IB Literature I—Pfeiffer

December-January Vacation Assignment 2013

The assignment over the holiday is to read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Penguin Classics, ISBN 14-143951-8). Besides
the information on the Study Guide beginning on the next page, here is the specific information about which chapters to
annotate; it might be helpful for you to circle the chapter numbers before you begin reading. For the assigned chapters, the
minimum annotation is to make two meaningful notes per page:

 one note about content: what is written; e.g. character, theme, plot.

 one on form: how it is written; e.g. figurative language, allusion, style, diction, narrative structure, metalinguistic
references.

Remember that merely labeling (writing a word in the margin like “allusion” or “theme”) and merely underlining or
highlighting does not count as annotation.

Pride and Prejudice

Volume 1: chapters 1, 3-4, 6, 8, 10-11, 16, 18-20, 23.
Volume 2: chapters 25-26, 28, 31-37.
Volume 3: chapters 43-45, 48, 50, 52-54, 56-61.

Also, there are a few other things I would like you to know before we head into the second semester:

 After surveying your writing done this semester, I highly suggest that you re-read a couple of essential parts of
the Guidebook before we resume class in January: the Guide to Writing About Literature (25-26), the Guide to
Writing Well (27-36--this includes Sentence Composing, which many of you need to work on), and the Guide to
Using Quotations (37-38).

 Consider looking for 3 poems you might consider for next semester's HS English Department’s Poetry
Recitation 2013; our class round of recitations will be at the end of February. See Pfeifferopolis (on the main IB Lit
G11 page) for the information about this HS event, along with the guidelines for poem selection, and the list of
poets.

 Finally, you might want to know that we will have a quiz on page 15 of the Literary Terms on 30-31 January.
IB Literature I—Pfeiffer
JANE AUSTEN’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813)
Background & Study Guide for Volume 1

How to Study this Novel: This packet contains essential background information and my Study Guide for Volume 1 (chapters 1-23).
Begin by starting the novel, read the first two pieces to help you understand the historical and cultural context in which Austen wrote. Then
read Volume 1 of the novel. [See the Vacation Assignment on Pfeifferopolis for the specific chapters you will be annotating; you do
not have to annotate the whole novel.] After reading Volume 1, read the information in this packet about Austen’s style and the novel’s
geography—it’s important that you have that information in mind. Go to Pfeifferopolois for the Study Guides to Volumes 2 & 3 of the novel;
print them out and have them in front of you as you read the remainder of the novel.

Included in this packet:

1. “England in Austen’s Time,” Fay Weldon
2. “Jane Austen and Her Times,” Barron Notes
3. Austen’s Style
4. Geography in Pride and Prejudice
5. Study Guide for Volume 1

On Pfeifferopolis, for you to print out on your own:

6. Study Guides for Volumes 2 & 3

"England in Austen's Time," Fay Weldon [from Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, 1984; second edition 1999]

In the form of a letter to her niece Alice, British novelist Fay Weldon explains the discrepancy between the harsh society in which Jane Austen
lived and the gentler society she portrays in her novels. According to Weldon, women in the late eighteenth century lacked basic rights and
endured all kinds of dangers and duties. Conceding that the real life of women in Austen's time must seem unbelievable to a modern English
girl like Alice, Weldon suggests that Austen may simply have created an idyllic fictional world as an alternative to the unpleasantness she
nevertheless took for granted in the real world. Novels, Weldon reminds her niece, are inventions of the imagination, not records of history.

M
y dear Alice,
...I do believe it is the battle the writer wages with the real world which provides the energy for invention. I think Jane
Austen waged a particularly fearful battle, and that the world won in the end and killed her: and we are left with the seven
great novels. I know you've been told six. But she did write another, Lady Susan, a diverting, energetic and excellent novel, when she
was very young, at about the same time as she wrote the comparatively tedious and conventional Sense and Sensibility (please don't
read it first). She put Lady Susan in a drawer. She did not attempt to have it published; nor, later, did her family. My own feeling is that
they simply did not like it. They thought it unedifying and foolish, and that wicked adventuresses should not be heroines, and
women writers should not invent, but only describe what they know. They had, in fact, a quite ordinary and perfectly
understandable desire to keep Jane Austen respectable, ladylike and unalarming, and Lady Susan was none of these things....

You must understand, I think, the world into which Jane Austen was born. I do not think the life or personality of writers to be
particularly pertinent to their work.... But I do think the times in which writers live are important. The writer must write out of a
tradition—if only to break away from it... He, or she, writes out of a society: links the past of that society with its future....

Jane Austen concerned herself with what to us are observable truths, because we agree with them. They were not so
observable at the time. [In reading Pride and Prejudice] we believe with her that Elizabeth should marry for love, and that Charlotte
was extremely lucky to find happiness with Mr. Collins, whom she married so as not, in a phrase dating from that time, to be left on
"the shelve." [Austen] believed it was better not to marry at all, than to marry without love. Such notions were quite new at the
time. It surprises us that in her writing she appears to fail to take the pleasures of sex into account, but that was the convention at
the time: we disapprove, where her society most approves. She is not a gentle writer. Do not be misled: she is not ignorant, merely
discreet: not innocent, merely graceful. She lived in a society which assumed—as ours does—that its values were right. It had God
on its side, and God had ordained the ranks of His people; moreover, He had made men men and women women, and how could a
thing like that be changed? It is idle to complain that Jane Austen lacked a crusading zeal. With hindsight, it is easy to look at the
world she lived in, and say she should have. What she did seems to me more valuable. She struggled to perceive and describe the
flow of beliefs that typified her time, and more, to suggest for the first time that the personal, the emotional, is in fact the
moral—nowadays, of course, for good or bad, we argue that it is political. She left a legacy for the future to build upon.

ENGLISH LIFE IN AUSTEN'S TIME

I want you to conceive of England, your country, two hundred years ago. A place without detergents or tissues or tarmaced
[asphalt] roads or railway trains, or piped water, let alone electricity or gas or oil; where energy (what a modern term) was
provided by coal, and wood, and the muscle of human beings, and that was all. Where the fastest anyone could cover the ground

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was the speed of the fastest horse, and where, even so, letters could be posted in London one evening and be delivered in
Hereford the next morning. Because people were so poor—most people—they would run, and toil, and sweat all day and all night
to save themselves and their children from starvation. Rather like India is today. If you were a child and your parents died, you lived
on the streets: if you were a young woman and gave birth out of wedlock you would, like as not, spend the rest of your life in a
lunatic asylum, classified as a moral imbecile. If you tried to commit suicide to save yourself from such a life, you would be saved,
and then hanged. (These last two "ifs," incidentally, applied as recently as fifty years ago.) If you stole anything worth more than £5
you could be hanged, or transported to a penal colony for life. If it was under £5 there were long, harsh prison sentences in
unspeakable prisons, and the age of criminal liability was seven. No casual vandals or graffiti writers then.

Child, you don't know how lucky you are. If you cheat on The Underground they give you a psychiatrist. If you break a leg,
there's someone to mend it. If you have a cold in the nose, you use a tissue and flush it down the W.C.: Jane Austen used a pocket
handkerchief, and had a maid to boil it clean. Fair enough, if you're Jane Austen, but supposing you were the maid? You would be
working eighteen hours a day or so, six-and-a-half days a week, with one day off a month, and thinking yourself lucky.

EMPLOYMENT CHOICES FOR WOMEN

If you weren't the maid, you might well be working on the land. Well into the nineteenth century, agriculture was the largest
single source of employment for women. And do not think for one moment women of the working classes did not work, or had
husbands able and willing to support them. A young country girl (and only fifty per cent of the population lived in towns) would be
on the farm, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes—and carrying the water, and chopping the wood and lighting the boiler to heat
it—feeding animals, milking cows, planting, gleaning, gathering hay. If you worked in the dairy you would at least have the pleasure of
developing skills, and would be better paid, but your day would start at 3 A.M. and end in the late evening. Your reward would be in
heaven. The Bible rather rashly claimed that that was where the poor went, thus giving the rich every justification for preserving
their poverty. No one's health was good—T.B. [tuberculosis] afflicted a sizeable proportion of the population. If you, as a young
woman, fled to the city to improve your life, you could, with difficulty, become an apprentice and learn the traditional women's
trades of millinery, embroidery, or seaming; or you could be a chimney sweep (from the age of six) or you could become a butcher
(a nasty trade, despised by men) or a prostitute—70,000, they reckoned, in London at the turn of the [19 th] century, out of a
population of some 900,000.

MARRIAGE AS AN OPTION
Or you could marry.
The trouble was that you had to be able to afford to marry. You were expected to have a dowry, provided by your parents or
saved by yourself, to give to your husband to offset your keep. For this great reason, and a variety of others, only thirty per cent of
women married. Seventy per cent remained unmarried. It was no use waiting for your parents to die so that you could inherit
their mansion, or cottage, or hovel, and so buy yourself a husband—your parents' property went to your brothers. Women
inherited only through their husbands, and only thus could gain access to property. Women were born poor, and stayed poor, and
lived well only by their husbands' favour. The sense of sexual sin ran high: the fear of pregnancy was great—you might well estimate
that half the nation's women remained virgins all their lives....

So to marry was a great prize. It was a woman's aim. No wonder Jane Austen's heroines were so absorbed by the matter. It is
the stuff of our women's magazines but it was the stuff of their life, their very existence. No wonder Mrs. Bennet, driven half-mad
by anxiety for her five unmarried daughters, knowing they would be unprovided for when her husband died, as indeed would she,
made a fool of herself in public, husband-hunting on her girls' behalf. Politeness warred, as always, with desperation. Enough to give
anyone the vapours!

Women survived, in Jane Austen's day, by pleasing and charming if they were in the middle classes, and by having a good, strong
working back if they were of the peasantry. Writing was, incidentally, one of the very few occupations by which impoverished and
helpless female members of the gentry could respectably—well, more or less—earn money. To be a governess was another, much
fabled, occupation. Beautiful and talented governess, handsome scion of ancient housing, marrying where he loved and not where
he ought.... It was a lovely, if desperate, fantasy. (See Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.)

The average age of puberty, incidentally, was later in their day than it is now. In 1750 we know it to have been between eighteen
and twenty. General malnutrition and low female body weights were no doubt the cause. Marriage was later, too: on average
between twenty-five and twenty-eight, though Jane Austen's heroines seem to have started panicking in their early twenties. Lydia,
in Pride and Prejudice, managed it at the age of sixteen, and shocked everyone by revealing everyone's true feelings—trailing her
hand with its new wedding-ring out of the carriage window as she rode triumphantly into town, so that everyone would know.
Married! Jane Austen herself put on her cap when she was thirty. That is, she announced herself by her dress as out of the
marriage market, now resigned to growing old with as much grace and dignity as she could muster. Thirty!

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WOMEN LACKED RIGHTS
Once you were married, of course, life was not rosy. Any property you did acquire belonged to your husband. The children were
his, not yours. If the choice at childbirth was between the mother or child, the mother was the one to go. You could not sue, in
your own name. (By the same token at least you could not be sued.) He could beat you, if he saw fit, and punish your children
likewise. You could be divorced for adultery, but not divorce him for the same offence. Mind you, divorce was not a way out of
marital problems. Marriage was forever. Between 1650 and 1850 there were only 250 divorces in England.

You put up with the sex life you had, and were not, on the whole, and in the ordinary ranks of society, expected to enjoy it. It
tended to result, for one thing, in childbirth. Contraception was both wicked and illegal, against God's law and the land's.
Abstinence was the decent person's protection against pregnancy. There were, of course, then as now, libidinous sections of
society, the wild young of the upper classes, and free thinkers, who saw sexual freedom as the path to political liberty: and, of
course, there were married couples who did find a real and sensual satisfaction in each other—but this was a bonus, not
something to be taken for granted: certainly nothing you could go to a Marriage Counsellor about.

The fact that there were 70,000 prostitutes in London in 1801, out of a female population of some 475,000, indicates that your
husband at least would not be virginal on marriage. He would quite possibly be diseased. Venereal disease was common, and often
nastily fatal.

Alice, by your standards, it was a horrible time to be alive. Yet you could read and read Jane Austen and never know it. And why
should you? Novelists provide an escape from reality: they take you to the City of Invention. When you return you know more
about yourself. You do not read novels for information, but for enlightenment. I don't suppose Jane Austen thought particularly
much about the ills of her society. All this, for her, was simply what the world was like....

WOMEN'S DUTY TO BEAR CHILDREN

Now, Alice, there you are, a typical young woman of the 1799s. We're supposing you're working on the land, and of peasant
stock. You've scraped your dowry together and you've found your young (or old, often quite old!) man, and got yourself married.
Your prime duty is to have children. The clergyman has told you so at the wedding ceremony. "Marriage is designed by God for the
procreation of children...." Everyone believes it. (If you turned out to be barren, that was a terrible disaster, not just personally but
socially. It made you a non-woman.... But such disasters apart, you're likely to be pregnant within a year of marriage and carry one
child successfully to term every two years until the menopause. This seems to be the rate which nature, uninterfered with, decrees
for human reproduction. Fifty per cent of all the babies would die before they were two: from disease due to malnutrition,
ignorance, or infection. Every death would be the same misery it is today. Your many pregnancies would be plentifully interrupted
by miscarriages, and one baby in every four would be still-born. Midwives, mercifully, did not customarily allow imperfect babies to
live, nor were they expected to. Child delivery was primitive and there were no analgesics. Child care was not considered a
full-time job. Babies were swaddled and hung on pegs out of the way while mothers went on keeping the wolf from the door. If the
mother's milk failed, the babies would be fed on gruel, soaked into sacking and sucked out by the baby.

Your own chances of dying in childbirth were not negligible and increased with every pregnancy. After fifteen pregnancies (which
meant something like six babies brought to term and safely delivered) your chances of dying were (Marie Stopes later claimed)
one in two....

Back to you, Alice, mother of six, aged thirty, with your backache and your varicose veins and your few teeth, carrying water
from the village well for all your family's needs, and water is about as heavy a soul's task as you can get, and you have to choose if
they're going to be clean or you're going to be ill....

So you must understand there were compensations to be found in virginity, in abstinence, in fidelity, and in spinsterhood, which
are not found today, and read Jane Austen bearing this in mind.

There were more positive compensations for living in this terrible time. The countryside must have been very, very pretty. The
hedgerows and blasted oaks had not been rooted out by agro-industrialists, and wild flowers and butterflies flourished to brighten
the gentle greyish greens of the landscape. These days the greens are brighter and the fields are smoother, thanks to insecticides,
nitrates and herbicides. And everything you looked at would have been lovely: furniture (if you had any) made of seasoned oak, and
by craftsmen working out of a tradition unequalled anywhere in the world—usefulness working in the service of grace. New and
different buildings going up everywhere, as the population grew and the middle classes with it....

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 Perhaps landscape, buildings and objects had to be beautiful to compensate for the ugliness of the people. Malnutrition,
ignorance and disease ensured a hopping, shuffling, peering, scrofulous [having TB, tuberculosis] population, running short of eyes
and limbs. Crutches, peg-legs, glass-eyes and hooks were much in demand. If the children had pink cheeks it was because they had
T.B. Do not be deceived by the vision of Georgian England as a rural idyll. Artists of the time liked to depict it as such, naturally
enough . . . and so did writers, and while you are reading Jane Austen you are perfectly entitled to suspend your disbelief, as she
was when she wrote. Fiction, thank God, is not and need not be reality. The real world presses forcibly enough into the imaginative
adventure that is our life, without fiction aiding and abetting.

CHANGES FOR THE BETTER

During Jane Austen's lifetime—she was born in December 1775 and died in July 1817—attitudes, they say, changed significantly.
They became, for a time, before the rigours of Victorian puritanism set in, more relaxed. The age of puberty declined; sexual
activity in women was less surprising and less alarming; young women, increasingly, chose to marry for love and not at their
parents' choosing. There was an increase in the marriage rates, a lowering of the age of marriage, and a dramatic rise in the
illegitimacy rate. Women became more fertile, for good or bad. The rate of infant mortality decreased....

Why, you ask? Better nutrition, a new understanding of hygiene, the aftermath of the French Revolution, the loosening of the
stranglehold of the Church, more novels and better novels read by more people in the opinion-forming ranks of society, better
poetry—not wide-sweeping social changes, waves in the body politic but the sharp focusing power of individuals....

Any theory will do until the next one replaces it. Being a writer, I like the better-novels theory, which I hereby give you. If the
outer world is a mere reflection of the inner one, if as you refine the person so the outer aspects of the world are refined, so will
social change work from the inside out, from the individual out into the wider community. Enlighten people, and you enlighten
society. How's that? That is enough for now....
With love, Aunt Fay

Jane Austen and Her Times, Barron's Notes (1984)

Jane Austen was a country parson's daughter who lived most of her life in a tiny English village. She began writing her first novel,
Sense and Sensibility, when she was still in her late teens. When she wrote the original version of her second and most famous
novel, Pride and Prejudice (originally entitled First Impressions), she was not yet twenty-one. At that time she had never been away
from home, except for a few years at a girls' boarding school before the age of ten. And yet, although she had seen almost nothing
of the world beyond Steventon, the town where she grew up, she was able to write a witty, worldly novel of love, money, and
marriage.
Jane Austen's world seems very narrow to us today. The year she was born, 1775, was an important one in English as well as
American history, but to the people of the little village of Steventon, the American Revolution was something very far away that
hardly touched their lives at all. Years later while Austen was writing her novels, England was involved in the Napoleonic Wars,
but you won't find much mention of them in her work. One reason these wars did not affect the English at home very much was
that they were fought entirely on foreign soil or at sea, and they did not involved very large numbers of Englishmen. (Two of Jane
Austen's brothers did see combat as naval officers and both reached the rank of admiral, and a naval officer who did well in the
wars is one of her most attractive heroes in her last novel, Persuasion.) Another reason is that—without television, radio,
telephones, automobiles, or even railroads— news traveled slowly.
People traveled very little, and when they did it was on foot, by public coach, or—if they could afford it—by private carriage.
In the evenings they sat together around the fire, mother and girls mending or embroidering by candlelight and often someone
reading aloud. For entertainment, they might visit a neighbor or go to a dance in the village public hall. At these so-called
assemblies, young people were chaperoned by mothers and aunts, and only the most correct behavior was tolerated. If there was a
large estate in the neighborhood, the squire or lord of the manor would give evening parties and occasionally a ball, to which his
lady would invite the leading families of the countryside.
Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in the family sitting room while her six brothers and a sister, her father’s pupils, and
visiting neighbors swirled around her. She would cover her manuscript with a blotter during interruptions and take up her pen
again when the room was quiet. All the while, she was watching, listening, and thinking about the world around her. The novel
reflects her understanding of and active involvement with ordinary people
The plot of Pride and Prejudice is based on the concerns of people in early nineteenth-century country society. One of these
concerns is money. Austen could observe the money problems of a middle-class family right in her own home. As a clergyman of
the Church of England, her father was an educated man and a gentleman. But his parish consisted of only about three hundred
people, and his income didn’t provide well for his family, so he had to take in students in addition to his church duties. Even so, he
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could send only one son, the oldest, to Oxford University, and he couldn’t give his daughters attractive dowries or an income if
they remained unmarried.
Like other young women of their social class, Jane and her sister Cassandra were educated, mostly at home, in the "ladylike"
subjects of music, drawing and painting, needlework, and social behavior. Thanks to her father and her own literary tastes, Jane was
also very well read. Tall and graceful, with dark hair and beautiful hazel eyes, she enjoyed parties, liked to dance, and had numerous
suitors. As it turned out, however, neither Jane nor her sister Cassandra ever married. After their father died in 1805, they and
their mother were cared for by a brother who—because of the Austen family’s poor financial situation—had been adopted by a
wealthy childless couple and had inherited a sizable estate. (Such financial adoptions were a fairly common custom of the time.)
Such realities of middle-class life are central to Pride and Prejudice. Critics of a hundred or so years ago called Jane Austen
"vulgar" and "mercenary," because she writes so frankly about money. One of the first things we learn about her characters, for
example, is how much income they have. Her critics considered it bad taste to talk about money, either one’s own or someone
else’s.
But in the middle class of Jane Austen’s time, the amount of your income could be a matter of life and death. What is more, it
was not money you worked for and earned that mattered, but money you were born to or inherited. People who worked—
businessmen, manufacturers, and even some professional people, such as lawyers—were not accepted as members of the "gentry."
They were "in trade," and the gentry looked down on them.
While Austen was writing in the beginning of the nineteenth century, a great change was coming over England. The industrial
revolution was reaching its height in the first half of that century, and a new middle class of prosperous factory owners was
developing. Yet in the midst of this change, one ancient English tradition still survived, and that was that the true gentry were not
the newly rich in the cities but those who lived on their inherited estates. The new middle class, who had become rich "in trade,"
were therefore buying manor houses and estates in the country, and setting up their heirs as members of the landed aristocracy.
In Pride and Prejudice the two leading male characters represent this social change. Mr. Darcy's aristocratic family goes back
for generations, and he draws his income from his vast estate of tenant farms. His friend Mr. Bingley, however, is heir to a fortune
made "in trade" and is looking for a suitable country estate to establish himself in the upper class.
Notice how different characters in the novel react to these social distinctions. Jane Austen herself, through her heroine
Elizabeth, expresses her contempt for snobbery. You’ll find that she pokes fun at the snobs and makes them her most comical
characters.
Still, there was a very serious side to all this, and that was the situation of young women. In our time, women have many
other choices in addition to marriage. In Jane Austen’s time it wasn’t so. A young woman of her class depended for her happiness,
her health, in fact the whole shape of her life, on her making a good marriage. If her husband was poor or a gambler or a drunkard,
she and her children could suffer genuine privation. A girl with no fortune of her own often could not attract a husband. Then she
might have to become a governess, living in other people’s houses, looking after their children and subject to their whims.
The necessity of making a good marriage is one of the major themes of Pride and Prejudice, but that doesn’t mean the novel is
old fashioned. In fact, you may find that you can make a good argument for calling Jane Austen a feminist and her novel a feminist
novel. It’s a serious novel in many ways, but also a very funny one.
Jane Austen began writing novels simply to entertain herself and her family, with no idea of having her stories published. In
her time, novels weren’t considered a respectable form of literature, rather the way murder mysteries and Gothic romances are
looked down on by intellectuals in our own time. In Austen’s time, ministers preached and social critics thundered against the habit
of reading novels. Meanwhile, hundreds of novels were being published—most of them trashy romances or wildly exaggerated
adventure tales—and people went right on reading them.
Most of these novels, including some of the better ones, were written by women. Writing was one of the few possible
occupations for an intelligent, educated woman. Women could write at home while fulfilling their traditional role of running a
household and bringing up children. They could stay out of the public eye, hiding behind an assumed name. When Jane Austen’s
books were finally published, thanks to her brother Henry who acted as her agent, the title page just said "By a Lady. " Her novels
were read by a small, exclusive audience during her lifetime. She lived a quiet life and never yearned for celebrity.
Austen was working on her sixth and last novel, Persuasion, when Henry fell ill and she moved to London to nurse him. Soon
afterward, her own health began to fail. With Cassandra as her nurse and companion, she moved to Winchester to be treated by a
famous surgeon there. He apparently could not help her, and on July 18, 1817, she died, just five months short of her forty-second
birthday.
Judging from her letters, which radiate good humor and laugh off minor misfortunes, Jane Austen’s life, although short, was a
busy and contented one. If the lively, witty Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice was modeled on any living person, the model
must have been Jane Austen herself.

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JANE AUSTEN’S STYLE: Irony, Syntax, Aphorism

TONE—IRONY
Jane Austen is known for her humorous use of irony because she uses so many different kinds and uses them so skillfully. In
the broadest sense, irony is the recognition of the difference between reality (what is) and appearance (what seems to be). I
will review the different kinds of irony then give some examples from the novel.

Verbal Irony: A form of speaking in which one meaning is said and a different, usually opposite meaning is intended. All of
us speak ironically at times. If you say, "Nice weather, huh?!" when the temperature is in the upper 30s, you have probably
indicated what you really meant by the expression on your face and by your tone of voice. In speech, tone of voice makes
ironic intent obvious, but a writer has to show irony in a less obvious way, so sometimes it is hard for the reader to
recognize. These days sarcasm is the most common verbal irony; it is harsh and heavy-handed, rather than clever. Austen is
much more subtle and clever in her irony.

There are different kinds of verbal irony, such as overstatement (hyperbole; obvious exaggeration), understatement (litotes;
affirming something by stating the negative of its opposite: Saying, "She is no fool," instead of "She is intelligent."), and negative
description ("X was not Y").

 See the end of this sheet for a response I wrote to show past students a model of a written response on tone.
 Elizabeth says, "Mr. Darcy is all politeness," but she doesn't believe he is polite at all. (27)
 After Darcy says, “...it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a
strong understanding to ridicule,“ Elizabeth responds, "Such as vanity and pride.” (56) She is being
ironic because this is precisely what she thinks he is: vain and prideful.
 At the Netherfield ball, when Mary won't stop playing the piano for everyone, thinking they love
hearing her play (when they wish she would stop), Mr. Bennet tells her, "That will do extremely well
child.You have delighted us long enough." (98)

Austen also uses ironic contradictions between a speaker and the narrator, or between speech and situation.

 Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst "indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend's
vulgar relations." (37) The Bingley sisters cannot believe Jane is a dear friend if they mock her family.
 When Miss Bingley asks Elizabeth what they should do after Darcy reveals their true reason for
walking in front of him, Elizabeth replies, “Tease him--laugh at him--Intimate as you are, you must know
how it is to be done.” (55) Of course, Caroline is anything but intimate with Darcy.

Situational Irony: The contrast between what is intended or expected and what actually occurs. One glaring example
from the first part of the novel: because Miss Bingley constantly criticizes Elizabeth in front of him and brings up her family's
lack of status and propriety, she expects Darcy to dislike Elizabeth. Instead, her comments have no negative effect on him. A
form of situational irony, called dramatic irony, involves the audience's being aware of a character's real situation before the
character is.

 We know that Darcy is falling in love with Elizabeth, but she thinks he dislikes her.
 We know that Mr. Bennet is mocking Mr. Collins when he asks him, "May I ask whether these pleasing
attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?" (67)

In general, the key to understanding any kind of irony is to see where there is a gap or mismatch or difference between these things:

appearance reality
apparent meaning  real meaning
apparent situation  real situation
what is intended  what is actually done
what is thought to be true  what is true
what is expected  what actually happens
how a person sees him/herself  how others see him/her
impression a person gives of him/herself  person's real nature
pretense  actuality
perceived reason or motive  real reason or motive
character's limited understanding  reader's more complete understanding

7
Irony in Pride and Prejudice [I wrote this for a Pride and Prejudice course that I taught in Osaka to model how to write a
response on tone]
Like many of Austen's other novels, irony is used in Pride and Prejudice as the lens through which society and human
nature are viewed. The point of view is the third person, the objective view of an external observer. However, sometimes
this third-person point of view shifts to explore the thoughts and feelings of a character, and so becomes a third person
omniscient narrator. In the first line of the novel ("It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a good
fortune must be in want of a wife") seems to be the voice of certain characters and is filled with irony: rather, it is a woman
who is in want of a husband of a good fortune, not the other way around; the truth being expressed, isn't truth for everyone,
only those pursuing rich men; and in the novel we will see that not all rich men are searching for wives. The narrator also
becomes omniscient when we go into Darcy's mind and see that he slips little by little in love with Elizabeth, as in this line:
"Her resistance [to dance with him] had not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some
complacency" [in this context the word seems to mean "state of being pleased, tranquil pleasure in someone"] (25). Later in
the novel we go into Elizabeth's mind as she considers her own behavior and the behavior of others. The narrator seems to
be Austen as she shows a sharp, critical eye that observes and comments on her society's follies and foibles, making us aware
and making us laugh.
In the novel, Austen studies social relationships in the limited society of a country neighborhood and investigates
them in detail often with an ironic and humorous eye. An early example is in chapter one, with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Their
contrasting temperaments are shown through their manner of conversation; Mrs. Bennet chatters on while Mr. Bennet
counters her talk with mildly sarcastic statements, a mocking tone Mrs. Bennet completely misses: "You want to tell me, and
I have no objection to hearing it...Is that his design in settling here?...for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley
might like you the best of the party" (5-6). After letting the reader hear the contrast between the couple through their
dialogue, Austen then provides a general summary on page 7 of the two parents' differing personalities. The difference
between them is amusing, but it is also ironic. In a novel about couples overcoming misunderstandings of each other to
reach marital happiness, the reader's first view of marriage is one of a mismatched couple that cannot communicate.

SYNTAX & APHORISM

Because literature of the time was filled with flowery wordiness and emotional excess, Jane Austen's narrative style was
unique in early nineteenth-century literature. Readers could choose among collections of sermons to improve their minds,
tales of sin and punishment to improve their morals, and horror stories to stimulate their circulation. On the other hand,
Pride and Prejudice is told in readable, engaging prose without superfluous words, and it frequently breaks into dialogue so
lively and so revealing of characters. As a result, entire scenes have been lifted bodily from the novel and reproduced in
dramatized versions for stage and screen, such as the BBC’s excellent five-hour 1995 film adaptation. As for point of view, in
some passages the author enters into the mind of one or another of her characters. As you know from our point of view
creative exercise, she sometimes has a paragraph where she assesses a situation through the minds of multiple characters,
revealing their varied attitudes and traits. Most often the narrator enters into the mind of her heroine Elizabeth, and there
she reveals her character's capacity for humor and self-criticism; through Elizabeth we see who and what is worthy of
ridicule. Austen's style is so deceptively lucid that we can hardly believe she submitted her writing to so much polishing and
revision. Here are some specific examples of elements of Austen’s use of syntax, aphorism, and irony.

SYNTAX
PARALLELISM
 She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. (7)
 The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news. (7)
 He was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased. (12)
 …a collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion. (18)
 The evening conversation…had lost much of its animation and almost all of its sense. (59)

PARENTHETICALS
 Having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments,
[she] was always impatient for display. (25)
 Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic
air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached. (25)

APHORISM (an aphorism is an adage, a short, terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation, as Lord
Acton’s famous line “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
 Every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason. (33)
 It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion to be secure of judging properly at first. (92)

8
GEOGRAPHY of Pride and Prejudice [from pemberley.com—a great site to check out]

Hertfordshire (“heart-ford-sure”), Derbyshire (“dar-bi-sure”), Kent and Sussex are counties in England that are referenced in the
novel.

Hertfordshire
Imaginary places in Hertfordshire:
Longbourn (residence of the Bennets), Netherfield Park (residence of the Bingleys), Lucas Lodge, (residence of the Lucases), and
the village of Meryton, where the militia regiment is quartered for a time. Less important places in the vicinity are Oakham Mount
(to which Darcy and Elizabeth walk in chapter 59), the memorably named town of “----” (where the London coaches stop, and the
George Inn is located), and the houses or estates of Ashworth, Haye-Park, Purvis Lodge, and Stoke (all of which Mrs. Bennet
considers as possible residences for one of her newly married daughters).

Derbyshire
Imaginary places in Derbyshire:
Pemberley (residence of Mr. Darcy) and the villages of Lambton (former residence of Mrs. Gardiner) and Kympton (where
Wickham was to be the clergyman).
Real places:
Scenic and tourist locations in Derbyshire mentioned in connection with Elizabeth and the Gardiners' tour are Bakewell,
Chatsworth, Matlock, Dove Dale, and the Peak. On their itinerary from Hertfordshire to Derbyshire, they took in Blenheim (the
estate of the Duke of Marlborough) and Oxford, in Oxfordshire; and Warwick, the famous ruined castle of Kenilworth, and the city
of Birmingham, in Warwickshire.

Kent
Imaginary places in Kent:
Rosings (the home of Lady Catherine) and Hunsford (where Mr. Collins is rector) are near Westerham.
Real places:
Ramsgate is a sea-side resort, where Georgiana Darcy stayed for a summer.

Other real places in the novel:

Sussex: On the southeast coast the town of Brighton is the fashionable seaside resort, with a temporary military camp, where
Lydia goes. In real life it was the hangout of the Prince Regent (the "king-in-waiting") and his decadent followers; in a letter of
January 8th 1799 to Cassandra, Jane Austen wrote "I assure you that I dread the idea of going to Brighton as much as you do, but I
am not without hopes that something may happen to prevent it." Eastbourne is another seaside town on the Sussex coast, to the
east of Brighton.

London: "Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted,” Jane Austen wrote
in a letter, August 1796.

London is located in southeastern Middlesex. In Austen's time, London area had over a million inhabitants (the first city in Europe
to do so), and was several times larger than any other city in Britain; London was often associated, in the imagination of Austen's
day, with loose morals in both low life and high society—a scene of fashionable, but not necessarily moral diversions and a
dangerous example to the rest of the country. Bromley is between Westerham and London, Epsom is on the southern-eastern
approaches to London, and Clapham is a neighborhood on the south side of the Thames (across from the “City” proper).
Cheapside, where the Bingley sisters accuse Mr. Gardiner of living (he actually lives in Gracechurch Street, further east) is an
unfashionably commercial neighborhood in the “City,” near St. Paul's. Grosvenor Street, where the Hursts live, is in a much more
fashionable neighborhood towards the West End.

The Lake country This area is rugged, scenic, and with literary associations—nineteenth-century Romantic poets such as
William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge. It is in the far northwest of England; and Newcastle (where Wickham is later
stationed after his marriage) is in Northumberland in the northeast.

Gretna Green: This town is just over the Scottish border, had weak marriage laws during the 1754-1856 period, which meant it
was known for quickie marriages, even ones with minors who didn't want to have to get parental permission--few questions asked.
That's why Gretna Green is suspected as the destination of one of the Bennet daughters and her lover.

9
10
IB Literature I—Pfeiffer
Study Guide for Pride and Prejudice Volume 1

The main families and characters at the beginning of the novel:

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet – Mr. Gardiner (her brother)

Jane Elizabeth (Lizzy) Mary Catherine (Kitty) Lydia

oldest (therefore, at times youngest
called “Miss Bennet”)
The Bennet family lives on a small estate called Longbourne, in the village of Meryton,
in the county of Hertfordshire, in southeast England

Fitzwilliam Darcy – Georgiana (his sister)

Both their mother and father have died. Darcy is Georgiana’s guardian.
They live on a grand estate called Pemberley, in the county of Derbyshire, north of London

Charles Bingley (Darcy’s friend) – Mrs. Hurst and Caroline (his sisters)

We learn nothing of their parents, but they seem to have died. Bingley has been successful “in trade,” so to reflect this new social status, he
rents an estate near Meryton called Netherfield.

Sir William and Mrs. Lucas

Charlotte (Elizabeth’s friend) Maria several little Lucases

This family is friendly with the Bennet family; they also live near Meryton.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTERS 1-12 (just to get you started)

Mrs. Bennet is excited that an eligible bachelor, Mr. Bingley, has rented the nearby mansion, Netherfield Park. She thinks this
will be a wonderful chance to marry off one of her five daughters. When Bingley meets Jane, the eldest Bennet sister, they enjoy
each other's company, and Jane tells her sister Elizabeth that she admires him very much. But Bingley's friend, Darcy, makes a
bad impression. He appears too proud and reserved, although he admits to Bingley's sister Caroline that he finds Elizabeth very
attractive. When Jane is invited to Netherfield to visit Bingley's haughty sisters and becomes ill with a cold, Elizabeth walks through
the mud to nurse her and stays until Jane is well enough to go home. During this time, Elizabeth becomes suspicious that Bingley's
sisters (Caroline and Mrs. Hurst) are hypocritical in their "friendship" with Jane, and that Caroline has designs on Darcy. She also
realizes, sadly, that her mother and younger sisters are behaving foolishly.

Pride and Prejudice: Guide for Chapters 1-2

CHARACTERS
Mr. Bennet Country gentleman who has five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth (Lizzy), Mary, Catherine (Kitty), and Lydia; he
has married beneath him and regrets it; takes refuge in books and sarcastic wit; especially close to his
daughter Elizabeth, but also to Jane.
Mrs. Bennet Unrefined, silly, and often the subject of her husband's sarcasm; her main goal is to marry off her
daughters.
Elizabeth (Lizzy) Intelligent and witty; 20 years old; a keen observer of people and things around her.
Jane Eldest Bennet daughter; 22 years old; more gentle and less judgmental than Elizabeth; they share a close
bond.
Mary Less pretty and more serious than her other sisters; likes to show off her musical talents and book
learning.
Kitty A little older than Lydia, around 16 years old; both Kitty and her youngest sister Lydia are silly, frivolous,
and mainly interested in parties, dances, clothes, and soldiers.
Lydia Youngest Bennet daughter, 15 years old.
Mrs. Long Neighbour of the Bennets who gossips with Mrs. Bennet.
Mr. Bingley A well-mannered, pleasant young man; he has money, from his father's success in business; has just rented
an estate called Netherfield Park, which is near the village of Longbourn, where the Bennets live.

11
VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they appear in the novel; many of them have other meanings, or the modern
meaning may be a bit different—that’s why you should keep this list nearby when you read. The words in bold will be on the next
vocabulary quiz. Remember that this novel uses British English. In the text you will also notice that some words have old spellings
(chuse = choose; teazing = teasing) and some have a space where we usually don't have one (any one; no where). Also, some words
have notations1, this means that you need to see the Explanatory Notes on pages 416-435 to understand the allusion.

word ch.pg definition context

rightful 1.5 right, proper, just considered as the rightful property of some one
let 1.5 to rent, lease Netherfield Park is let at last
tiresome 1.6 tedious, causing boredom how can you be so tiresome!
design 1.6 plan, intention Is that his design in settling here?
flatter 1.6 to compliment excessively My dear, you flatter me.
engage for 1.6 agree to It is more than I engage for
assure you 1.6 set the mind at rest, make certain I assure you
account 1.6 those circumstances merely on that account
scrupulous 1.6 conscientious, principled You are over scrupulous surely.
hearty 1.6 unrestrained warmth or feeling my hearty consent
consent 1.6 permission, agreement my hearty consent to his marrying
quickness 1.7 thinking, understanding Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters
vexing 1.7 irritating, annoying, bothering You take delight in vexing me
compassion 1.7 deep feeling of support You have no compassion on my poor nerves
consideration 1.7 high regard you mention them with consideration these twenty years
sarcastic 1.7 sharply mocking and ridiculing sarcastic humour
caprice 1.7 willful behavior sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice
insufficient 1.7 not sufficient, inadequate experience of 3 and 20 years had been insufficient
mean 1.7 average, humble, dull She was a woman of mean understanding
temper 1.7 disposition, state of mind uncertain temper
solace 1.7 comfort, consolation its solace was visiting and news
intended 2.8 had in mind, planned He had always intended to visit him
disclosed 2.8 made known, divulged It was then disclosed in the following manner
resentfully 2.8 full of resentment said her mother resentfully
hypocritical 2.8 insincere She is a selfish, hypocritical woman
deigned 2.8 thought worthy of oneself Mrs. Bennet deigned not to make any reply
scolding 2.8 reprimanding began scolding one of her daughters
discretion 2.8 reservation, modesty Kitty has no discretion in her coughs
ill 2.8 not favorably She times them ill
fretfully 2.8 feeling troubled, peevish replied Kitty fretfully
fortnight 2.8 two weeks To-morrow fortnight [a fortnight from tomorrow]
circumspection 2.9 prudence I honour your circumspection
venture 2.9 take a risk But if we do not venture
office 2.9 duty If you decline the office, I will take it on myself
emphatic 2.9 forceful emphatic exclamation
surpassing 2.9 going beyond the limit that of Mrs. Bennet perhaps surpassing the rest
tumult 2.9 commotion, disturbance when the first tumult of joy was over
raptures 2.10 ecstatic expressions fatigued with the raptures of his wife
amends 2.10 reparations, payment make him amends for his kindness
stoutly 2.10 boldly, forcefully said Lydia stoutly
conjecturing 2.10 guessing rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon

QUESTIONS to Check Your Understanding:

Chapter One

1. How is the first line ironic? From whose point of view is it?

2. How does the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and the last paragraph show them and their relationship?

3. Which daughter does each parent prefer and why?

Chapter Two

4. Why does Mr. Bennet pretend to refuse to go visit Mr. Bingley?

5. How does Mr. Bennet feel about Mary?

12
 6. Why is Mr. Bennet the way he is?

Chapters 3-4

NEW CHARACTERS
Miss Caroline Bingley Bingley's sister; a fashionable young woman, but superficial and selfish, she's a social climber who is
ambitious to rise in society through marriage.
Mrs. Louisa Hurst Bingley's married sister, similar in character to her younger sister.
Mr. Hurst Bingley's brother in law; a lazy man only interested in food and entertainment.
Fitzwilliam Darcy An extremely wealthy aristocrat (one of the top 400 most wealthy in England); proud, haughty and
extremely conscious of class differences at the beginning of the novel. He does, however, have a strong
sense of honor and virtue

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they appear in the novel; many of them have other meanings, or the modern
meaning may be a bit different. On page 12, &c = etc.

word ch.pg definition context

ingenious 3.11 original, imaginative ingenious suppositions
suppositions 3.11 something supposed or assumed ingenious suppositions
surmises 3.11 something guessed at distant surmises
eluded 3.11 escaped from but he eluded the skill of them all
obliged 3.11 constrained because of some reason they were at last obliged to accept
they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper
ascertaining 3.11 discovering, making certain
window
deferred 3.11 put off, postponed an answer which deferred it all
consequently unable to accept the honour of their
consequently 3.12 following as a result or conclusion
invitation
disconcerted 3.12 upset, disordered, ruffled Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted
grieved 3.12 be sorrowful, distressed, mourned The girls grieved over such a number of ladies
countenance 3.12 appearance, facial expression he had a pleasant countenance
unaffected 3.12 natural, genuine a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners
mien 3.12 manner, appearance, expression noble mien
principal 3.12 high ranking, important acquainted with all the principal people in the room
amiable 3.12 good-natured, sociable Such amiable qualities must speak for themselves.
resentment 3.13 indignation as a result of a perceived offense sharpened into particular resentment
slighted 3.13 treated with inattention or disrespect by his having slighted one of her daughters
scarcity 3.13 insufficient amount, shortage by the scarcity of gentlemen
insupportable 3.13 unbearable, intolerable it would be insupportable
excessively sensitive in matters of taste or
fastidious 3.13 I would not be so fastidious as you are
propriety
beheld 3.13 looked upon, gazed at the most beautiful creature I ever beheld
tolerable 3.13 endurable, fair, adequate, passable She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me
consequence 3.13 distinction, importance in rank, significance to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted
cordial 3.13 warm, sincere, hearty with no very cordial feelings towards him
disposition 3.14 one's usual mood, temperament she had a lively, playful disposition
gratified 3.14 pleased, satisfied Jane was as much gratified by this
inhabitants 3.14 people who live in a certain place they were the principal inhabitants
regardless 3.14 unmindful, heedless With a book he was regardless of time
splendid 3.14 glorious, praiseworthy evening which had raised such splendid expectations
finery 3.15 fine clothing and accessories protested against any description of finery
rudeness 3.15 ill-mannered behavior, discourtesy the shocking rudeness of Mr. Darcy
horrid 3.15 dreadful, offensive, extremely disagreeable he is a most disagreeable, horrid man
conceited 3.15 vain so conceited that there was no enduring him!
set downs 3.15 critical remarks, rebukes to have given him one of your set downs
detest 3.15 dislike intensely, abhor I quite detest the man
gallantry 4.16 courteous attention, especially to a lady No thanks to his gallantry for that
apt 4.16 inclined, likely to do or be something you are a great deal too apt to like people
hasty 4.16 eager, impatient, rash I would wish not to be hasty
censuring 4.16 condemning, judging to be hasty in censuring any one
follies 4.16 foolish acts blind to the follies and nonsense of others
candid 4.16 honest, frank, natural But to be candid without ostentation
13
ostentation 4.17 excessive display, pretentiousness But to be candid without ostentation
converse 4.17 talk, discuss when you converse with them
convinced 4.17 persuaded but was not convinced
calculated 4.17 planned, brought about deliberately had not been calculated to please
pliancy 4.17 flexibility, easily influenced, yielding less pliancy of temper
unassailed 4.17 unclouded, not prejudiced by judgment too unassailed by any attention to herself
deficient 4.17 lacking, defective not deficient in good humour
meanly 4.17 badly think well of themselves, and meanly of others
by trade 4.17 in business their own had been acquired by trade
tenant 4.17 one who rents a house or building established only as a tenant
preside 4.17 occupy a placed of authority unwilling to preside at his table
of age 4.17 at a mature age Mr. Bingley had not been of age two years
endeared to 4.18 feel affection for, admired Bingley was endeared to Darcy
ductility 4.18 easily influenced, easily led ductility of his temper
reliance 4.18 confidence, dependence strength of Darcy's regard Bingley had the firmest reliance
understanding 4.18 intelligence, comprehension In understanding Darcy was the superior.
haughty 4.18 intentionally and disdainfully proud He was at the same time haughty, reserved
offence 4.18 hurt displeasure; act of offending people Darcy was continually giving offence
felt authorised by such commendation to think of her as
commendation 4.18 recommendation, praise
he chose

Chapter Three

1. How does Darcy's behavior (and others' views of it) differ from Bingley's at the Meryton assembly?

2. How does Darcy offend Elizabeth, and how does she react? Is she hurt by the comment?

Chapter Four

3. What character traits do Jane and Bingley share?

4. What first impressions do Elizabeth and Darcy have of each other, and why might these first impressions prevent them
from going beyond that judgment?

5. What is Elizabeth's judgment of Bingley's sisters?

Chapters 5-6

NEW CHARACTERS
Charlotte Lucas Elizabeth's close friend, intelligent, but plain looking; has a practical outlook on life, love, and marriage.
Sir William Lucas Charlotte's father, trying to act the part of a member of the upper class and fashionable society, but is
crude and loud, and speaks too frankly; later, he says something in public that causes a big problem for
others.
word ch.pg definition context
intimate 5.19 having a close relationship with whom the Bennets were particularly intimate
disgust 5.19 great hatred It had given him a disgust to his business
unshackled 5.19 freed, as if from shackles unshackled by business
elated 5.19 joyful For though elated by his rank
civil 5.19 polite being civil to all the world
render 5.19 cause to become it did not render him supercilious
supercilious 5.19 haughty, disdainful it did not render him supercilious
former 5.19 the first of two mentioned brought the former to Longbourn to hear
misfortune 5.20 bad fortune, ill luck it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him
mortified 5.21 cause shame or humiliation if he had not mortified mine
piqued 5.21 pride oneself who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections
solidity 5.21 condition of being solid or sound the solidity of her reflections
prone 5.21 tending particularly prone to it
complacency 5.21 contentment, satisfaction who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency
vanity 5.21 excessive pride in oneself Vanity and pride are different things
synonymously 5.21 expressing similar meaning the words are often used synonymously
good will 6.22 good intentions the good will of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley

14
 intolerable 6.22 unbearable the mother was found to be intolerable
probability 6.22 likelihood arising in all probability from the influence of
evident 6.22 obvious, easily see understood It was generally evident whenever they met
composure 6.22 tranquility of mind, calmness a composure of temper
impertinent 6.22 ill-mannered people who meddle guard her from the suspicions of the impertinent
impose 6.22 force or pass off on others to be able to impose on the public
consolation 6.22 comfort be but poor consolation to believe the world
simpleton 6.23 fool, silly or stupid person he must be a simpleton indeed not to discover
partial 6.23 having a particularly liking for But if a woman is partial to a man
endeavour 6.23 try, attempt does not endeavour to conceal it
conceal 6.23 hide does not endeavour to conceal it
leisure 6.23 free time, freedom from duty there will be leisure for falling in love
regard 6.23 respect, affection, esteem the degree of her own regard
ascertain 6.24 discover, make certain enabled them to ascertain that they both like...
parties 6.24 person, selected group dispositions of the parties are ever so well known
felicity 6.24 happiness advance their felicity in the least
defects 6.24 imperfections, faults as little as possible of the defects of the person
sound 6.24 with firm basis, free from defect it is not sound
scarcely 6.24 almost not, hardly had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty
rendered 6.24 shown, represented find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent
symmetry 6.24 harmonious balance failure of perfect symmetry in her form
asserting 6.24 stating, declaring his asserting that her manners were not
satirical 6.25 characterized by irony He has a very satirical eye
defied 6.25 challenged, confronted Miss Lucas defied her friend to mention
persevering 6.25 persisting On Miss Lucas's persevering...she added...
gravely 6.25 seriously And gravely glancing at Mr. Darcy...
capital 6.25 first rate, excellent though by no means capital
entreaties 6.25 pleas, requests before she could reply to the entreaties of...
showing narrow concern for book learning
pedantic 6.25 a pedantic air and a conceited manner
and formal rules
indignation 6.26 anger aroused by something unjust silent indignation
exclusion 6.26 rejection to the exclusion of all conversation
engrossed 6.26 occupied, absorbed was too much engrossed by his own thoughts
improvements, fineness of
refinements 6.26 the finest refinements of polished societies
thought/expression
polished 6.26 refined, cultured the finest refinements of polished societies
savage 6.26 wild, uncivilized person Every savage can dance.
adept 6.26 expert, highly-skilled person you are an adept in the science, Mr. Darcy
inconsiderable 6.26 trivial received no inconsiderable pleasure from...
discomposure 6.27 state of disorder, absence of calm said with some discomposure to Sir William
propriety 6.27 appropriateness, quality of being proper Mr. Darcy with grave propriety requested to be
persuasion 6.27 act of convincing by his attempt at persuasion
excel 6.27 be superior, to beyond a limit or standard You excel so much in the dance
inducement 6.27 motive considering the inducement
complaisance 6.27 wish to please we cannot wonder at his complaisance
archly 6.27 mischievously Elizabeth looked archly, and turned away.
reverie 6.27 daydreaming I can guess the subject of your reverie.
insipidity 6.27 dullness, lack of excitement The insipidity and yet the noise
strictures 6.27 limits, restrictions What would I give to hear your strictures on them!
meditating 6.27 reflecting, pondering meditating on the very great pleasure...
credit 6.28 source of honor or distinction what lady had the credit of inspiring
inspiring 6.28 bringing about, arousing, stimulating the credit of inspiring such reflections
intrepidity 6.28 courage, fearlessness Mr. Darcy replied with great intrepidity.
matrimony 6.28 marriage from love to matrimony in a moment
indifference 6.28 lack of concern or interest His listened to her with perfect indifference
wit 6.28 verbal humor, repartee her wit flowed long

QUESTIONS
Chapter Five

1. What is Charlotte's justification for Darcy's behavior, and what does it show about her?

15
Chapter Six

2. What is Charlotte's view of how a woman should behave around a man she's interested in? What is her view of marriage?

3. What are hints of Darcy's changing feelings toward Elizabeth?

Chapters 7-9

NEW CHARACTERS
Mrs. Phillips Mrs. Bennet's sister; shares some of her foolish qualities, lives in Meryton.
Colonel Forester Head of the military regiment stationed at Meryton; his wife becomes friends with Lydia.
Captain Carter One of the soldiers stationed at Meryton with whom Kitty and Lydia are infatuated.
Mr. Jones A local apothecary.

IMPORTANT CONCEPT
entailment: The legal limitation of the inheritance of landed estate to a specific line of heirs. Usually this meant the male heir, as in
the case of the Bennet estate in Longbourn (which is to be inherited by the closest male heir, Mr. Collins). Since the Bennets
only have daughters, their estate cannot be left to them. This law (entail) may have been established generations earlier
(something Mrs. Bennet can't understand) and can be broken by the heir when he comes of age (reaches adulthood).

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they appear in the novel. A strange spelling on page 33: ankles (for ankles).

word ch.pg definition context

deficiency 7.29 lacking could but ill supply the deficiency of his
thither 7.29 over there usually tempted thither 3 or 4 times a week
vacant 7.29 empty their minds were more vacant than their sisters'
contrived 7.29 devised, planned they always contrived to learn some
productive 7.29 producing a result Their visits...were now productive
animation 7.30 liveliness the mention of which gave animation to their mother
nay 7.30 no I shall not say nay to him
footman 7.31 servant by the entrance of the footman with a note
tête-à- tête 7.31 private talk a whole day's tête-à- tête between two women
receipt 7.31 act of receiving Come as soon as you can on the receipt of this.
scheme 7.31 plan That would be a good scheme
chaise 7.31 light, open carriage the gentlemen will have Mr. Bingley's chaise
extort 7.31 draw out with difficulty She did at last extort from her father
prognostics 7.31 predictions with many cheerful prognostics of a bad day
uneasy 7.32 lacking comfort Her sisters were uneasy for her
intermission 7.32 without pause continued the whole evening without intermission
contrivance 7.32 clever plan all the felicity of her contrivance
imputed 7.32 caused by is to be imputed to my getting wet
fit 7.32 attack a dangerous fit of illness
pursuit 7.32 chase it was all in pursuit of Mr. Bingley
trifling 7.32 simple, trivial People do not die of little trifling colds.
resolution 7.32 determination to do She declared her resolution.
benevolence 7.33 kindness, generosity I admire the activity of your benevolence
exertion 7.33 effort exertion should always be in proportion to
proportion 7.33 part related to the whole should always be in proportion to what is required
repaired 7.33 went repaired to the lodgings
lodgings 7.33 temporary home the lodgings of one of the officers' wives
stiles 7.33 steps for crossing a fence jumping over stiles
contempt 7.33 hatred they held her in contempt for it
occasion 7.33 cause the occasion's justifying her coming
justifying 7.33 demonstrating a good reason for justifying her coming so far alone
latter 7.33 the second of two mentioned The latter was thinking only of his breakfast.
enquiries 7.33 questions Her enquiries after her sister
equal to 7.33 having the qualities necessary She was not equal, however, to much
solicitude 7.34 quality of being concerned, attentive solicitude they shewed for Jane
acutely 7.34 sharply, intensely her head ached acutely
convert 7.34 change Miss Bingley was obliged to convert the offer
dispatched 7.34 sent to a servant was dispatched
16
acquaint 7.34 make familiar, inform to acquaint the family with her stay
intruder 8.35 one who violate others' privacy feeling herself so much an intruder
indolent 8.35 lazy he was an indolent man
pronounced 8.35 declared Her manners were pronounced to be very bad
nonsensical 8.36 foolish, absurd Very nonsensical to come at all
scampering 8.36 run hurriedly Why must she be scampering about the country
petticoat 8.36 under skirt Yes, and her petticoat
inclined 8.36 tending, likely I am inclined to think that you would not wish
exhibition 8.36 display make such an exhibition
decorum 8.36 proper manners a most country town indifference to decorum
well settled 8.36 well established in marriage I wish with all my heart she were well settled
jot 8.37 bit not make them one jot less agreeable
materially 8.37 truly But is must very materially lessen their chance
assent 8.37 agreement their hearty assent
indulged 8.37 given in to indulged their mirth for some time
mirth 8.37 humor, pleasure indulged their mirth for some time
vulgar 8.37 ill-bred, common, indecent their dear friend's vulgar relations
renewal 8.37 rebirth, refreshing With a renewal of tenderness
summoned 8.37 sent for, requested to appear sat with her till summoned to coffee
quit her 8.37 leave her Elizabeth would not quit her at all
astonishment 8.37 surprise looked at her with astonishment
singular 8.37 peculiar, eccentric That is rather singular
censure 8.37 condemnation, criticism I deserve neither such praise nor such censure
fetch 8.37 get, obtain offered to fetch her others
afforded 8.37 provided all that his library afforded
idle 8.37 lazy, without work but I am an idle fellow
accomplished 8.38 having many talents so extremely accomplished for her age
piano-forte 8.38 piano Her performance on the piano-forte is exquisite.
exquisite 8.38 most excellent Her performance on the piano-forte is exquisite.
extent 8.39 range, degree the common extent of accomplishments
air 8.39 personal bearing, manner something in her air and manner of walking
substantial 8.39 of worth, valuable something more substantial
severe 8.39 hard, critical Are you so severe upon your own sex
capacity 8.39 ability I never saw such capacity
implied 8.39 suggested the injustice of her implied doubt
paltry 8.40 trifling, worthless it is a paltry device
device 8.40 scheme it is a paltry device
condescend 8.40 do something beneath one's dignity sometimes condescend to employ for captivation
employ 8.40 use sometimes condescend to employ for captivation
captivation 8.40 state of fascinating, charming someone sometimes condescend to employ for captivation
affinity 8.40 resemblance, connection Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.
cunning 8.40 crafty deception Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.
despicable 8.40 worthy of hatred Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.
eminent 8.40 well regarded, famous the most eminent physicians
comply 8.40 act by another's request or wish unwilling to comply with
miserable 8.40 uncomfortable, unhappy they were miserable
wretchedness 8.40 misery, unpleasantness They solaced their wretchedness
duets 8.40 songs sung by two people by duets after supper
chief 9.41 most of, the largest part of Elizabeth passed the chief of the night
amendment 9.41 improvement In spite of this amendment
restoration 9.41 return her restoration to health
advisable 9.41 prudent, worthy of being suggested think it all advisable
trespass 9.41 take advantage of another's kindness We must trespass a little longer on your kindness
profuse 9.42 plentiful, extravagant Mrs. Bennet was profuse in her acknowledgement
vast 9.42 great, enormous amount suffers a vast deal
lease 9.42 rental agreement, contract you have but a short lease
intricate 9.42 complex a deep, intricate character
estimable 9.42 admirable more or less estimable
confined 9.42 small a very confined and unvarying society
unvarying 9.42 without change a very confined and unvarying society
alter 9.43 change people themselves alter so much
offended 9.43 felt displeasure offended by his manner of mentioning
delicate 9.43 sensitive, considerate His sister was less delicate

17
 genteel 9.43 well mannered so genteel and so easy
mince 9.44 finely chopped meat mince pies
pity 9.44 shame It is a pity they are not handsome
particular 9.44 special She is our particular friend
efficacy 9.44 effectiveness first discovered the efficacy of poetry
stout 9.44 substantial, powerful Of a fine, stout, healthy love
ensued 9.44 followed general pause which ensued
tremble 9.44 shiver, shake, shiver made Elizabeth tremble lest her mother
lest 9.44 for fear that made Elizabeth tremble lest her mother
tax 9.45 make demands on, burden the youngest should tax Mr. Bingley with
assurance 9.45 self-confidence, boldness had increased into assurance

QUESTIONS
Chapter Seven
1. Does Mrs. Bennet's scheme work for Jane? How does it affect Elizabeth?

Chapter Eight
2. What effect does Caroline Bingley want her critical comments of Elizabeth to have on Darcy? Is Miss Bingley successful
or not?

Chapter Nine
3. How is Elizabeth embarrassed by her family at Netherfield Park?

Guide for Chapters 10-13

NEW CHARACTERS
Hill The Bennet family cook and maid.
Mr. Collins Mr. Bennet's cousin, heir to the Longbourn estate, a clergyman; he is pompous, pretentious, always
flattering and seeking the approval of social superiors. Collins is one of Austen's great comic
creations, used to attack social pretension and conventional ideas about marriage.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh Darcy's aunt and Mr. Collins' patron (he is the clergyman who lives next to her estate, Rosings
Park); she is bossy and meddling; she is very concerned with social appearances and status. Austen
also uses her character to make fun of society.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they appear in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context
invalid 10.46 sick person spent some hours...with the invalid
perpetual 10.46 constant The perpetual commendations of the lady
odious 10.46 exciting hatred How odious I should think them!
lot 10.46 fate they fall to my lot instead of to yours
defer 10.47 postpone, delay give me leave to defer your raptures
determine 10.47 decide, settle it is not for me to determine
humility 10.47 lack of pride, state of being humble Your humility...must disarm reproof.
disarm 10.47 make harmless Your humility...must disarm reproof.
reproof 10.47 criticism Your humility...must disarm reproof.
boast 10.47 show of excessive pride, brag sometimes an indirect boast
quitting 10.48 leaving if you every resolved on quitting Netherfield
panegyric 10.48 elaborate praise, public compliment meant it to be a sort of panegyric
laudable 10.48 praise-worthy what is there so very laudable
precipitance 10.48 quality of being impulsive or abrupt in a precipitance which must leave
celerity 10.48 speed gone with such celerity
rashness 10.48 unthinking quickness consider the rashness of your
atoned 10.48 make up for atoned for by your obstinacy
obstinacy 10.48 stubbornness atoned for by your obstinacy
adhering 10.48 sticking in adhering to it
yield 10.49 give in To yield readily
persuasion 10.49 act of persuading to the persuasion of a friend
conviction 10.49 strong belief To yield without conviction
appertain 10.49 belong as a part of which is to appertain to this request
aweful 10.49 inspiring awe, awesome, great I do not know a more aweful object
expostulation 10.49 strong demand in an expostulation with her brother
disputes 10.50 debate, controversy too much like disputes

18
alacrity 10.50 eagerness, speed moved with alacrity
reprehensible 10.50 deserving criticism, blameworthy more wrong and reprehensible
approbation 10.50 praise too little to care for his approbation
despising 10.50 hating pleasure of despising my taste
overthrowing 10.50 overturning, ruining delight in overthrowing
premeditated 10.50 planned in advance their premeditated contempt
dare 10.50 have the courage for the challenge if you dare
affront 10.51 insult expected to affront him
bewitched 10.51 fascinated, enchanted never been so bewitched by any woman
compass 10.51 achieve, obtain if you can compass it
cure 10.51 heal do cure the younger girls
abominably 10.51 unpleasantly, terribly You used us abominably ill
avenue 10.52 road lined with trees go into the avenue
gaily 10.52 happily She then ran gaily off
rambled 10.52 wandered as she rambled about
considerable 11.53 many, great Their powers of conversation were considerable.
anecdote 11.53 verbal tale, story relate an anecdote with humour
diffuseness 11.53 wordiness but diffuseness and warmth remained
salutation 11.53 greeting remained for Bingley's salutation
petition 11.53 request, plea found even his open petition rejected
quest 11.54 search in quest of some amusement
insufferably 11.54 unbearably, intolerably something insufferably tedious in the usual
tedious 11.54 boring something insufferably tedious in the usual
order of the day 11.54 plan, condition made the order of the day
inflexibly 11.55 stubbornly Darcy...was still inflexibly studious
studious 11.55 interested in study Darcy...was still inflexibly studious
attitude 11.55 position of the body, state of mind sitting so long in one's attitude
novelty 11.55 newness awake to the novelty of attention
confidence 11.55 secrecy, friendship in each other's confidence
plague 11.56 harass, annoy We can all plague and punish one another
uncommon 11.56 rare That is an uncommon advantage
ridiculous 11.56 absurd, laughable may be rendered ridiculous by a person
whims 11.56 impulse, passing fancy whims and inconsistencies do divert me
inconsistencies 11.56 something not consistent whims and inconsistencies do divert me
regulation 11.56 control always under good regulation
pretension 11.56 claim I have made no such pretension.
vouch 11.56 verify My temper I dare not vouch for.
puffed about 11.56 blown about My feelings are not puffed about
implacable 11.57 unyielding, unchanging Implacable resentment is a shade in a
shade 11.57 flaw, fault resentment is a shade in a character
propensity 11.57 inclination, tendency a propensity to hate every body
wilfully 11.57 purposely And your is wilfully to misunderstand them
propitious 12.58 favorable, gracious Her answer...was not propitious
postscript 12.58 addition to a letter, at the end in her postscript it was added that
spare 12.58 do without she could spare them very well
laconic 12.59 having few words, concise, terse though very laconic in his expressions
flogged 12.59 beaten a private had been flogged
roused 13.60 aroused, caused This roused a general astonishment
rail 13.61 complain she continued to rail bitterly
bitterly 13.61 with resentment she continued to rail bitterly
iniquitous 13.61 wicked a most iniquitous affair
filial 13.61 having to do with a son's duties had some filial scruples
scruples 13.61 ethics, principles had some filial scruples
subsisting 13.61 existing disagreement subsisting between yourself
breach 13.61 division, break up heal the breach
variance 13.61 being different, varying pleased him to be at variance
ceremony in which a person is
ordination 13.61 having received ordination at Easter
admitted into the church
patronage 13.61 financial support distinguished by the patronage of
bounty 13.61 plentiful gifts whose bounty and beneficence has
beneficence 13.61 acts of charity or kindness whose bounty and beneficence has
rectory 13.61 home of parish minister the valuable rectory of this parish
parish 13.61 church the valuable rectory of this parish

19
 demean 13.61 humble oneself endeavour to demean myself
conscientious 13.62 thoughtful a most conscientious and polite young man
indulgent 13.62 giving in to someone's desires should be so indulgent as to let him
atonement 13.62 act of making up for an offence make us the atonement he thinks our due
deference 13.62 courteous respect his extraordinary deference for Lady Catherine
pompous 13.62 haughty something very pompous in his stile
servility 13.63 acting like a servant, acting lowly a mixture of servility and self-importance
punctual 13.63 exactly on time Mr. Collins was punctual to his time
stately 13.63 dignified, majestic His air was grave and stately
fame 13.63 reputation fame had fallen short of the truth
destitute 13.63 poor, impoverished for else they will be destitute enough
allude 13.63 refer to You allude perhaps to the entail
precipitate 13.64 acting hastily I am cautious of appearing forward and precipitate
asperity 13.64 ill temperedness, irritability assured him with some asperity

QUESTIONS
Chapter Ten
1. What do the conversations reveal about each character (Miss Bingley, Darcy, Bingley, Elizabeth)?

Chapter Eleven
2. In the last two chapters, what has caused Darcy's affection for Elizabeth to deepen?

Chapter Twelve
3. Why does Darcy ignore Elizabeth during her and Jane's last day at Netherfield?

Chapter Thirteen
4. What is humorous about Mr. Collins' character and actions at Longbourn?

Chapters 14-16

NEW CHARACTERS
Denny An officer in the Meryton regiment, object of Lydia's affection and friend of Wickham's.
Wickham An officer who has a past connection with Darcy: the two men grew up together at Pemberley. Wickham says a lot
of bad things about Darcy, influencing Elizabeth's opinion of Darcy.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they appear in the novel. There is something odd on page 72: "―shire," which was a
convention at the time so an author didn't have to be geographically specific; there is also an odd spelling: crouded (for crowded).
word ch.pg definition context
eloquent 14.65 persuasive, graceful, and fluent in speaking appeared eloquent in her praise
elevated 14.65 raised to a higher level The subject elevated him to
solemnity 14.65 seriousness more than the usual solemnity of manner
aspect 14.65 countenance, look with a most important aspect
affability 14.65 friendliness, gentleness such affability and condescension
discourses 14.65 speeches approve of both the discourses
vouchsafed 14.65 condescend to give something had even vouchsafed to suggest some
abode 14.66 home my humble abode
widow 14.66 woman whose husband has died she was a widow
constitution 14.66 physical condition of a sickly constitution
deprived 14.66 take away from, deprive has deprived the British court
ornament 14.66 person who is a source of pride or honor of its brightest ornament
duchess 14.66 wife of a duke; aristocrat born to be a duchess
dose 14.67 portion (usually of medicine) the dose had been enough
monotonous 14.67 dull, without variation with very monotonous solemnity
stamp 14.67 nature or quality books of a serious stamp
importune 14.67 annoy, vex no longer importune my young cousin
antagonist 14.67 game partner, enemy as his antagonist at backgammon
backgammon 14.67 board game as his antagonist at backgammon
miserly 15.68 greedy an illiterate and miserly father
subjection 15.69 condition of being under someone's power The subjection in which his father had
prosperity 15.69 wealth early and unexpected prosperity
veneration 15.69 great respect his veneration for her as his patroness

20
 obsequiousness 15.69 servility, servile compliance pride and obsequiousness
reconciliation 15.69 settling of a dispute seeking a reconciliation
eligibility 15.69 condition of being qualified or worthy full of eligibility and suitableness
parsonage 15.70 home of a clergyman beginning with his parsonage-house
avowal 15.70 acknowledgement, admission to the avowal of his hopes
amid 15.70 surrounded by, in the middle of amid very complaisant smiles
treasured up 15.70 valued highly, saved for future use Mrs. Bennet treasured up the hint
good graces 15.70 state of being in someone's favor high in her good graces
cessation 15.70 act of ceasing, halting with little cessation
exceedingly 15.70 very much discomposed Mr. Bennet exceedingly
bonnet 15.71 woman's hat held in place with a ribbon a very smart bonnet indeed
recal 15.71 bring back, bring back to awareness could recal them
pretence 15.71 act of pretending under the pretence of wanting something
entreated 15.71 asked for entreated permission to introduce
corps 15.71 group of soldiers accepted a commission in their corps
address 15.71 way of speaking very pleasing address
readiness 15.71 willingness, promptness a happy readiness of conversation
unassuming 15.71 humble, modest perfectly correct and unassuming
corroborated 15.71 confirmed, supported Mr. Darcy corroborated it with a bow
long 15.72 desire, want it was impossible not to long to know
pressing 15.72 demanding, urgent Miss Lydia's pressing entreaties
contemplation 15.72 act of thinking but her contemplation of one stranger
mutual 15.73 possessed in common they parted in mutual good spirits
unwearying 15.73 not tiring, without pause assured with unwearying civility
convey 16.74 give, pass on did not at first convey much gratification
proprietor 16.74 owner who was its proprietor
digressions 16.74 comments that are off the point with occasional digressions
retail 16.74 tell and retell resolving to retail it all among her
stuffy 16.75 dull, formal broad-faced stuffy uncle Philips
threadbare 16.75 overused, hackneyed, trite the commonest, dullest, most threadbare
at intervals 16.75 at times, stages, from time to time he had still at intervals a kind listener
whist 16.75 card game by sitting down to whist
impartial 16.76 without judgment impossible for me to be impartial
deserts 16.77 something deserving reward or punishment be estimated beyond their deserts
proclaim 16.77 say or state publicly what I might proclaim to all the world
scandalous 16.77 shocking, causing scandal his behaviour to myself has been scandalous
verily 16.77 truly I verily believe I could forgive himj
prospect 16.77 thought, possibility It was the prospect of constant society
procured 16.77 brought about, provided Meryton has procured them
bequeathed 16.78 left to someone in a will the late Mr. Darcy bequeathed me
godfather 16.78 man who sponsors a child at baptism He was my godfather
amply 16.78 with a generous amount provide for me amply
disregarded 16.78 not looked at, dismissed from consideration How could his well be disregarded?
redress 16.78 amends, remedy, correction seek legal redress
bequest 16.78 something left to someone in a will the terms of the bequest
imprudence 16.78 quality of being unwise or indiscreet forfeited all claim to it by...imprudence
induced 16.78 caused what can have induced him to behave
malicious 16.79 evil descending to such malicious revenge
just 16.79 honorable and fair I can hardly be just to him
superintendance 16.79 direction, duty of taking care of to my father's active superintendance
wonderful 16.80 astonishing, causing wonder It is wonderful
degenerate 16.80 deteriorate, decline to degenerate from the popular qualities
conversible 16.81 having conversational abilities He can be a conversible companion
liberal-minded 16.81 open-minded he is liberal-minded
dictatorial 16.82 acting like a dictator, an authoritative ruler her manners are dictatorial and insolent
insolent 16.82 rude, arrogant, insulting her manners are dictatorial and insolent
enumerating 16.82 counting off, naming one by one enumerating all the dishes at supper

QUESTIONS
Chapter Fourteen
1. How does Mr. Bennet make fun of Mr. Collins, and how does Collins show himself to be both pompous and servile?

21
Chapter Fifteen
2. After he finds out that Jane may be soon engaged to another gentleman, Collins turns his attentions to Elizabeth. What
does this show about him?

3. On the street in Meryton, what does Elizabeth notice when Darcy and Wickham meet?

Chapter Sixteen
4. What does Wickham say that Darcy has done to him?

5. How does Elizabeth react to this news? What does this show about her?

Chapters 17-18

IMPORTANT CONCEPT
Social status and social rules: On pages 95-96 when Mr. Collins decides to introduce himself to Darcy, he commits a serious social
error. Because of his self-importance and arrogance, Mr. Collins believes that through his association with his patron Lady
Catherine de Bourgh, he has risen to a higher social level. It was improper in the more formal early 19 th century English
society for someone of a lower rank to just walk up to a member of the upper class and introduce himself―rank and wealth
were very important in social relations. Elizabeth is extremely aware of these social conventions, and is continually being
embarrassed by her family's lack of propriety.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they appear in the novel. There are some odd spellings: exstasy (for ecstasy); stopt
(for stopped).
word ch.pg definition context
veracity 17.84 truth question the veracity of a young man
alienated 17.84 set them apart from others circumstances which have alienated them
ceremony 17.85 formality every thing mentioned without ceremony
distressing 17.85 upsetting it is distressing
ceremonious 17.85 formal instead of a ceremonious card
ball 17.86 dance a ball was, at any rate, a ball
profess 17.86 declare, claim I profess myself one of those who
recreation 17.86 fun, leisure who consider intervals of recreation
rebuke 17.86 criticism, reprimand dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop
tendency 17.86 inclination young man of character can have any evil tendency
soliciting 17.86 asking for I take this opportunity of soliciting yours, Miss Elizabeth
taken in 17.86 tricked, deceived Elizabeth felt herself completely taken in.
perforce 17.86 by necessity her own was per force delayed a little
quadrille 17.86 card game assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings
vivacity 17.86 liveliness, spirit a compliment on her wit and vivacity
pitiable 17.87 arousing pity or compassion would have been in a pitiable state at this time
by proxy 17.87 with the help of someone else the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy
trial 17.87 test, challenge Even Elizabeth might have found some trial of her patience
in vain 18.88 without success looked in vain for Mr. Wickham
surmount 18.89 overcome, conquer ...ill humour, which she could not wholly surmount
transition 18.89 switch or change unable to make a voluntary transition to
presence of mind 18.89 poise, self-control fret over her own want of presence of mind
console 18.89 comfort, make feel better Charlotte tried to console her.
oblige 18.90 force, constrain the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk
taciturn 18.90 uncommunicative, laconic an unsocial, taciturn disposition
posterity 18.90 future generations handed down to posterity
eclat 18.90 brilliance of performance with all the eclat of a proverb
in the affirmative 18.90 yes, asserting yes She answered in the affirmative
hauteur 18.90 arrogance A deeper shade of hauteur overspread his features
constrained 18.91 restrained At length Darcy spoke, and in a constrained manner
desirous 18.91 wanting to, desiring seemed desirous of changing the subject
first circles 18.91 highest level, most talented you belong to the first circles
upbraiding 18.91 criticizing sharply whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me
forcibly 18.91 with force seemed to strike him forcibly
unappeasable 18.92 unable to be calmed, fixed your resentment once created was unappeasable
incumbent 18.92 obligatory It is particularly incumbent on those who never
merely 18.92 just; only Merely to the illustration of your character

22
 gravity 18.92 seriousness endeavouring to shake off her gravity
get on 18.92 understand I do not get on at all.
accosted 18.93 approached first with an expression of civil disdain thus accosted her
implicit 18.93 implied, suggested not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions
sneer 18.93 scornful facial expression turning away with a sneer
interference 18.93 act of interfering, intruding Excuse my interference.―It was kindly meant.
malice 18.93 desire to harm others the malice of Mr. Darcy
pardon 18.94 forgiveness you may be sure of my pardon
regard 18.94 respect has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy's regard
exultation 18.95 joy, rejoicing told her with great exultation
convince someone not to do
dissuade 18.95 Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme
something
scope 18.95 range all matters within the scope of your understanding
laity 18.95 people not in the clergy amongst the laity
dictates 18.96 orders, commands follow the dictates of my conscience
discernment 18.96 keenness of perception so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment
perverseness 18.97 something which is not right or good a most unlucky perverseness which placed them
self-gratulation 18.97 self-congratulation were the first points of self-gradulation
consign 18.97 give over to the care of another to be able to consign her single daughters to the care
triumphantly 18.97 victoriously triumphantly believing there was no chance of it
revive 18.98 come back to life, regain good spirits Elizabeth now began to revive.
tranquillity 18.98 calmness, peace But not long was the interval of tranquillity
in agonies 18.98 in agony, in pain Elizabeth was in agonies.
impenetrably 18.98 strongly, unable to be penetrated impenetrably grave
applied to 18.98 asked for help Others of the party were now applied to.
compatible 18.99 agreeable, harmonious perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman
conciliatory 18.99 pleasant, friendly attentive and conciliatory manners towards every body
preferment 18.99 advancement to whom he owes his preferment
repulsed 18.100 rejected by denial or rudeness They repulsed every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation
languor 18.100 stillness, laziness threw a languor over the whole party
whither 18.101 where after his return to London, whither he was obliged to go
eclipsed 18.101 surpassed, outshone the worth of each was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield

QUESTIONS
Chapter Seventeen
1. When Elizabeth asks for Jane's opinion of the Wickham/Darcy conflict, what is Jane's assessment?

2. When Elizabeth realizes that Mr. Collins has his sights set on her, what does she decide to do?

Chapter Eighteen
3. How does Elizabeth and Darcy's dance together develop and/or hinder their relationship?

4. During the evening at Netherfield, how does Elizabeth's family (including Mr. Collins) embarrass her?

Chapters 19-23

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.
word ch.pg definition context
diffidence 19.102 state of hesitancy, timidity having no feelings of diffidence
hastening 19.102 quickly moving away she was hastening away
injunction 19.102 command, order Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction
incessant 19.103 continual, constant tried to conceal by incessant employment
diversion 19.103 something that distracts divided between distress and diversion
modesty 19.103 propriety in speech your modesty...rather adds to your other perfections
disservice 19.103 harmful action, injury far from doing you any disservice
purport 19.103 purpose You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse
dissemble 19.103 pretend your natural delicacy may lead you to dissemble
tempered 19.104 moderated, adjusted when tempered with the silence and respect
inevitably 19.104 unavoidably and respect which her rank will inevitably excite
excite 19.104 produce, arouse respect which her rank will inevitably excite
reproach 19.104 criticism no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips

23
altar 19.105 front of the church lead you to the altar ere long
ere 19.105 before lead you to the altar ere long
suit 19.105 proposal said as much to encourage my suit
hitherto 19.106 until this time If what I have hitherto said
give me leave 19.106 allow You must give me leave to flatter myself
manifold 19.106 multiple in spite of your manifold attractions
uniformly 19.106 consistently You are uniformly charming!
sanctioned 19.106 authorized when sanctioned by the express authority of
express 19.106 particular when sanctioned by the express authority of
decisive 19.107 conclusive in such a manner as must be decisive
affectation 19.107 display, manner the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female
coquetry 19.107 flirtation the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female
dawdled 20.108 wasted time having dawdled about in the vestibule
vestibule 20.108 entryway, foyer having dawdled about in the vestibule
felicitations 20.108 congratulations returned these felicitations with equal pleasure
relate 20.108 tell, explain proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview
stedfastly 20.108 constantly, firmly his cousin had stedfastly given him
bashful 20.108 shy would naturally flow from her bashful modesty
headstrong 20.108 stubborn She is a very headstrong foolish girl
persists 20.108 hold firmly to a purpose If therefore she actually persists in rejecting
liable 20.109 tending to have if liable to such defects of temper
affair 20.110 matter, incident her husband regarded the affair as she wished
spared by 20.111 saved by Charlotte's reply was spared by the entrance
Aye 20.111 yes Aye, there she comes
effusion 20.111 unrestrained outpouring listened in silence to this effusion
sooth 20.111 relieve from worry, calm any attempt to reason with or sooth her
projected 20.112 extended, thrown out began the projected conversation
resignation 20.112 act of giving up Resignation to inevitable evils
inevitable 20.112 unable to avoid Resignation to inevitable evils
preferment 20.112 promotion as fortunately as I have been in early preferment
interpose 20.112 insert a remark requesting you to interpose your authority
dismission 20.112 dismissal having accepted by dismission from your daughter's lips
peevish 21.113 ill-tempered, quarrelsome from some peevish allusion of her mother
dejection 21.113 state of being depressed not by embarrassment or dejection
resentful 21.113 feeling ill will resentful silence
assiduous 21.113 diligent, persistent the assiduous attentions which he had been so sensible of
morrow 21.113 tomorrow The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's
abatement 21.113 easing The morrow produced no abatement of Mrs. Bennet's
lament 21.113 mourn, regret to lament over his absence from the Netherfield ball
self-imposed 21.113 voluntarily endured his absence had been self-imposed
forbearance 21.114 tolerance, patience approved of his forbearance
bestowed 21.114 given to which they civilly bestowed on each other
dwelling 21.114 focusing saw her dwelling intently

intercourse 21.114 communication between people returns of the delightful intercourse we have known
beaux 21.115 boyfriends, suitors that your beaux will be so numerous
reserves 21.115 restraint I have no reserves with you.
intermarriage 21.115 marriage between families when there has been one intermarriage
ingenuity 21.117 cleverness there is certainly some ingenuity
merit 21.117 value sensible of your merit
fret 21.117 worry fret no longer
deliberation 21.117 act of deciding if upon mature deliberation
disobliging 21.117 not pleasing the misery of disobliging his two sisters
utmost 21.117 most, highest treated with the utmost contempt
desponding 21.118 becoming disheartened Jane's temper was not desponding
bewailed 21.118 cried out she bewailed it as exceedingly unlucky
slyness 22.119 cleverness with admirable slyness
irksome 22.120 annoying his society was irksome
preservative 22.120 something preserved must be their pleasantest preservative from want
prosperous 22.121 thriving, favorable longing to publish his prosperous love
avail 22.121 make use of I shall avail myself of it
concurrence 22.121 agreement without her ladyship's concurrence
bounds 22.122 limits the bounds of decorum

24
 pang 22.123 sudden spasm of pain And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself
incredulous 23.124 not believing an audience not merely wondering, but incredulous
boisterously 23.124 noisily boisterously exclaimed
courtier 23.124 one who seeks favor the complaisance of a courtier
vent 23.125 opening giving escape her feelings found a rapid vent
inferences 23.125 suggestions Two inferences...were plainly deduced from the whole
deduced 23.125 reach a conclusion Two inferences...were plainly deduced from the whole
barbarously 23.125 uncivilly, unfairly she herself had been barbarously used by them all
dwelt 23.125 focused, concentrated two points she principally dwelt during the rest of the day
appease 23.125 satisfy, calm Nothing could console and nothing appease her
improbable 23.125 not possible to consider it improbable
retort 23.125 reply quickly triumph on being able to retort on Mrs. Bennet
rectitude 23.125 quality of being morally correct of whose rectitude and delicacy
rapturous 23.126 filled with great joy with many rapturous expressions
incensed 23.126 angered which highly incensed Mrs. Bennet
successor 23.127 one who takes over for another As her successor in that house
abhorrence 23.127 hatred she regarded her with jealous abhorrence

QUESTIONS
Chapter Nineteen—Twenty
1. What makes Mr. Collins' proposal funny?

Chapter Twenty-one—Twenty-two
2. How is Elizabeth contrasted with Jane in chapter 21?

3. What is Elizabeth's reaction to Charlotte's engagement and what does her reaction show about her?

Chapter Twenty-three
4. Besides the prospect of Charlotte's marriage, what else is causing the Bennet family anxiety?

25
IB Literature—Pfeiffer
Pride and Prejudice (1813): Reading Guide for Volume 2 (Chapters 24-42)

Chapters 24-26

NEW CHARACTERS
Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner Elizabeth's uncle and aunt (Mr. Gardiner is Mrs. Bennet's and Mrs. Philips' brother); Mr. Gardiner is "in
trade," a businessman in London. Even though they live in what Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley would
consider an unfashionable part of London, the Gardiners are quite respectable and have better
manners than the upper-class characters we have met. Mrs. Gardiner is especially close to her nieces
Elizabeth and Jane. Both Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner play key roles in the novel.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context

inmate 24.131 resident in a dwelling being an inmate of Mr. Darcy's house
designing 24.131 scheming, planning slave of his designing friends
inclinations 24.131 tendencies, desires the caprice of their inclinations
sport 24.131 play, joke with been allowed to sport with it
unavailing 24.132 useless, unsuccessful must be unavailing
repine 24.132 be discontented, complain But I will not repine
encroaching 24.132 intruding my encroaching on your privilege of
integrity 24.133 state of holding to standards meaning of principle and integrity
jilt 24.135 deceive or drop a lover would jilt you creditably
material 24.135 important, relevant was of material service in dispelling
dispelling 24.135 taking away material service in dispelling the gloom
canvassed 24.135 discussed acknowledged and publicly canvassed
candour 24.136 frankness, straightforwardness mild and steady candour
artful 25.138 crafty, deceiving very artful people indeed
thwarted 25.138 prevented from succeeding to be thwarted so in my own family
accident 25.138 unexpected events when accident separates them
hackneyed 25.138 overused the expression...is so hackneyed
acquiescence 25.139 passive agreement her sister's ready acquiescence
ablution 25.139 cleansing as part of a religious rite a month's ablution enough to cleanse
combated 25.140 opposed, resisted successfully combated by
fancy 26.142 imagination, inclination, liking must not let your fancy run away with you
forfeit 26.143 give up I should be miserable to forfeit it
duplicity 26.146 deception strong appearance of duplicity
duped 26.146 deceived would no longer be duped
relinquish 26.147 give up a few struggles to relinquish her
effectual 26.147 fully adequate My watchfulness has been effectual
leaving a connection or relationship
defection 26.147 take his defection much more to heart
without consent or permission

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Twenty-four
1. Why and how does the mood of the story now change?

2. What are the strong opinions Elizabeth expresses in this chapter?

Chapter Twenty-five
3. What is the connection between Mrs. Gardiner and Wickham?

Chapter Twenty-six
4. How does Austen reveal the closeness between Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth?

5. Two romantic plot lines seem to be resolved in these chapters: Jane's chances with Bingley, and Elizabeth's chances with
Wickham. How do different members of the Bennet family react and respond
1
Chapters 27-30

NEW CHARACTERS
Mrs. Jenkinson Miss de Bourgh's governess, her constant companion.
Miss de Bourgh Lady Catherine de Bourgh's daughter, a sickly young woman.
Colonel Fitzwilliam Darcy's cousin; the younger son of a lord. [refer to your question 5 response for more information]

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context

diversified 27.149 varied, given variety diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton
novelty 27.149 newness There was novelty in the scheme
adieu 27.149 good-bye bidding her adieu
rallied 27.151 met together for a purpose Mrs. Gardiner then rallied her niece
mercenary 27.151 greedy sorry to think our friend mercenary
avarice 27.151 greed Where does discretion end and avarice begin?
distressed 27.151 needy, strained A man in distressed circumstances has not time
spleen 27.152 melancholy, ill temper Adieu to disappointment and spleen.
banish 28.153 send out, exile to banish all fear for her health
paling 28.153 fence The paling of Rosings park was their boundary
discernible 28.153 able to be seen the Parsonage was discernible
fender 28.154 screen for fireplace from the sideboard to the fender
minuteness 28.154 close examination, close detail pointed out with a minuteness which left
clump 28.154 cluster, thick grouping how many trees...were in the most distant clump
tenor 28.155 voices the quiet tenor of their usual employments
vexatious 28.155 annoying the vexatious interruptions of Mr. Collins
phaeton 28.156 small carriage ladies stopping in a low phaeton
grandeur 29.157 nobleness, magnificence displaying the grandeur of his patroness
toilette 29.157 process of dressing and grooming the ladies were separating for the toilette
antichamber (usually
29.158 room before main room; a waiting room through an antichamber
spelled "antechamber")
conciliating 29.159 overcoming distrust, pleasant Her air was not conciliating
formidable 29.159 arousing fear, awe-inspiring She was not rendered formidable by silence
deportment 29.159 behavior, conduct, demeanor in whose...deportment she found resemblance
indisposed 29.160 mildly ill, disinclined fearing she was indisposed
composedly 29.160 with composure, with poise answered them composedly
out 29.162 in public circulation, in society Are any of your younger sisters out?
disclaim 30.166 deny the truth of something had scarcely time to disclaim
curtseyed 30.166 made a gesture of respect, like a bow Elizabeth merely curtseyed to him
betray 30.167 make known unintentionally whether he would betray any consciousness

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Twenty-seven
1. On what subject do Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner disagree?

Chapter Twenty-eight
2. Elizabeth seems to regain some respect for Charlotte. What does she learn about Charlotte's living arrangement?

3. What side of Elizabeth's personality do we see when Miss de Bourgh visits?

Chapter Twenty-nine
4. What is the purpose of this chapter? What does it add to the plot of the story?

Chapter Thirty
5. Who is Colonel Fitzwilliam, and what kind of person does he seem to be?

2
Chapters 31-33

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. There is an odd spelling on page 180: Unles for Unless.

word ch.pg definition context

scruple 31.169 hesitate, show reluctance she did not scruple to call out
proficient 31.169 skilled, accomplished (person)―here a noun I should have been a great proficient
notion 31.170 idea, belief give you a very pretty notion of me
impolitic 31.170 hasty, acting without thinking very impolitic too
retaliate 31.170 get revenge provoking me to retaliate
execution 31.172 performance instructions on execution and taste
intrusion 32.173 entering without permission apologised for his intrusion
emergence 32.173 unexpected/urgent situation in this emergence recollecting when
prudential 32.174 practical, shrewd in a prudential light
earnest 32.176 serious, grave, important It was an earnest, steadfast gaze
mischance 33.178 bad luck, misfortune perverseness of the mischance
penance 33.178 act of self-debasement to show sorrow or repentance for a sin a voluntary penance
rencontre 33.178 casual meeting in the course of their third rencontre
re-perusing 33.178 studying/examining/reading again in re-perusing Jane's last letter
disposal 33.179 under the power or authority of someone else I am at his disposal
inured 33.179 accustomed to accept something undesirable must be inured to self-denial
sole 33.180 solitary, having no companion under his sole care
charge 33.180 person or thing under the care of another Does your charge give you much
tractable 33.180 easily managed/taught, docile one of the most tractable creatures
prodigious 33.180 great amount, lavish, enormous takes a prodigious deal of care
scrape 33.181 a bad/uncomfortable situation get into a scrape
disposed 33.181 inclined You are rather disposed
officious 33.181 intrusive, meddlesome call his interference officious

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Thirty-one
1. What do Darcy and Elizabeth reveal about their own characters and the other's in the "piano conversation" on pages
170-171?

Chapter Thirty-two
2. What makes Darcy's visit to Hunsford Parsonage awkward?

3. What do you think is Darcy's motivation for going there and for saying what he says?

4. What is Charlotte noticing between Darcy, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Elizabeth? What is her interpretation?

Chapter Thirty-three
5. What makes Elizabeth think Colonel Fitzwilliam is interested in her?

6. On their walk, what does Elizabeth say that startles Colonel Fitzwilliam, and what does Colonel Fitzwilliam say that
upsets Elizabeth?

Chapters 34-36

NEW CHARACTER
Mrs. Younge Miss Georgiana Darcy's former governess; an acquaintance of Wickham's.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. One strange spelling: dropt for dropped.

word ch.pg definition context

revival 34.184 renewal, bringing up again nor was there any revival of past occurrences
fluttered 34.184 excited her spirits were a little fluttered
repressed 34.185 controlled, brought under control My feelings will not be repressed.
ardently 34.185 passionately how ardently I admire and love you
subsequent 34.185 following, coming next resentment by his subsequent language
3
provocations 34.186 something that causes anger or resentment But I have other provocations.
wholly 34.187 completely which proved him wholly unmoved
remorse 34.187 guilt by any feeling of remorse
affected 34.187 assumed, faked, imitated with a smile of affected incredulity
incredulity 34.187 disbelief with a smile of affected incredulity
assumed 34.187 pretended With assumed tranquility
disdained 34.187 hated Elizabeth disdained the appearance
recital 34.187 narration, telling of a story unfolded in the recital which I received
contemptuously 34.187 with disgust and hatred repeated Darcy contemptuously
comparative 34.187 comparing to something else comparative poverty
desert 34.187 reward or punishment no less his due than his desert
estimation 34.188 value This is the estimation in which you hold me!
bitter 34.188 angry These bitter accusations
suppressed 34.188 controlled might have been suppressed
policy 34.188 prudence, caution had I with greater policy concealed
impelled 34.188 pressured, compelled the belief of my being impelled by
unalloyed 34.188 complete unalloyed inclination
mingled 34.188 mixed an expression of mingled incredulity
disapprobation 34.188 ill feeling ground-work of disapprobation
unpardonable 34.189 unforgivable his unpardonable assurance
agitating 34.189 troubling very agitating reflections
unequal 34.189 unable to deal with made her feel how unequal she was to
verdure 35.190 green adding to the verdure of the early trees
plantation 35.191 large estate turned again into the plantation
apprehension 35.191 anxiety by the apprehension of its containing
formation 35.191 forming the effort which the formation
magnitude 35.191 greatness by no means of equal magnitude
charge 35.191 accusation, indictment you last night laid to my charge
defiance 35.191 opposition in defiance of various claims
blasted 35.191 destroyed blasted the prospects of Mr. Wickham
wantonly 35.191 without caution wilfully and wantonly
exertion 35.191 effort had been brought up to expect its exertion
depravity 35.191 moral corruption would be a depravity
severity 35.191 seriousness from the severity of that blame
liberally 35.191 freely which was last night so liberally bestowed
partiality 35.192 inclination toward his partiality for Miss Bennet
serenity 35.192 peace, calmness that the serenity of your sister's countenance
repugnance 35.192 disgust other causes of repugnance
coincidence 35.193 similarity our coincidence of feeling
detaching 35.193 separating be lost in detaching their brother
remonstrance 35.193 criticism however this remonstrance might have
staggered 35.193 caused to lose strength staggered or delayed his determination
extinguished 35.194 erased did not appear to me enough extinguished
vicious 35.194 evil The vicious propensities
steady 35.195 constant was to the last so steady
took orders 35.195 went into the clergy and if he took orders
pecuniary 35.195 monetary some more immediate pecuniary advantage
accede 35.195 agree perfectly ready to accede to his proposal
obtruded 35.196 forced on someone again most painfully obtruded on my notice
acquit 35.197 free from accusation/criticism you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth
henceforth 35.197 from now acquit me henceforth of cruelty
detection 35.197 awareness Detection could not be in your power
contrariety 36.198 contrast what a contrariety of emotion
insensibility 36.198 unconscious, unmindful her sister's insensibility
penitent 36.198 feeling remorse for a sin his style was not penitent
discredit 36.198 argue against something successfully She wished to discredit it entirely
perturbed 36.199 confused, upset In this perturbed state of mind
gross 36.199 terrible there was gross duplicity
err 36.199 make a mistake her wishes did not err
in lieu 36.199 in place of his receiving in lieu
profligacy 36.199 state of being recklessly wasteful The extravagance and general profligacy
befriended 36.200 became a friend to no such recollection befriended her
4
 indelicacy 36.200 quality of lacking propriety, tactlessness She saw the indelicacy of putting himself
mediocrity 36.201 average, low quality or value the mediocrity of her fortune
lingering 36.201 remaining Every lingering struggle in his favour
prepossession 36.202 prejudice I have courted prepossession and ignorance
fervent 36.202 passionate Jane's feelings, though fervent, were little

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Thirty-four
1. Darcy says, "In vain have I struggled." What has he been struggling with, specifically?

2. What does Elizabeth find so offensive about his marriage proposal?

3. Explain Elizabeth's thoughts and feelings after Darcy leaves (189).

Chapter Thirty-five
4. What key things does Elizabeth learn in Darcy's letter?

Chapter Thirty-six
5. In her long contemplation over the letter, on what points does Elizabeth conclude that Darcy must be correct?

6. As a result of reading and thinking about Darcy's letter, what does Elizabeth now realize about herself? (201-202)

Chapters 37-40

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. One strange spelling: sallad for salad (211).

word ch.pg definition context

obeisance 37.204 gesture of deference make them his parting obeisance
diminution 37.204 reduction, diminishing the diminution of the Rosings party
abide by 37.205 conform to, comply with we must abide by our original plan
replete 37.207 full of so replete with advantage
civilities 38.208 courtesies, acts of politeness the parting civilities
deemed 38.208 judged, considered, supposed he deemed indispensably necessary
indispensably 38.208 essentially he deemed indispensably necessary
parcels 38.209 packages the parcels placed within
consternation 38.210 sudden confusion or amazement with some consternation
larder 39.211 place where meat and food are kept, pantry meat as an inn larder usually affords
signify 39.211 have meaning or importance it will not much signify what one wears
overset 39.212 throw into disturbed state, upset who have been overset already by
congenial 39.214 friendly, sociable be congenial with the generality of
plague 39.215 harass, pester, annoy nothing more to plague her
equivocal 39.215 of a doubtful or uncertain nature so vague and equivocal
vindication 40.217 clearing of blame or doubt Darcy's vindication
profusion 40.217 plentiful outpouring or display Your profusion makes me
spur 40.217 stimulus, incentive3 It is such a spur to one's genius
allayed 40.218 lessen or reduce the pain; calm, set to rest The tumult in Elizabeth's mind was allayed
injurious 40.219 harmful must have been injurious to her own health

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Thirty-seven
1. Elizabeth does a lot of thinking about what has happened and what she has learned. What certainties does she arrive at
regarding Bingley's affection for Jane, her family's behavior, and her feelings for Darcy?

Chapter Thirty-eight
2. What is funny about Mr. Collins' farewell to Elizabeth?

Chapter Thirty-nine
3. Why are the follies of the Bennet family no longer amusing to Elizabeth (and the reader)?
5
Chapter Forty
4. When Elizabeth finally tells Jane about what happened in Kent, what does she keep secret from her?

5. What is Jane's reaction to the Wickham and Darcy situation, and how does Elizabeth react to Jane's response?

Chapters 41-42

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. There is one odd spelling: uncontrouled for uncontrolled
(223).

word ch.pg definition context

drooping 41.221 hang down with lifelessness ladies in the neighborhood were drooping apace
apace 41.221 swiftly, at a rapid pace ladies in the neighborhood were drooping apace
woe 41.221 deep sorrow, grief exclaim in the bitterness of woe
lamentations 41.221 acts of grieving, cries of sorrow kind of lamentations resounding perpetually
resounding 41.221 uttering loudly kind of lamentations resounding perpetually
perpetually 41.221 continuously kind of lamentations resounding perpetually
anew 41.221 again She felt anew the justice of Mr. Darcy's objections
repining 41.222 grieving for a loss Kitty continued in the parlour repining at her fate
death-warrant 41.222 death-sentence, absolute end as the death-warrant of all possibility
squeamish 41.223 oversensitive Such squeamish youths
aloof 41.223 distant, indifferent have been kept aloof by Lydia's folly
state of being flighty, lighthearted,
volatility 41.223 be affected by the wild volatility
explosive
exuberant 41.223 full of unrestrained joy or enthusiasm checking her exuberant spirits
ward off 41.223 keep away unable to ward off any portion of
volubility 41.224 ready flow of words, fluency in their united volubility
agitation 41.225 emotional disturbance agitation was pretty well over
frivolous 41.225 trivial, silly frivolous gallantry
ought 41.225 nothing he deigned to add ought of civility
deter 41.226 prevent or discourage from acting for it must deter him from such foul misconduct
pathetic 41.227 helpless, inadequate her family was rather noisy than pathetic
diffuse 41.227 wordy Mrs. Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes
clamorous 41.227 noisy in the clamorous happiness of Lydia
conjugal 42.228 marriage pleasing picture of conjugal felicity
illiberal 42.228 narrow-minded, ill-bred weak understanding and illiberal mind
derive 42.228 receive, obtain derive benefit from such as are given
querulous 42.230 complaining, peevish, fretful her usual querulous serenity
commencement 42.230 beginning delayed its commencement
curtailed 42.230 cut short and curtailed its extent
contracted 42.230 shrunk, reduced in size a more contracted tour
impunity
42.231 without harm or punishment enter his county with impunity
(with impunity)
chambermaid 42.232 a maid in an inn or a hotel she asked the chambermaid

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Forty-one
1. What are Mr. Bennet's reasons for allowing Lydia to go to Brighton? How does Austen (and Elizabeth?) judge Mr. Bennet
as a husband and father?

2. What enjoyment does Elizabeth find in her conversation with Wickham?

Chapter Forty-two
3. Earlier Elizabeth said that she was sure she never cared to see Darcy again. At the end of this chapter, do you believe
her? Why or why not?

6
IB Literature—Pfeiffer
Pride and Prejudice (1813): Study Guide for Volume 3 (Chapters 43-61)

Chapters 43-44

NEW CHARACTER
Mrs. Reynolds Darcy's elderly housekeeper, whom Elizabeth and the Gardiners meet at Pemberley.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. There is one odd spelling: connexion for connection.

word ch.pg definition context

perturbation 43.235 emotional disturbance with some perturbation
surveying 43.236 looking over after slightly surveying it
prospect 43.236 view enjoy its prospect
miniatures 43.237 small paintings amongst several other miniatures
affable 43.238 easy to speak to, amiable just as affable to the poor
intelligible 43.240 capable of being understood more intelligible
started 43.241 moved suddenly as from a surprise He absolutely started
immoveable 43.241 incapable of being moved seemed immoveable from surprise
sedateness 43.241 composure, manner that is serenely deliberate none of its usual sedateness
whence 43.242 from where, out of which place whence, in spots where the opening
glen 43.243 valley contracted into a glen
coppice 43.243 group of small trees amidst the rough coppice-wood
submit 43.243 yield, surrender obliged to submit
strike into 43.243 go, proceed probably strike into some other part
construed 43.243 analyzed, thought of might be mischievously construed
stroke 43.244 manner, touch a stroke of civility
decamping 43.244 depart suddenly or secretively expectation of his decamping
sustained 43.244 withstood, endured he sustained it
tackle 43.244 equipment supply him with fishing tackle
brink 43.245 edge descending to the brink of the river
outstripped 43.245 surpassed, exceeded They soon outstripped the others
embargo 43.246 prohibition there seemed an embargo on
tete-a-tete 43.246 dialogue, conversation between two people before the tete-a-tete was over
whimsical 43.246 unpredictable, flighty he may be a little whimsical in his
flaming 43.247 intense, ardent a most flaming character
liberal 43.247 generous Be he is a liberal master, I suppose
environs 43.247 surroundings interesting spots in its environs
livery 44.248 uniform of a servant in a household, carriage immediately recognising the livery
imparted 44.248 made known, disclosed imparted no small degree of surprise
quarter 44.248 person or group attentions from such a quarter
disquiet 44.248 uneasiness, restlessness other causes of disquiet
monosyllable 44.249 one syllable beyond a monosyllable
discerning 44.249 noticing with careful attention by discerning such different feelings
cordiality 44.249 sincerity, warmth the unaffected cordiality with which
ardently 44.250 passionately, intensely how ardently did she long to know
resemblance 44.250 similar appearance trying to trace a resemblance
untinctured 44.250 unstained not untinctured by tenderness
ridicule 44.251 mockery, condemnation would draw down the ridicule
patron 44.252 economic supporter with the son of his patron
discharged 44.252 got rid of which Mr. Darcy afterward discharged
petulance 44.253 ill-temper, contemptuousness forgive all the petulance and acrimony
acrimony 44.253 bitterness, ill-natured hatred in manner forgive all the petulance and acrimony
bent on 44.253 inclined to, interested in bent on making her known to his sister

1
QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Forty-three
1. Why do you think that this chapter is considered one of the most important of the novel?

2. How does Pemberley reflect its owner?

3. Why is Darcy's invitation to Elizabeth to meet his sister significant?

Chapter Forty-four
4. How does Elizabeth feel about meeting Miss Darcy?

5. Do Darcy and his sister have anything in common? Do Elizabeth and Miss Darcy have anything in common?

6. Was Elizabeth's first impression of Darcy completely wrong?

7. One of the hardest things a novelist can do is portray convincingly a change in a character. Does Austen succeed with Darcy?
If so, how?

Chapters 43-44

NEW CHARACTER
Mrs. Annesley Miss Darcy's current governess, with whom she lives in London.

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. There is one odd spelling: secresy for secrecy.

word ch.pg definition context

saloon 45.255 large reception room, for entertaining through the hall into the saloon
predominate 45.256 dominate, be of greater power believed her wishes to predominate
exerted 45.257 put forth effort exerted herself much more to talk
disengaged 45.257 uninvolved in a tolerably disengaged tone
discomposed 45.257 disturb the calmness of someone merely intended to discompose Elizabeth
meditated 45.257 planned or intended in the mind Miss Darcy's meditated elopement
ensure 45.258 make certain of enough to ensure her favour
shrewish 45.258 scolding, nagging have a sharp, shrewish look
nettled 45.259 irritated, vexed look somewhat nettled
confined 46.261 restricted though not confined for time
renewing 46.262 restore, re-establish anxiously renewing them
turnpikes 46.262 road with a toll at all the turnpikes
exigence 46.262 urgent situation In such an exigence my uncle's advice
impetuous 46.263 impulsive, hasty impetuous manner
superceded 46.263 replace, take the place of every idea was superceded by Lydia's situation
commissioned 46.263 put into service she commissioned him
unintelligible 46.263 unable to be understood made her almost unintelligible
commiseration 46.263 sympathize with, express pity for in a tone of gentleness and commiseration
wretched 46.263 miserable in wretched suspense
palliation 46.264 easing, act of making less severe afforded no palliation of her distress
retrospective 46.265 looking back on the past threw a retrospective glance
infamy 46.266 evil fame or reputation Lydia's infamy must produce
anguish 46.266 mental pain, torment found additional anguish
prey 46.266 victim from falling an easy prey
fluctuating 46.266 varying irregularly had been continually fluctuating
wild 46.266 full of intense emotion She was wild to be at home
deranged 46.266 disturbed from normal condition in a family so deranged
summons 46.266 request to go/come somewhere the cause of their summons
actuated 46.267 put into action all three being actuated by one spirit

2
QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Forty-five
1. How are Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner received at Pemberley by the Bingley sisters, Miss Darcy, and Darcy?

2. What evidence can you find for Darcy's current feelings for Elizabeth?

Chapter Forty-six
3. What do you think Darcy is thinking on page 265-266? What does Elizabeth think about after he leaves?

Chapters 47-48

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. The words in bold will be on the next vocabulary test.
There is one odd spelling: drily for dryly.

word ch.pg definition context

decency 47.268 quality of being proper or moral violation of decency
hackney coach 47.268 carriage for hire into an hackney coach
expeditiously 47.269 quickly though less expeditiously
insinuating 47.270 suggesting he is insinuating
keenest 47.271 sharpest keenest of all anguish
interval 47.271 period of time find no interval of ease
paddock 47.271 fenced area as they entered the paddock
capers 47.271 leaping about a variety of capers and frisks
frisks 47.271 playful movement a variety of capers and frisks
fugitives 47.272 someone who flees from something heard of the fugitives
sanguine 47.272 optimistic The sanguine hope of good
apartment 47.272 room, group of rooms to whose apartment they all repaired
invectives 47.272 critical language invectives against the villanous conduct
villanous 47.272 viciously wicked or criminal; obnoxious invectives against the villanous conduct
(now, villainous)
spasms 47.274 cramps such spasms in my sides
moderation 47.274 not excessive or extreme activity recommending moderation to her
seclusion 47.274 state of being set apart from others such a seclusion from the family
incurred 47.274 brought upon one's self she had herself incurred in the business
stem the tide 47.274 stop or hold back the force of something stem the tide of malice
balm 47.274 something that soothes, heals, or comforts balm of sisterly consolation
brittle 47.275 easily breakable no less brittle than it is beautiful
extractions 47.275 extract; passage from a literary work moral extractions
apprehension 47.275 ability to understand Had they no apprehension of any thing
faculties 47.277 power or ability took from me my faculties
condole 47.278 express sympathy or sorrow condole with us
dilatory 48.279 tending to delay or procrastinate negligent and dilatory correspondent
correspondent 48.279 one who communicates through letters negligent and dilatory correspondent
striving 48.279 trying hard seemed striving to blacken the man
blacken 48.279 defame, ruin the reputation of someone seemed striving to blacken the man
intrigues 48.279 secret love affairs, schemes his intrigues
alleviate 48.281 make more bearable can alleviate so severe a misfortune
licentiousness 48.281 having no regard for acceptable rules or this licentiousness of behaviour
behaviour, lacking moral restraint
augmented 48.282 increased augmented satisfaction
heinous 48.282 extremely wicked her own heinous offence
transpired 48.282 happened, occurred it had just transpired that
gamester 48.282 a frequent gambler "A gamester!" she cried.
intreaty 48.283 plea his brother-in-law's intreaty that he
(also spelled, entreaty)

3
QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Forty-seven
1. Who do you think is to blame for the Bennet family crisis?

2. What self-reproach (criticism of herself) does Elizabeth reveal on page 271-272?

Chapter Forty-eight
3. How would you describe Mr. Collins' letter?

4. How has this family crisis affected Mr. Bennet?

Chapters 49-51

NEW CHARACTER
Haggerston Mr. Gardiner's lawyer or accountant (it's not explained).

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. There is one odd thing: dont for don't.

word ch.pg definition context

copse 49.285 area of small trees or shrubs walking towards the little copse
decease 49.286 death after the decease of yourself
per annum 49.286 per year one hundred pounds per annum
explicitly 49.287 clearly, precisely be careful to write explicitly
Heaven forbid! 49.288 exclamation of shock or disgust Ten thousand pounds! Heaven forbid!
requited 49.288 repaid, returned The kindness...can never be requited
calico, muslin, 49.290 kinds of fabric all the particulars of calico, muslin, and cambric
and cambric
proportionate 50.293 properly related with proportionate speed through the neighborhood
spiteful 50.293 wishing ill on others, malicious from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton
guinea 50.294 old British gold coin worth a bit over a would not advance a guinea to buy clothes
pound
spurned 50.295 rejected, refused, scorned proudly spurned only four months ago
multitude 50.296 large group of people teach the admiring multitude
connubial 50.296 having to do with marriage what connubial felicity really was
welfare 50.296 condition, situation promote the welfare of any of his family
subjoin 50.296 add at the end, append of whom I shall subjoin a list
culprit 51.298 one guilty or at fault for a crime had she been the culprit
austerity 51.298 severe, stern, grave, somber His countenance had rather gained in austerity
untamed 51.298 not tamed, wild untamed and unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless
unabashed 51.298 not embarrassed untamed and unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless
curricle 51.299 a light, opened, 2-wheeled carriage overtook William Goulding in his curricle
commission 51.300 government document indicating military received his commission before he left London
rank
cogent 51.303 convincing for very cogent reasons

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Forty-nine
1. What is the great act of generosity Mr. Bennet and Elizabeth believe that Mr. Gardiner has done for the family?

Chapter Fifty
2. What are Elizabeth's thoughts about and feelings toward Darcy now (294-296)?

Chapter Fifty-one
3. What is so outrageous about Lydia's behavior at Longbourn?

4
 4. In watching the newlyweds, what assessment does Elizabeth give of their relationship (301)?

Chapters 52-53

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel. On page 314, there is an old verb form you may not know:
shan't, which means shall not.

word ch.pg definition context

comprise 52.304 consist of, be composed of a little writing will not comprise what I have to tell you
dreadfully 52.304 terribly not so dreadfully racked as your's seems
racked 52.304 tormented, strained not so dreadfully racked as your's seems
motive 52.304 reason for doing something The motive professed was his conviction
confide 52.305 share a secret, open up to emotionally love or confide in him
remedy 52.305 fix, solve endeavour to remedy an evil
expedite 52.305 make happen quickly to secure and expedite a marriage
battled 52.306 engaged in discussing something They battled it together for a long time
against the grain 52.306 against what is desired or what is went sorely against the grain
proper
reserve 52.307 self-restraint, quality of keeping things I doubt whether his reserve, or anybody's
private
sly 52.308 cunning I thought him very sly
presuming 52.308 having excessive self-confidence I have been very presuming
overtaken 52.309 catch up with, take by surprise she was overtaken by Wickham
palateable 52.311 agreeable, acceptable to the mind or when sermon-making was not palateable to you
(usually senses
spelled
"palatable")
compromised 52.311 exposed to suspicion or danger the business had been compromised accordingly
simpers 53.312 silly smiles He simpers and smirks and makes love to us all.
smirks 53.312 self-conscious smiles He simpers and smirks and makes love to us all.
forlorn 53.312 sad One seems so forlorn without them.
fidgets 53.313 nervous movements Mrs. Bennet was quite in the fidgets.
speculation 53.314 risky guessing without raising all this speculation
etiquette 53.314 social rule 'Tis an etiquette I despise.
tidings 53.315 information, news have the earliest tidings of it
partake 53.315 take part in, share called to partake their joy
lustre 53.316 brightness added lustre to her eyes
irremediable 53.317 impossible to repair or correct from irremediable infamy

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Fifty-two
1. What is Mrs. Gardiner's opinion of Darcy?

2. Why does Elizabeth say she is proud of Darcy?

3. How does Elizabeth behave toward Wickham?

Chapter Fifty-three
4. How does this chapter parallel an earlier chapter?

5. What does Elizabeth have to endure? What does she find so painful?

5
Chapters 54-55

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context

confederacy 54.322 group of people united by a purpose in so close a confederacy
indignity 54.322 humiliating or degrading experience There is no indignity so abhorrent
rapacity 54.323 greed her mother's rapacity for whist players
venison 54.323 deer meat The venison was roasted to a turn
partridges 54.323 wild game birds the partridges were remarkably well done

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Fifty-four
1. What humor is there in this chapter? What anxiety is there in this chapter?

Chapter Fifty-five
2. What does Bingley not tell Jane, and why is Elizabeth grateful?

3. What is Mr. Bennet's opinion of Jane and Bingley's marriage? Do you agree with him?

4. What were Bingley's and Jane's main mistakes in the development of their relationship?

Chapters 56-57

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context

equipage 56.332 livery, carriage appearance the equipage did not answer to that of
prevailed 56.332 became effective, won out Bingley instantly prevailed on Miss Bennet
ungracious 56.332 not gracious, not polite with an air more than usually ungracious
allurements 56.335 temptations, attractive qualities your arts and allurements may have made him
entitled 56.335 given the right or claim to something But you are not entitled to know mine
brooking 56.336 putting up with, tolerating in the habit of brooking disappointment
upstart 56.337 self-important The upstart pretensions of a young woman
recede 56.337 withdraw, retreat Do not believe...that I will ever recede.
ambition 56.339 eager or strong desire to achieve Do not imagine...that your ambition will ever
something
revolving 57.340 pondering, reflecting on In revolving lady Catherine's expressions
wavering 57.341 having no decision, moving back and forth If he had been wavering before
constancy 57.341 faithfulness, steadfastness in purpose every wish of his constancy
sagacity 57.342 wisdom I may defy even your sagacity
illustrious 57.342 famous, distinguished one of the most illustrious personages in this land
personages 57.342 people one of the most illustrious personages in this land
precipitate 57.342 hasty, impulsive by a precipitate closure with this gentleman's
diverted 57.343 amused, entertained Are you not diverted?
rector 57.343 clergyman had I been rector of Longbourn
Missish 57.343 coy, girlish You are not going to Missish, I hope
penetration 57.344 understanding, insight wonder at such a want of penetration

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Fifty-six
1. How does Elizabeth show her strength of character in the conversation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh?

2. Besides this chapter, where else does someone warn Elizabeth against a marriage? How are the tones of the scenes different?
6
Chapter Fifty-seven
3. What does Elizabeth think is the nature of the relationship between Lady Catherine and Darcy?

4. When he is writing about Darcy to Mr. Bennet, in which sentences does Collins reveal his character fully (343)?

5. Where does Mr. Bennet reveal his outlook on life in one sentence (343-344)?

Chapters 58-59

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context

lagged 58.345 stayed or fell behind, lingered They lagged behind
diffused 58.346 spread diffused over his face
indebted 58.347 owing gratitude to another person indebted for their present good understanding
contrariwise 58.347 opposite its effect had been exactly contrariwise.
irrevocably 58.347 cannot be changed, unalterably absolutely, irrevocably decided against me
premises 58.347 something believed or presumed formed on mistaken premises
annexed 58.347 connected the greater share of blame annexed to that evening
irreproachable 58.347 cannot be criticized The conduct of neither...will be irreproachable
reconciled 58.347 come to accept something unpleasant I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself.
devoid 58.348 empty, completely without You thought me then devoid of every proper feeling
overbearing 58.349 dominant, proud almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing
unabated 58.350 without end, continuing his attachment to her was unabated
article 59.353 matter, point When convinced on that article, Miss Bennet had
epithet 59.354 abusive word or phrase describing a always giving him such an epithet
person
disposing 59.355 getting rid of fears and regrets in disposing of her
incredulity 59.356 disbelief she did conquer her father's incredulity
rant 59.357 talk in a noisy or excited manner he will rant and storm about his love for you
storm 59.357 be in a passion, rage he will rant and storm about his love for you
gaiety 59.304 high spirits, merriment Every thing was too recent for gaiety

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Fifty-eight
1. Describe the style of the new proposal. Why do you think Austen shows it this way?

2. What do Elizabeth and Darcy say about their past behavior?

3. What is ironic about Lady Catherine's interference?

Chapter Fifty-nine
4. Here's a thought: Who did more for whom: Darcy for Lydia, or Lydia for Darcy? Explain.

5. How would you describe the reaction the impending marriage receives from Jane, Mr. Bennet, and Mrs. Bennet?

7
Chapters 60-61

VOCABULARY: I have defined the words as they are used in the novel.

word ch.pg definition context

avowed 60.361 declared with confidence or openly My avowed one, or what I avowed to myself
befall 60.361 happen to what is to befall her?
vicinity 61.364 area, neighborhood So near a vicinity to her mother
moralize 61.365 explain or interpret morally but she could still moralize over every morning
arrear 61.366 debt paid off every arrear of civility to Elizabeth
sportive 61.366 playful at her lively, sportive, manner of talking
indignant 61.367 filled with anger over something that Lady Catherine was extremely indignant
seems unjust

QUESTIONS to check your understanding:

Chapter Sixty
1. What made Darcy fall in love with Elizabeth?

2. What do you think is the tone and content of Elizabeth's letter to her aunt? of Darcy's letter to his aunt?

3. What worries Elizabeth (363)? How does Darcy respond?

Chapter Sixty-one
4. How is Elizabeth's belief that Lydia and Wickham's marriage cannot be a good one confirmed in this chapter?

5. Describe Miss Bingley's, Georgiana Darcy's, and Lady Catherine's reaction, feelings, and attitudes toward Darcy's marriage and
his new wife?

6. What does the end of the novel say about Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner's role?