Jane Austen called Elizabeth Bennet her favorite character — "as delightful a creature
as ever appeared in print." Two centuries of readers have agreed. Elizabeth is not
simply charming. She is a woman who thinks, argues, makes mistakes, and refuses to
be diminished by a world that has very little use for thinking women.
The England of 1813 offered women of Elizabeth's class a narrow set of choices.
Marry well or face genteel poverty. Defer to fathers, brothers, husbands.
Accept the limits of your situation with grace. Elizabeth does none of these things
gracefully. She laughs at pomposity. She argues with men who expect agreement.
She turns down two marriage proposals — one from a man who would have saved her
family, one from the man she will eventually love — because the terms are wrong.
Her misjudgment of Wickham and Darcy is the engine of the novel and the thing
that makes her human. She is perceptive about everyone except the men she has
decided to feel strongly about. When Darcy's letter forces her to see clearly,
she does not flinch from what it reveals about herself. That willingness to be
wrong, and to admit it, is rarer than wit.
Austen based Elizabeth partly on herself — the second daughter, the sharp one,
the one who never quite fit the mold expected of her. Austen never married.
Elizabeth did, on her own terms, to a man who had to become worthy of her.
That is the wish Austen gave her character that life did not give herself.
