise and good. A heart-
sick Evelina describes him as "one who seemed formed as a
pattern for his fellow-creatures, as a model of perfection."8
The relationship between Orville and Evelina is much the
same as that between Sir Charles Grandison and Harriet
Byron. Evelina adores Orville from their first meeting, and
she is fully convinced of her own inferiority. "That he should
be so much my superior in every way, quite disconcerted me,"
she writes after their first dance together (I, Letter XI, p.
36). She cringes when she learns that he has referred to her
as "a poor weak girl" and is "grateful for his attention" even
after she believes that he has insulted her with a dishonorable
proposal. Orville, like Sir Charles, is regarded as an oracular
"monitor" by his heroine. Evelina seeks, and is delighted to
receive, his counsel. "There is no young creature, my Lord,
who so greatly wants, or so earnestly wishes for, the advice
and assistance of her friends, as I do," she says to him on
one occasion (III, Letter V, p. 383); and Orville quickly be-
comes a substitute for her absent guardian. It is he who ar-
ranges an interview with Mr. Macartney for her at Bristol,
who persuades the repentant Sir John Belmont to receive her
-and who, later on, magnanimously disposes of half of her
fortune to provide for Macartney and the one-time Miss Bel-
mont. Like Harriet Byron, Evelina is overcome with gratitude
when her hero finally proposes to her. "To be loved by Lord
Orville," she writes "-to be the honoured choice of his noble
heart,-my happiness seemed too infinite to be borne, and I

8Fanny Burney, Evelina, ed. Sir Frank D. MacKinnon (Oxford, 1930),

II, Letter XXVII, p. 321. All references will be to this edition.

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 497

wept, even bitterly I wept, from the excess of joy which over-
powered me." (III, Letter XV, p. 443).
The Burney-Richardson character-type and situation were
imitated in the sub-literature of the period. In Thomas Hull's
The History of Sir W'illiam Harrington, for example (1771),
the exemplary Lord C--, nobly born, extremely wealthy,
and "as perfect as a human being can be" in person, mind, and
character, is very obviously modeled on Sir Charles Grandison.
And Mr. Charlemont, the hero of a novel by Anna Maria
Porter entitled The Lake of Killarney (1804), is "a young
Apollo," "the god of his sex," and the son of a lord. Rose, a
dependent in a family of Charlemont's acquaintance, loves him
desperately, but is by no means unaware of his vast superior-
ity to her. At one point in the novel, in an episode that may
have been inspired by the scene in Cecilia in which Mrs. Del-
vile warns Cecilia to beware of falling in love with Delvile,
Rose is cross-examined by an older woman who is a friend of
Charlemont's family. "If nothing else were wanting to crush
presumptuous hopes on my part," Rose replies, ". . . the dif-
ference in our rank, our birth, our fortune, would place them
beyond all doubt. Mr. Charlemont is . . . a prize, for which all
his equals may contend."9 Similar heroes, often similarly diffi-
cult of attainment to admiring heroines, are to be found in
numerous other works of Jane Austen's day.
Jane Austen must have been as much amused by the all-
conquering heroes and too humble heroines of the day as many
other readers have been, for in the juvenile sketch entitled
"Jack and Alice" she reduces the patrician hero to absurdity
with gusto. Charles Adams, in that sketch, is the most exagge-
rated "picture of perfection" conceivable. He is incredibly
handsome, a man "of so dazzling a Beauty that none but
Eagles could look him in the Face."10 (The continual refer-
ences in "Jack and Alice" to the brilliance of Charles's coun-
tenance are probably specific allusions to Sir Charles Grandi-
son: Richardson repeatedly describes Sir Charles in similar
language.1") But the beauties of Charles's person are nothing
to those of his mind. As he tells us himself:

'Anna Maria Porter, The Lake of Killarney (London, 1804), I, iv, 219.
Jane Austen mentions this novel in a letter of 24 October 1808: see the
Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman, 2nd ed. (London, 1959), pp. 58-59.
?Jane Austen, Works, ed. R. W. Chapman (London, 1954), VI, 13. All
references will be to this edition.
1As E. E. Duncan-Jones points out in "Notes on Jane Austen," N & Q,

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 498 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

I imagine my Manners & Address to be of the most

polished kind; there is a certain elegance, a peculiar
sweetness in them that I never saw equalled. ... I am
certainly more accomplished in every Language, every
Science, every Art and every thing than any other
person in Europe. My temper is even, my virtues in-
numerable, my self unparalleled. (VI.25).

The superciliousness and conceit that readers cannot help

attributing to Sir Charles Grandison or Orville becomes the
very essence of Charles Adams's being. The kind of praise
that Richardson and Fanny Burney heap on their heroes is
most liberally bestowed by Charles on himself. And just as
Charles is a burlesque version of the too perfect Burney-
Richardson hero, so he is provided with two heroines who
are ten times more inferior, and twenty times more devoted
to him than Evelina and Harriet Byron are to their heroes.
Charles is the owner of the "principal estate" in the neighbor-
hood in which the lovely Lucy lives, and Lucy adores him. She
is the daughter of a tailor and the niece of an alehouse-keeper,
and she is fearful that Charles may think her "deficient in
Rank, & in being so, unworthy of his hand" (VI.21). Screwing
up her courage, however, she proposes marriage to him. But
to her sorrow, she receives "an angry & peremptory refusal"
from the unapproachable young man (VI.21). Alice Johnson,
the titular heroine of the novel, is also infatuated with Char-
les. Although, like the rest of her family, Alice is "a little
addicted to the Bottle & the Dice," she hopes, after she has
inherited a considerable estate, to be found worthy of Charles.
But when Alice's father proposes the match to him, Charles
declares that she is neither "sufficiently beautifull, suffi-
ciently amiable, sufficiently witty, nor sufficiently rich for
me-." "I expect," he says, "nothing more in my wife than
my wife will find in me-Perfection" (VI.25-26). Fortunately,
Alice is able to find consolation in her bottle. "Jack and Alice,"
I believe, was not Jane Austen's only attack on the patrician
hero. There is a good deal of Charles Adams in her Mr. Darcy.
Darcy's actual circumstances are not an exaggeration of
those of the patrician hero, as Charles Adams's are. In fact

196 (1951), 114-116. Numbers of heroes in the minor fiction of the per-
iod, however, among them Lord C- in The History of Sir William
Harrington and Mr. Charlemont in The Lake of Killarney, are similarly
described.

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 499

Jane Austen seems at times to be uncritically borrowing the

popular Burney-Richardson character type and situation in
Pride and Prejudice-altering them, if at all, only by toning
them down a bit. Mr. Darcy is not the picture of perfection
that Sir Charles Grandison is, but he shares many of the ad-
vantages of Sir Charles and Lord Orville. He has, for instance,
a "fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien .. . and ten
thousand a year" (II.10). He has mental powers that com-
mand respect. He is not as powerful and important as Sir
Charles Grandison, but he is the owner of a large estate and
a giver, and withholder, of clerical livings. He marries a
woman who, like Evelina, is embarrassed by the inferiority of
some of her nearest connections, although even Mrs. Bennet
can scarcely approach the supreme vulgarity of Madame
Duval.
But Darcy is a Charles Adams in spirit, if not in circum-
stances. It is his exaggerated conception of the importance
of his advantages,his supercilious determination "to think well
of myself, and meanly of others" who are not so fortunate that
causes him at times to sound very much like a caricature of
the Burney-Richardson hero. He may not expect to have to
address "an angry & peremptory refusal" to a fawning, love-
lorn Elizabeth Bennet; but during Elizabeth's visit at Nether-
field he is anxious lest, by devoting so much of his conversa-
tion to her, he may have been encouraging her to hope for
the honor of his hand. On the eve of her departure from
Netherfield, we are told: "He wisely resolved to be particular-
ly careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him,
nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing
his felicity. . . . Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke ten
words to her through the whole of Saturday" (11.60). The
idea of a proposal which is humiliating to a heroine may
come from Cecilia. But the language of Darcy's first pro-
posal to Elizabeth sounds like something that might have
come from Charles Adams's lips, rather than the gallant, ardent
language of a Delvile. During Darcy's proposal, we are told
that "his sense of her inferiority" was "dwelt on with a
warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wound-
ing, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit" (II.189).
And when Elizabeth rebukes him, he declares that he is not
"ashamed of the feelings I related. . . . Could you expect me
to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratu-

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 500 PRI D E AND P R E J U D I C E

late myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life

is so decidedly beneath my own?" (II.192).
On two occasions, I believe, Darcy is specifically a carica-
ture of Fanny Burney's Lord Orville. The scene at the Mery-
ton assembly in which Darcy makes rude remarks about
Elizabeth Bennet is a burlesque of Orville's unfavorable first
impression of Evelina.l2 In Evelina, shortly after Orville and
Evelina have had their first dance together, there is a con-
versation between Orville and Sir Clement Willoughby on the
subject of Evelina's merits. Sir Clement says to Orville:

"Why, my Lord, what have you done with your

lovely partner ?"
"Nothing !" answered Lord Orville, with a smile and
a shrug.
"By Jove," cried the man, "she is the most beauti-
ful creature I ever saw in my life!"
Lord Orville . . . laughed, but answered, "Yes; a
pretty modest-looking girl."
"O my Lord !" cried the madman, "she is an angel !"
"A silent one," returned he.
"Why ay, my Lord, how stands she as to that? She
looks all intelligence and expression."
"A poor weak girl !" answered Lord Orville, shaking
his head. (I, Letter XII, p. 42).
In Darcy's remarks about Elizabeth at the Meryton assembly,
Orville's gentle mockery becomes supercilious rudeness. Mr.
Bingley sounds Darcy on the merits of the various ladies at
the assembly, hoping to persuade his friend to dance. Like Sir
Clement Willoughby, Bingley praises the heroine: Elizabeth,
he declares, is "very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable";
and he proposes that Darcy ask her to dance. Darcy replies
that Elizabeth is "tolerable; but not handsome enough to
tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give conse-
quence to young ladies who are slighted by other men" (11.12).
And another ballroom scene in Evelina is burlesqued in
Pride and Prejudice. At one point in Evelina Sir Clement
Willoughby, who is determined to punish the heroine for pre-
tending that Lord Orville is to be her partner in a dance for
which Sir Clement wished to engage her, conducts her to Lord
Orville and presents him with her hand. Evelina writes:

"In "A Critical Theory of Jane Austen's Writings," Part I, Scrutiny, 10

(1941-42), 61-87, Mrs. Leavis recognizes the similarity between the two
scenes.

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 501

-he suddenly seized my hand, saying, "think, my

Lord, what must be my reluctance to resign this fair
hand to your Lordship !"
In the same instant, Lord Orville took it of him;
I coloured violently, and made an effort to recover it.
"You do me too much honour, Sir," cried he, (with an
air of gallantry, pressing it to his lips before he let it
go) "however, I shall be happy to profit by it, if this
lady," (turning to Mrs. Mirvan) "will permit me to
seek for her party."
To compel him thus to dance, I could not endure,
and eagerly called out, "By no means,-not for the
world !-I must beg-" (I. Letter XIII, p. 57).

Orville politely attempts to help Evelina recover from her

confusion. Darcy, "all politeness," as Elizabeth ironically
describes him, signifies his willingness to oblige Elizabeth
Bennet with a dance when Elizabeth is placed in a similarly
embarrassing situation at Sir William Lucas's ball.13 Sir
William and Darcy are conversing. Elizabeth approaches them
and Sir William, "struck with the notion of doing a very
gallant thing," declares:

"Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to present this young

lady to you as a very desirable partner.-You cannot
refuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is
before you." And taking her hand, he would have given
it to Mr. Darcy, who, though extremely surprised, was
not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew
back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William,
"Indeed, Sir, I have not the least intention of danc-
ing.-I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this
way in order to beg for a partner."
Mr. Darcy with grave propriety requested to be al-
lowed the honour of her hand; but in vain. Elizabeth
was determined; nor did Sir William at all shake her
purpose by his attempt at persuasion.
"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza. . . and
though this gentleman dislikes the amusement in gen-
eral, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us
for one half hour."
"Mr. Darcy is all politeness," said Elizabeth, smiling.
(11.26).
Mr. Darcy is a complex human being rather than a mere

'Of course, as Brower (Fields of Light, pp. 168-169) points out, we see
this scene largely through the eyes of the prejudiced Elizabeth Bennet.
Darcy is actually eager to dance with Elizabeth, although his manner of
expressing himself is not very gallant.

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 502 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

vehicle for satire such as Charles Adams. Nevertheless, I think

it is likely that Darcy has somewhere in his ancestry a parody-
figure similar to the ones in which Jane Austen's juvenilia
abound. Such a theory is consistent with current assumptions
about Jane Austen's habits of composition. Her first three
novels are the products of reworkings of drafts written at a
period much closer to the time when her juvenile parodies of
fiction were written than to that at which Sense and Sensi-
bility as we have it was published. Both Northanger Abbey
and Sense and Sensibility contain marked traces of satiric
originals, and it seems reasonable to assume that Pride and
Prejudice, as well as the other two novels, grew, through
process of refinement, from a criticism of literature into a
criticism of life. Moreover, the theory accounts for what is
perhaps the most serious flaw in Pride and Prejudice: the
vast difference between the Darcy of the first ballroom scene
and the man whom Elizabeth Bennet marries at the end of
the novel. We have seen that the most exaggerated displays of
conceit and rudeness on Darcy's part-his speech at the
Meryton assembly, his fears lest he should be encouraging
Elizabeth to fall in love with him, and the language of his
first proposal-could have originated as burlesques of the
patrician hero. If we postulate an origin in parody for Darcy
and assume that he was later subjected to a refining process,
the early, exaggerated displays of rudeness can be explained
as traces of the original purely parodic figure that Jane Aus-
ten was not able to manage with complete success.
Regardless of its origins, Pride and Prejudice, even as it
stands, is in many respects a subtly ironic reflection on Rich-
ardson and Fanny Burney and their patrician heroes. In
addition to Darcy's role as an ironically treated Orville or
Sir Charles Grandison, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a remi-
niscence of Mrs. Delvile in Cecilia or Dr. Marchmont in Ca-
milla, a humorous version of the kindly but mistaken friend
who frowns upon the patrician hero's intended bride. And the
scene in which she attempts to persuade Elizabeth not to
marry Darcy is an exaggeration of what is potentially ridi-
culous in similar situations in Cecilicv-not, as R. B. Johnson
and others have suggested, a refined imitation. Mrs. Delvile
is Mortimer's mother and exercises, according to Cecilia, an
almost maternal prerogative upon Cecilia herself. Cecilia is
grateful-exaggeratedly, unnecessarily grateful, many readers

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 503

feel-to Mrs. Delvile for that lady's interest in her and for
her kindness in providing her with a home during part of her
minority. Mrs. Delvile has as much right as anyone could
have to interfere in the love affair between Mortimer and
Cecilia. And when she persuades Cecilia not to marry Mor-
timer, although what she says is prideful and humiliating to
Cecilia, her language, at least, is kind and respectful.14 Lady
Catherine is Darcy's aunt, and she hardly knows Elizabeth.
Her attempt to prevent Elizabeth's and Darcy's marriage,
her arrogant language, and the manner in which she taxes
Elizabeth with ingratitude, on the strength of having invited
her to Rosings several times in the past, are a parody of the
situation in Cecilia. Again, Darcy's relationship with Mr.
Bingley is humorously reminiscent of Sir Charles Grandison
and the friends who continually depend on him for advice and
assistance. Richardson's super-competent hero was notable
for his propensity to manage the lives and loves of his friends.
Darcy, to our and Elizabeth Bennet's amusement, domineers
over the spineless Bingley, arranging and rearranging Bing-
ley's love-life, and at one point officiously separating him from
the amiable and disinterested young woman whom Bingley
truly loves. Darcy is provided with a mock-Evelina or Harriet
Byron in Miss Bingley, who is all too obviously willing to
play the role of the patrician hero's female adorer in order
to become the mistress of Pemberley. The flattery Evelina
and Harriet Byron unconsciously heap upon their heroes, their
willingness to take their young men's pronouncements as law,
become Miss Bingley's determined toadeating: when she is not
praising Darcy's library or his sister, she is defending his
views on feminine accomplishments or inviting his comments
on the company at Sir William Lucas's ball.
Most important, while Miss Bingley is a caricature of Eve-
lina or Harriet Byron, Elizabeth Bennet plays the role of an
anti-Evelina in the novel's satiric pattern.15 Throughout most
of the novel she acts in a manner directly contrary to the

4See, for example, Cecilia, ed. R. Brimley Johnson (London, 1893), III,
Bk. VIII, Ch. iii, p. 22 and Ch. iv, p. 37.
'Mrs. Leavis ("Critical Theory," Part I) adopts a somewhat similar
view of Elizabeth's origins. She holds that much of Pride and Prejudice
was originally a satire of Cecilia, and that Elizabeth is an "anti-Cecilia."
She feels, however, that Darcy is simply a refined imitation of Mortimer
Delvile-"Delvile with the minimum of inside necessary to make plausi-
ble his conduct." I am primarily concerned here with Darcy's role as a

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 504 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

way in which one would expect a Richardson or Burney hero-

ine to behave. While the would-be Harriet Byron, Miss Bing-
ley, courts Darcy in the traditional manner, Elizabeth makes
him the butt of her wit, the prime target of her attacks on
snobbery. While he worries lest he should have encouraged
her to hope for the honor of his hand, she regards him as
"only the man who made himself agreeable no where, and
who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with"
(11.23). Instead of being overwhelmed with gratitude when
he proposes to her, she prefaces her refusal by saying: "if I
could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot-
I have never desired your good opinion, and you have cer-
tainly bestowed it most unwillingly" (II.190). And she goes
on to tax him with "arrogance," "conceit," and a "selfish dis-
dain for the feelings of others" (11.193), and to accuse him
of being snobbish and overbearing in his interference with
Jane and Bingley and of abusing the power he holds over
Wickham. Even when she and Darcy are reconciled she cannot
help smiling at his casual assumption of the right to arrange
and rearrange his friend Bingley's love-life, "his easy manner
of directing his friend" (11.371). (We might also note that
she answers Lady Catherine de Bourgh's demand that she
renounce Darcy in a manner calculated to warm the hearts of
readers irritated by Cecilia Beverly's deference to Mrs. Del-
vile's pride and prejudice.)
In the early stages of the novel's development, I believe,
Lady Catherine, Mr. Bingley, and Miss Bingley were more
exaggerated and distorted versions of their prototypes than
they are at present. Elizabeth Bennet was merely an anti-type
to the Burney-Richardson sycophantic heroine; Darcy, a cari-
cature of the patrician hero. Later, although she retained an
element of ironic imitation, Jane Austen refined her charac-
ters, transforming them from mere vehicles for satire into
human beings interesting in their own right as well as because
of their relationship to their literary prototypes. And, as
the remainder of this essay implies, she also changed her atti-
tude toward her patrician hero and her anti-Evelina, and
accordingly altered her treatment of Darcy drastically and

mock patrician hero; and, of course, I believe that Elizabeth is an anti-

type to a number of heroines, and not simply a vehicle for satire of one
novel.

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 KENNETH L. MOLER 505

made Elizabeth, as well as Darcy, a target for her irony.

Theories about the development of the novel aside, however,
the fact remains that Pride and Prejudice as we have it is not
simply, as critics have suggested, an imitation of the work
of Jane Austen's fellow-novelists. It is, in part at least, an
attack on Richardson and Fanny Burney and their patrician
heroes.
Jane Austen thoroughly humbles her patrician hero. Darcy
is subjected to a series of "set-downs" at the hands of the
anti-Evelina, Elizabeth Bennet, and through his love for
Elizabeth and the shock he receives from her behavior, he
comes to see himself as he really is, and to repent of his pom-
posity and pride. "By you, I was properly humbled," he ad-
mits to Elizabeth towards the end of the novel (II.369).
Interestingly enough, however, Jane Austen does not allow
her anti-Evelina to rout her patrician hero completely. For
once Darcy has been humbled, she turns her irony on Eliza-
beth Bennet. She shows that Elizabeth, in her resentment of
Darcy's conscious superiority, has exaggerated his faults and
failed to see that there is much in him that is good. Elizabeth
proves to have been blind and prejudiced in her views on the
relationship between Darcy and Wickham, too willing to ac-
cept Wickham's stories because they so nicely confirm her
own feelings about Darcy. When she reads the letter that
follows Darcy's first proposal, she is forced to admit that her
resentment has led her to be foolish and unjust. Again, until
Darcy's letter shocks her into self-knowledge, Elizabeth has
seen Darcy's interference in the affair between Jane and
Bingley only as an instance of cold-hearted snobbery on Dar-
cy's part. Reading Darcy's letter, and considering Jane's dis-
position, Elizabeth is forced to admit that Darcy's view of the
affair, his belief that Jane was little more than a complacent
pawn in her mother's matrimonial game, is not unjustified.
Darcy's interference, Elizabeth must admit, was motivated
not merely by snobbery, but by concern for his guileless
friend's welfare as well. With her eyes thus opened, Elizabeth
comes to see later in the novel that Darcy's position and for-
tune, and his pride in them, can be forces for good as well as
sources of snobbery and authoritarianism. Seeing Pemberley,
and hearing his housekeeper's praise of Darcy's conduct as a
brother and a landlord, she learns that Darcy's position is a
trust and a responsibility, and that his not unjustifiable self-

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 506 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

respect leads to a code of conduct worthy of admiration. And

in his action in the Lydia-Wickham affair she is provided with
an impressive and gratifying instance of his power to do good
and his sense of responsibility. At the end of the novel Jane
Austen's anti-Evelina is defending her patrician hero. "I love
him'," Elizabeth says of Darcy to the astounded Mr. Bennet.
"Indeed, he has no improper pride" (11.376).
As many critics have pointed out, a pattern of "art-nature"
symbolism in Pride and Prejudice added depth of suggestion,
for Jane Austen's early nineteenth century audience, to the
novel's love plot. I suggest that Jane Austen's continual allu-
sions, through parody, to her fellow-novelists' treatment of an
eighteenth century authority-figure served a purpose similar
to that which the "art-nature" symbolism served. We cannot,
of course, assume that Jane Austen thought of her Mr. Darcy
as an "authority-figure," in our sense of the term, any more
than we can assume that she considered Pride and Prejudice
a treatise on the eighteenth-century "art-nature" antithesis.
But we can be sure that she expected the novel-reading audi-
ence for which she wrote to respond to her work on the basis
of their impressions of the insufferable Sir Charles Grandi-
sons and Lord Orvilles, the sycophantic Evelinas and Harriet
Byrons, of noveldom. At the beginning of Pride and Prejudice
Darcy is a pompous Burney-Richardson aristocrat, with many
of the most disagreeable attributes of his literary progenitors
as well as a representative of "art" and excessive class pride.
Elizabeth is a determined anti-Evelina as well as a symbol
for "nature" and aggressive individualism. The marriage at
the end of the story joins a "properly humbled" patrician hero
and an anti-Evelina who has also undergone a partial refor-
mation. This element of burlesque-with-a-difference co-oper-
ates with the novel's "art-nature" symbolism in broadening
and deepening the significance of Elizabeth and Darcy's love
story.
In view of what has just been said, it is interesting to note
that in the latter part of Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
ceases to laugh at the works of Richardson and Fanny Burney
and even imitates them rather obviously. At Pemberley Darcy
behaves toward Elizabeth with a marked tact and gallantry
that is reminiscent of Sir Charles Grandison or Lord Orville.
In the manner of Richardson's and Fanny Burney's heroes he
takes over his heroine's affairs, rescuing Elizabeth and her

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 KENNETH L. MAOLER 5OT

family from imminent disgrace and providing for the erring

Lydia. Moreover, the scenes in which Elizabeth visits Pember-
ley may well be specific imitations of similar scenes in Sir
Charles Grandison. Sir Charles, we are told, "pretends not to
level hills, or to force and distort nature; but to help it, as
he finds it, without letting art be seen in his works, where he
can possibly avoid it" (XVI.246. Grandison, III, Letter
XXIII). He has a
large and convenient house, . . . situated in a spacious
park; which has several fine avenues leading to it.
On the north side of the park flows a winding stream,
that may well be called a river, abounding with trout
and other fish; the current quickened by a noble cas-
cade, which tumbles down its foaming waters from a
rock, which is continued to some extent, in a ledge of
rock-work, rudely disposed.
The park is remarkable for its prospects, lawns, and
rich-appearing clumps of trees of large growth. (XX.
30. Grandison, VII, Letter VI).
The Pemberley grounds are kept up with a similar regard for
nature and timber, and there is even a similarly managed, arti-
ficially swelled trout stream. Pemberley House, we are told,
was
situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the
road with some abruptness wound. It was a large,
handsome, stone building, standing well on rising
ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;-
and in front, a stream of some natural importance was
swelled into greater, but without any artificial ap-
pearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely
adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen
a place for which nature had done more, or where
natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an
awkward taste. (11.245).
Was Jane Austen thinking of Harriet Byron's tour of Sir
Charles Grandison's property when she described Elizabeth
Bennet's visit to Pemberley? Both Elizabeth and Harriet are
conducted around magnificent but tastefully appointed houses
and both talk to elderly, respectable housekeepers who praise
their masters' kindness to servants and tenants. "Don't your
ladyship see," Sir Charles's housekeeper asks Harriet Byron,
"how all his servants love him as they attend him at table?
. . . Indeed, madam, we all adore him; and have prayed morn-
ing, noon, and night, for his coming hither, and settling among
us" (XX.52. Grandison, VII, Letter IX). Darcy's housekeeper,

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 508 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

we remember, laments the fact that he is not at Pemberley

"so much as I could wish" and declares him "the best landlord,
and the best master ... that ever lived. There is not one of his
tenants or servants but what will give him a good name" (II.
248, 249). Harriet and Elizabeth are both conducted around
noble picture-galleries, and both view pictures of their lovers
with admiration during their tours.
As Darcy becomes a modified but genuine Sir Charles
Grandison, so does Elizabeth cease to resemble an aggressive
anti-Evelina or Harriet Byron. She becomes more and more
impressed with her patrician hero, more and more attracted
to his many good qualities. Indeed, as she stands in the gal-
lery at Pemberley, there is even a trace of Evelina-like grati-
tude in her thoughts, and she feels honored by the love of
such a man as Darcy:
As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how
many people's happiness were in his guardianship!
-How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power
to bestow! . . . Every idea that had been brought for-
ward by the housekeeper was favourable to his char-
acter. . . . Elizabeth thought of his regard with a
deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised
before. (11.250, 251).
Pride and Prejudice is a story about two complex, sensi-
tive and often blindly wrong-headed "intricate characters"
and their progress toward a better understanding of one
another, the world, and themselves. This drama of self-knowl-
edge is played out in the context of a symbolism based on the
antithesis between "art" and "nature," in the comprehensive
eighteenth-century sense of those terms. It is also referred,
at many points, to the fiction of Jane Austen's day-particu-
larly to her fellow-novelists' handling of the figure that I have
called the patrician hero. Jane Austen's first response to the
patrician hero, I believe, was purely satiric. Later, I think,
she refined, revised, and greatly complicated her treatment
of him. At any rate, Pride and Prejudice is something more
than a much-improved imitation of the novels Jane Austen
knew. It is a work in which she tumbles an eighteenth-century
authority-figure from the pedestal on which Richardson and
Fanny Burney had placed him-and, with a gesture that
distinguishes her also from some later novelists, then stoops
to retrieve him from the dust.

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA

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