Pride and Prejudice Literary Essay The characteristics of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth change throughout the novel after series of accusations and assumptions. Realizing a flaw can be a major step towards fixing it, but admitting when one has a flaw is the real test. Throughout the novel, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth recognize their flaws and fault themselves for the unsatisfactory being of others. The author’s message through this series of events is that nobody is perfect, and that it takes a great deal of effort to recognize and overcome a flaw. By the middle of the eighteenth century, being a gentleman meant more than just being a rich landowner born into the position or title of gentleman. Once people could get rich on their own, the term began …show more content…
Elizabeth doesn’t like him, so she thinks that she needs to tell her friend her opinion, so she doesn’t make any rash decisions. Elizabeth just does not stop to consider the situation from her friend’s point of view and to appreciate the fact that her friend might feel and act differently to herself. This all points towards Elizabeth’s flaw of judging people too quickly. Greater tolerance of others is what Elizabeth must learn, and to see beyond her own prejudices towards others. Midway through the novel, she comes to a sudden full realization of this, of how she has let her preconceptions about Darcy entirely mislead her as to his respective true nature. She criticizes herself for her blindness: “How despicably have I acted!” she cried. “I, who have prided myself on my discernment!.... Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.” Elizabeth also has to learn to behave with more class in public. The novel makes clear that her free and easy manners are to be taken only up to a point. While being open and honest with others, she has also to learn not to overstep the mark. By the end of the novel, after she and Darcy have finally come together, she openly admits to him that her manners towards him at the beginning were concluded on outright