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Pride and Prejudice’s Negative Character Traits In Jane Austen’s unique 19th century love story, Pride and Prejudice, Austen shows negative aspects in a good amount of her characters to make heavy conflict arise throughout the novel. “Austen explains that someone’s actions explain how their morals are” (Bloom 1). Some characters put up facades and try to hide their feelings from others within the story, while other characters wear their hearts on their sleeves and always show what they feel inside.
Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy and Mrs. Bennet show the most negative aspects out of all the characters. “And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody. ” (Austen 56). Elizabeth Bennet portrays an enormous amount of prejudice against people, especially Mr. Darcy. She alleged that Mr. Darcy would be an unkind, stubborn and prideful man of his wealth. Mr. Darcy explains in the novel, “She is Tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me” (Austen 13).
Austen shows that Elizabeth is infatuated with Mr. Darcy at the beginning of the book, but he shows much interest in her because she is not pretty enough for him, and her class is much lower than his own. After he denies her dance offer, Elizabeth thinks that he is rude and prideful, and has no business to do with him for a short while. This slowly begins to show that her prejudice against Mr. Darcy might be a correct assumption. In Austen’s story, true love does not occur often, and Mr.
Darcy ignores his calling with Elizabeth Bennet when she asks him to dance at the ball, and he denies her offer because he does not find her handsome enough for him, and because of her inferior social status in comparison to his. During the beginning of the book, Mr. Darcy disregards Elizabeth because of her social status and he additionally does not find her pretty enough for his standards. He also Kwit 2 denies her denies her dance offer in an unkind way, which offends and confuses Elizabeth. Mr.
Darcy acts unkindly to others of lower class because he is prideful and feels like he is a better person then them. “Mother knows best” is apparently not very relevant to Mrs. Bennet, as he does not seem to show much care for any of her five daughter’s happiness. When Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Collins are in town, she instructs her daughter’s to pursue them and try to obtain a marriage proposal. She does that because there is no male heir to the family land, because the Bennet has all daughters and no sons. However, if Mrs.
Bennet actually cared about her daughters happiness, she would want them to find true love and not a marriage based around what is owned by the husband and the effects of the marriage upon herself. Mrs. Bennet is a selfish women who really only cares about herself and her husband, which is why she tells Elizabeth to marry Mr. Collins even though she does not love him. Pride and Prejudice is strongly based on characters breaking expectations, like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth’s love for each other despite Elizabeth’s inferior social status compared to Mr.
Darcy’s. He becomes less prideful as the book continues, and Elizabeth’s prejudice is nonexistent near the end of the book as she sees the true person that Mr. Darcy is. On the contrary, Mrs. Bennet does not change as she still wants her daughters to marry whoever is the best choice of a man, and shows she still does not care for what they want, simply what they should have to have the family be properly supported. Almost every character within the Austen’s work shows negative traits, and it creates the conflict that makes up the story as a whole.