In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen uses a multitude of letters to allow characters like Darcy to apologize and explain themselves or to reveal their kindness. In the novel, letters intensify Lizzy’s emotions towards Darcy just like they intensify Malvolio's emotions towards Olivia in Twelfth Night. Jane Austen and William Shakespeare don’t just use letters but use what they have to offer, both in their selectivity and the barrier they place between the reader and the writer to get different effects from the characters in the novel.
The letter in volume II, chapter 35 from Darcy to Elizabeth is used by Austen to give the reader a new perspective on the separation of Bingley from Jane and to show how letters offer a shield between the Darcy and Lizzy when information is delivered. The letter takes place after Elizabeth rejects Darcy’s marriage proposal and she rejects him due to his intervention in her sister’s happiness but he uses the letter to apologize and justify himself. The letter acts as the first long period of Darcy's thoughts and opinions because throughout the beginning of the novel Darcy is reserved and keeps to himself. “Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me.--It is done, however, and it was done for the best”(pg.194). In the book Lizzy defends her family no matter how
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But, Lizzy, this must go no farther than yourself, or Jane at most.(pg.306-307)
The letter consists of Mrs. Gardiner revealing the kindness of Mr. Darcy and the help he provided the Bennet family in covering up Lydia’s indiscretion with Wickham. Austen uses letters not only like texts but as secrets because they are directed at a particular person or group. Only the writer or the readers of a letter have the power to reveal the letter's content. In volume III Mrs. Bennet and others still see Mr. Darcy as a prideful and insipid person ,but Austen gives Lizzy the ability to know his true, kind self by revealing the letter to just