Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

If it is read as a novel of neoclassical hermeneutics—that is, as a novel that both considers interpretation and studies human behaviour and social institutions from a neoclassical perspective—then Pride and Prejudice (1813) becomes more than the improbable love story of a middle-class heroine and an upper-class hero.⁶³ An earlier unpublished draft of the novel was called ‘First Impressions’, and the later published draft tells the story of how Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy overcome their first impressions of each other. The heroine and the hero recognise the sins of pride and prejudice that influenced those first impressions, reason and reflect their way into maturity, and learn to give and receive love. Having finally merited this happy state, they are placed—and are placed equally—at the pinnacle of a rapidly changing social and economic and moral order that, in neoclassical terms, imitates a natural order that reflects a divine order.