Loyalty In Pride And Prejudice By Jane Austen

An angle of Pride and Prejudice which advances plausibility to Austen’s work is the stretch of social class in her description of admirable qualities. From wealthy and respected Lady Catherine to Mr. Wickham, the avaricious “wickedest young man in the world,” (Austen 201) Austen shows the reader the electrifying perspective of life in the English countryside; highlighting many discrepancies between wealth and gender roles of characters both high and low in status. An item that blazes much about Austen’s character is that the patricians tend not the realize that their actions directly correspond with the stereotype of their class, but rather naturally coming from their haughtiness in power and wealth. they are also habituated to the lower classes

Wickham’s charms, and Caroline Bingley’s obvious disdain for Elizabeth’s trust in Wickham makes it clear that she sees her as being easily taken in when Caroline states with a “sneer, ‘Excuse my interference, it was kindly meant’” (99). Elizabeth, deceived into believing Wickham to be sincere, questions the fine line between a “mercenary and prudent motive” when he becomes engaged to the previously undesirable Mary King upon her sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds, which prevents a negative effect on the Bennet family. (159). Wickham only cared about

Clearly, he possesses great distaste for his aunt’s “unjustifiable endeavors” (393) to regulate his life and “is a little ashamed of ill breeding” (179). Elizabeth brings him to the realization that the upper classes have no right to order the lives of their social inferiors or, on the opposite hand, to detach themselves from the warmth of society through “improper pride” (388).
When Darcy meets the Gardiners whom he has characterized as Elizabeth’s “inferior connections” (199), he discovers their character and elegance which stand in sharp contrast to his own aunt’s “ill breeding.” In words which illuminate the nature of the high aristocracy, Darcy admits that he was “allowed, encouraged, almost taught to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own”