A Tale of Two Vices; Pride and Pragmatism
Birds twitter in the outside wilderness of a garden, overrun by spring and all its cheer. The house shutters are all sprung open and the tart early lavender, washed with the smell of crocus and daffodils, envelops the dimly lit and musty estate. The keys of the piano pulse as its soft sound drifts through the hall and fills the air (Imagery). The family idly mingles about the yard, house, and the nearby town. One reads, another draws, some embroider, and others are calling on neighbors. The younger family members are out buying ribbons and the father is in his study working away on business affairs. This sweet and calm kind of English atmosphere is a demonstration of the setting Jane Austen creates in many of her novels, including her beloved Pride and Prejudice. This satire is a well-known and well-loved classic around the world. Austen’s unique characters bring the story to life through their very defined individuality, but realistic touch. The characters are extreme, make the plot flow perfectly, and yet they are just people that could be met on the street any day. Austen dug an unmatchable level of depth into each of the many roles, but the greatest being her heroine, Elizabeth Bennett. It is extremely difficult, nearly impossible, to read Pride and Prejudice and not love Lizzy. Her vivacity and energy mixed with wit and good looks makes her perfect in the eyes of the reader. Jane said herself “I must confess that I think her [Lizzy] as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, & how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know” (Austen letter). A character who receives less acknowledgement or sympathy is Elizabeth’s best friend, Charlotte Lucas, who has many interesting parallels with Lizzy. Although Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas share similar social positions,when identical marriage proposals occur, they show very distinct approaches to marriage, revealing a mindset of pride and pragmatism towards the ideas of love and happiness that will ultimately lead them both into a skeptical view of the world.
Lifestyle
From the beginning of the novel, Elizabeth and Charlotte share similar lifestyles, interests, and family circumstances while living in a time of social instability without marriage. Elizabeth Bennett lives a relatively posh idealistic life, in the regency era, as a second born gentleman's daughter with a routine lifestyle. Settled neatly in the middle class among the rich, she can comfortably go about her business without too much extravagance. Neither being poor, nor rich, the Bennetts are in a position of instability in the genteel class. The regency age is famous for the insecurity about title, birth class, and marriage class (Polysyndeton), and everyone was always trying to climb higher up the social-hierarchy of the time. For example, when Mr. Collins asks Mrs. Bennet, which of his lovely cousins made him his meal Mrs. Bennet is offended. There is an assumption of poverty in the idea of the daughter making the meal. “Mrs. Bennett, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do with it” (Austen 56). The idea of being second rate upperclassmen is a constant battle the Bennet’s fight and is a cause for much of the problem throughout the plot of the story. The only way for a woman of that time to level higher in the social class was to marry higher up the pyramid (Metaphor), so this was the goal of every young woman, and her mother, including Mrs. Bennett. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering the neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters” (Austen 1).
Just like Elizabeth, Charlotte is a single girl growing up in the competitive world of regency England. She has a large family and a father who obtains a reasonable living. The common practices and societal rules wear Charlotte down as she is continually struggling for matrimony. As a homely twenty-seven-year old woman, without prospects, she is an embarrassment to her parents. “The whole family was in short properly overjoyed on the occasion. The younger girls formed hopes of coming out a year or two sooner than they might otherwise have done; and the boys were relieved from their apprehension of Charlotte dying in Old Maid” (Austen 102). Spintsters were rare and an oddity (Asyndeton), quite undesirable, and not fashionable to have in the family. Women in the day had little to no means of a living apart from the men, so an unmarried woman could only be supported by her father. This could easily become tiresome for the parents and also difficult to continue after they died. Charlotte is in a position of anxiety, guilt, and shame, at the condition of her social life, as well as longing for a home of her own and maybe children. Her singleness not only is difficult for her parents, but also holds her sisters back. Due to regency mores, it was very difficult for younger sisters to go out and get married if their older sister was not so. Her singleness not only is painful to herself but is at the expense of her family. Elizabeth and Charlotte are both single girls living in a wealthy culture with strictly defined rules that creates harsh boundaries around their lives, providing much social instability, especially without advantageous marriage.
Marriage Proposal
As the story progresses and the character arcs advance, the Bennett’s cousin Mr. Collins enters the stage and proposes to both Elizabeth and Charlotte, one after the other. Elizabeth is Collin’s first choice, but she totally and completely rejects(Tautology) him. Mr. Collins first chooses Lizzy because she is his cousin, and he wants to ensure there is no hostilities between her family and his. This advantage appears to contain no persuasive power on Elizabeth, so he continues by explaining all his other reasons for matrimony. High on the list of marital virtues is the fact that it is the “most desired wish of”(Austen 89) his patroness lady Catherine de Bourgh.. Collins also likes her “fun nature” (Cohen). Lizzy is energetic, pleasant, and very clever, not to mention pretty, though not as pretty as her sister Jane, still a fine girl and one to be sought after. Charlotte is proposed to only days after Mr. Collins’ initial rejection, and this marriage appears to be a pragmatic contract for both sides. Mr. Collins shutters at the idea of leaving Houndsford in disgrace and rejected, and so to return to Lady Catherine wifeless. Opportunities are seized on both sides. Mr. Collins must find a wife quickly, and Charlotte has been wanting a husband for some time. So, she widdles her way into his mind by inviting him to her home and paying him constant attention for a few days. Instead of vivacity, as Collins had intuitionally desired, he set it in his mind that Charlotte's humble demeanor would please Lady Catherine much more.
Security
Upon receiving identical proposals from the same man, Elizabeth and Charlotte reveal two sharply contrasting approaches to securing their romantic futures and their ideas about marriage. Throughout the story, Elizabeth is seen as a strongly principled, stubborn, smart, girl, who does not compromise what she believes, ever. Joe Rigney, author, pastor, and professor in Moscow Idaho, words it beautifully as he explained Lizzy’s stance, in a video series done on Jane Austen’s Novel. Elizabeth believes strongly that marriage, or at least a strong, healthy marriage, must be grown from a rooted foundation of “respect, gratitude, and then blooms into a deep, undying, and true love” (Rigney) (metaphor). When Mr. Collin’s perfectly acceptable proposal by the world’s standards is rejected, Elizabeth is not making a feminist statement on a desire for independence, nor is she displaying a unlatching from cultural norms. “I am determined that only the deepest love will induce me into matrimony. So, I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to embroider cushions and play their instruments very ill” (Austen). Elizabeth is acting upon her principles of matrimony. She is confident that she could not respect a man such as Mr. Collins, and she views herself entirely above him. It would be better, in her mind, to be unmarried and a burden, then be the wife of Mr. Collins for the rest of her days. She does this same thing with Darcy, but in this instance she is actually mistaken. She is so confident in herself as a judge of character. She prides herself on her ability to categorize people into their proper places, and always, subconsciously has herself on top. This pride could have been the ruin of her (hyperbole).
Charlotte assumes the opposite approach, choosing inevitable challenges in her marriage over her lonely, socially scoffed at singleness. Charlotte believed that happiness in marriage was entirely a matter of chance, using these exact words when she says, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least” (Austen). Charlotte does not care who she marries as long as her very few hypothetical boxes of matrimony are checked. “I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home” (Austen 105). Charlotte’s ideas actually appear to take marriage more as a contract and less of a covenant. After their marriage, Mr. Collins believes he and his wife are of one mind, as they biblically should be, but really Charlotte is actually just manipulating and managing (alliteration) him. She actually reprimands Lizzy for striving to understand people's characters, particularly men. If Elizabeth receives any title of virtue because of her consistency with principles, Charlotte should as well, because she also acts and speaks cohesively with her own ideas. Author of the article “Instrument of Growth: The Courtship and Marriage Plot in Jane Austen's Novels,” William H. Magee, explains it this way, articulating, “If accepted, Charlotte’s philosophy that “happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance” would make nonsense of Elizabeth’s persistent efforts to judge others, especially potential suitors by their “merit” and “sense”” (Magee) because no matter how much is known, there is always an element of uncertainty. Charlotte pragmatically decides she has better chance of happiness with Mr. Collins than an uncertain future. She chooses a utilitarian marriage of virtue and respect. Because of the similarity between the proposals, a dividing revelation about Elizabeth and Charlotte’s views on marriage occurs.
The Jaded End
Despite differing faults, Elizabeth’s pride, and Charlotte’s pragmatism lead both girls into a similar state of jaded skepticism toward the world, and men. After turning down two suitors, due to her pride, Elizabeth becomes very solemn, and cynical of everything. When her Aunt asks her to join them on a vacation, she replies “What are men to rocks and mountains” (Austen). Her aunt rebukes, “take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment” (Austen). Her language gets stronger. “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense” (Austen). Speaking directly about men she rages, “Men are either eaten up with arrogance or stupidity. If they are amiable, they have no minds of their own” (Austen). The fact is, Lizzy is disappointed. Pride is the father of depression, and it holds a person in an illusion of reality (Personification). Toby Sumpter, pastor and author, explains and defines pride as “idolatry of self.” Pride imagines, projects, creates, self-indicates, self-excuses, pretends. Self-engrandizing, “it retells the story of sin, both personally and historically.” Pride hates shame and everything weak and embarrassing. “Self love and self assurance has to look in the mirror because they worship themselves, but when they do they see, there's nothing there” (Sumpter). When all that can be seen is self, everyone else seems so utterly insignificant, worthless. The world is unable to meet the standard the imageriner has made, thinking that it’s what they themselves are living up to. Everyone is hopeless, and Lizzy is the only person in the entire world who is above it all, who can see, who has her eyes open; this is the false reality she has let her pride create. How could she not be jaded by this hopeless view(Rhetorical question)? “Pride leads us into every Folly and vice and God detest it. He means to take a sledgehammer to it, which he does through the gospel of a suffering servant studying the meekness of wisdom” said Tabletalk magazine writer John F. Evans. Humility is the only way out of the bog.
Charlotte, though thought of as sensible and humble, has another form of jadedness, due to her lifestyle of absolute pragmatism. Admitting that she is not romantic, Charlotte actually looks down on the romantic view of life. She thinks Jane is silly for wanting genuine attachment from Bingley, and tries to convince her that she must act pragmatically, not caring about love or virtue. “There are very few who have enough heart to be really in love without encouragement” (Austen). There is no room for true foundational love in her schemes. R.C. Sproul declared pragmatism to be a “self-defeating system with no theoretical or practical value” (Sproul). Pragmatism is not practical. “Pragmatism is built upon a trust of yourself and no one else” (Longshore) or nothing else (Anaphora). It is an unrealistic form of trying to view the world realistically; trying to make a complicated reality simple. This can cause skepticism for anything outside of self, and what self proclaims to be pragmatic. “For Charlotte Lucas, 'without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object'” (Moe). Charlotte views marriage as a pragmatic social choice, not as a beautiful, harmonious becoming of one flesh by union. The poetry of her story lost all joy. In a pragmatic world, joy is an extravagance. No matter the ideal behind their choices, both Elizabeth and Charlotte end up and a state of constant skepticism and bitter disappointment towards the world and men.
Although Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas share similar social positions and both receive marriage proposals from Mr. Collins, they differ significantly in their beliefs about security and marriage, which ultimately shape their distinct sceptical views of the world and men. Much knowledge can be gained by a deep comparing and contrasting of the two girls, and as Christine Cohen, author and the director of the Camperdown MFA program at New St. Andrew’s College, articulates, “Stories help us make sense of the world” (Cohen). They teach truths about reality from an external or fictional reality, giving a clear, newer perspective on the real world. When readers think deeper about these characters, they begin to think deeper about themselves, who God made them to be. In Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis illustrates the fact that it is not until the reader reads and evaluates others that the blinds are pulled off their own eyes, revealing the truth about who they really are, leaving them raw and ready (Polysyndeton)to become a new creation. So, the regency world is left, the spring country of England is fading, and readers must judge what they have just read.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Cranford Collection, 2022.
Cohen, Christine, Rigney, Joseph. “Pride and Prejudice: A Four Part Discussion.” Canon Plus,
25 July 2025.
Evans, John F. “Gaining Wisdom.” Tabletalk Magazines,October 2023, pp. 26.
Friday, Chawton. Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, 29 January 1813. 8 Mar. 2021.
Longshore, Jared. “Pragmatism Is Impractical.” Canon Press, 24 May 2022.
Magee, William H. “Instrument of Growth: The Courtship and Marriage Plot in Jane Austen’s
Novels.” The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 17, no. 2, 1987, pp. 198–208. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225182. Accessed 29 Jan. 2026.
Moe, Melina. “Charlotte and Elizabeth: Multiple Modernites in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and
Prejudice.’” ELH, vol. 83, no. 4, 2016, pp. 1075–103. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26173905. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.
Sumpters, Toby. “How Pride is the Father of Depression.” Canon Press, 30 May 2022. Accessed
6 February 2026.
