(After Darcy’s letter): “Both Darcy and Elizabeth realize they were wrong and go about the business of changing.”
“After Elizabeth’s airing of grievances against Darcy—even when he writes the letter the next day, he’s trying to fix things she told him about his behavior. This moment is a catalyst for him.”
“I don’t think Darcy’s character changes a lot. I think Elizabeth’s understanding of him changes.”
“He doesn’t really change much. We’re just wrong about him.”
“Lots of the novel is from Elizabeth’s perspective. There could be things going on in Darcy’s life that we don’t know about.”
“Darcy’s not interested in being nice, but he IS interested in being good.”
“Darcy’s not nice to Elizabeth at Pemberley to get her to marry him. He’s nice because she told him he was a jerk and he took it to heart and changed.”
“At the beginning I was dead-set: ‘I am NOT going to be happy when Darcy and Elizabeth get together.’ But by the end of the book… it was INCREDIBLE.”
“He’s not an evil guy—he DIDN’T really do all those things to Wickham—but not being evil is kind of a low bar. He’s not particularly nice. I think he’s…fine. But Elizabeth probably deserves better than just ‘fine.’”
“But Darcy’s DOESN’T change abruptly. The second half of the book takes place over months.”
“We hear from multiple people that this is not how he always acts. Colonel Fitzwilliam says Darcy’s acting really weird. I think there’s definitely some kind of social anxiety here.”
“Come on, there are a lot of other characters who say things we don’t like—like Lydia, right? We don’t hate Lydia.”
(shocked silence)
(friendly bullying)
“Quick poll—if the first time you meet a person they say you’re not hot enough to dance with, and later you learn, ‘oh that’s just who they are, they’re a great guy-‘…What the h***? I mean—what the h***? Okay, nevermind, that’s all I got.”
“Darcy’s not fixing the Lydia and Wickham thing for Elizabeth’s sake—he’s still not planning on proposing again at that point. He’s trying to fix what he sees as HIS mistake. ‘If I had said something earlier, this might not have happened to another person.’”
On what role love is meant to play in marriage, and what love means as far as Jane Austen is concerned:
(Mr. Collins and Charlotte know why the other person is marrying them), “…whereas with Lydia and Wickham, there’s a fundamental disconnect in what they want going into this marriage…both are bad marriages, but different levels of pretense. I think Austen is saying something about authenticity and understanding in marriages.”
“Marriage should be based upon a type of love that’s mature.”
“Being truthful is something that’s so necessary.”
“I really disagree, because all of the marriages that are devoid of love—like Charlotte and Mr. Collins and the Bennets—they’re…well…they just suck. These people don’t like each other and they’re stuck together and…it’s really a bummer.”
“I think she focuses on TIME a lot. All of the people who get married quickly have bad marriages. The more time you take between meeting the person and getting engaged, the better it goes.”
“DO Jane and Elizabeth marry for money? Or is it just so convenient that Darcy and Bingley HAPPEN to be good AND rich?”
“Elizabeth and Darcy are the best representation of love in the book because they show mutual respect, share themselves with each other, and understand each other.”
“[Elizabeth] talk all the time about how grateful she is to Darcy for helping Lydia. And on top of the more classic—respect, yes. affection, yes—there’s this weird element of…indebtedness that I didn’t know what to do with.”
Is this book Romantic, in the sense of early 1800’s Romanticism?
It’s “implying that one can never truly be rational. We always have a bias based on emotions. But there is a way to a more rational treatment of emotions.”
“Characters who purely follow their emotions and intuition are mocked throughout this book.”
“When you have those super emotional characters, they’re actually like the worst characters in the book.”
“Mrs. Bennet is NOT a Romantic as in romanticism—she’s a pure pragmatist. All she wants is for her daughters to get married and she doesn’t care how they feel about the guy.”
Is the book feminist? What do we mean by feminism, in this case? What differentiates this book from a modern-day romance novel?
“The only way that women can advance—or even survive—is through marriage.”
“Whenever we get these ideas that are…sexist—like ‘women have to be pretty, or so accomplished’—the book retaliates against that.”
“Elizabeth is proposed to twice and rejects them both. And she never settles. If you know what’s right and you wait, you can have the best of both worlds.”
“Talking about this book as a modern day romance novel—that’s what makes this book relevant today. Like if you think of that love triangle—Wickham, Darcy, and Elizabeth—that’s a trope that’s still relevant today, like Twilight, if they were vampires.”
“Elizabeth, as a character, is fleshed out. She’s not right all the time and she’s not wrong all the time, and that is beautiful.”
“Yeah, going off of that, it’s like when Darcy describes his idea of an accomplished woman and Elizabeth says, ‘No real women are like that.’”
“Women are so often seen as objects at this time. And all these women have their own thoughts. [And they stick up for themselves] Like: ‘he is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.’ Even to have that PRINTED in a book at this time is WILD. She is equal and if she marries him it will be her choice PERIOD and she SAYS that.”
“Like Mr. Collins: ‘Well, no means yes if I think it does because I’m a man’ and that is SO uncomfortable because it is the same as today.”
“[I’m uncomfortable with the way sexuality is treated in this book.] The only woman who wants something physical for herself is Lydia, and that goes BADLY—REALLY badly.”
“The idea that Jane Austen presents of equality, of well-matched relationships—still illustrates what we should strive for today.”