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Prideful Attitude In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice

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Throughout Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen uses most of the characters to display a prideful attitude. Although many of the characters display pride through the novel, Mr. Darcy has the most pride. Despite the fact of Mr. Darcy being very prideful at the beginning of the novel, he became a lot less prideful toward the end of the novel. Austen displayed Mr. Darcy this way to show that it is possible to overcome pride. In the novel almost all of the characters show prideful behavior, but Austen transformed Mr. Darcy’s pride from unfavorable to respectable. This displays pride as being one of the main themes in the novel, and shows how Austen believes it is possible to overcome pride. When Fitzwilliam Darcy was first introduced in the …show more content…

When Mr. Darcy was rejected by Elizabeth during his marriage proposal, he realized how prideful and arrogant he must have been. This is where Mr. Darcy began to change, and in chapter 38 Mr. Darcy gives Elizabeth a letter explaining all of his earlier actions. Elizabeth’s opinion of him changed, and she no longer thought that he was as bad as he was before. According to Ray, “After Darcy’s second, successful proposal to Elizabeth, the two have something of an apology contest. He is acknowledging that he has behaved badly, in an ungentlemanly man­ ner, when his pride was under no regulation”(Jay 47). After this Mr. Darcy finally has control of his pride and he has now went from an unfavorable to a respectful pride. Although Mr. Darcy was the main character that displayed pride in the novel, other characters had prideful characteristics also. Elizabeth also had some prideful characteristics that are evident here, “Elizabeth also prides herself on being a good judge of character. (This from a girl who's twenty years old, mind you)”(Shmoop Editorial Team par.5). This shows an instance where Elizabeth thinks she can judge a person by what she knows. She ends up losing that pride when she realizes she has judged Mr. Darcy in the wrong way and, liked Wickham who was deceiving her. Although they both end up changing, they are not fully free of pride. They still were able to overcome it.
In conclusion Austen used Mr. Darcy and some other

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