Pride and Prejudice Jounal

Pride and Prejudice Journal 2

 “Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority -- of its being a degradation -- of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.  (Page 111)

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen explores the relationship between two unlikely partners- Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. Despite coming from contrasting social classes, they end up falling in love.  However, this does not happen without an abundance of tension and conflict, primarily when Darcy first confesses his love to Elizabeth. In this passage, Austen employs varying sentence structure, as well as descriptive diction to develop the conflicting relationship of social status and love.

At the start of her passage, Austen concentrates on specific word choice and syntax to display to the reader the depth of Darcy’s revelation. Austen starts off the passage by exploring Elizabeth’s “astonishment”. By describing it as “beyond expression”, allows the reader to understand the depth of how rare an event like this would be, especially for Elizabeth. The syntax of the short sentence allows Austen to draw emphasis to this. Austen continues to characterize Elizabeth’s reaction as “coloured, doubted” and “silent”. Obviously, Elizabeth was not expecting Darcy to present this revelation to her, and Austen’s list-like format of adjectives pertaining Elizabeth’s reaction places emphasis on this. Despite Elizabeth looking “doubted”, Darcy continued to consider this reaction as “sufficient encouragement.” This incorrect interpretation of the situation characterizes Darcy as inexperienced. Austen then uses a semicolon to break up the run on sentence, and proceeds to describe Darcy’s “avowal” of his feelings towards Elizabeth. The connotation that Austen implies through her use of the word avowal illustrates how big of a deal this revelation is, and the structure of her sentence allows her to include details about how long-felt these feelings had been. Austen continues to praise Darcy on his speech, before acknowledging that there were feelings “besides those of the heart” present in the situation. Austen separates these clauses using a semicolon, emphasizing the contrast between the love he was eloquently declaring, and the presence of outside tensions, specifically the “subject of […] pride”. Despite his attempt, Darcy is not able to convey his message effectively, because of Elizabeth’s prior knowledge of his extreme pride, stemming from his high social class.