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CHAPTER THREE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Austen considered this novel, which was originally named First Impressions, to be her lightest, describing it as “rather too light, and bright, and sparkling” (Letters:299). It is, however, not without serious elements.
Moreover, even though it contains certain structural elements and stylised personalities in common with the other novels, and constitutes a comment on marriage, it is less overtly schematised when compared with its predecessor Sense and Sensibility.
As in Sense and Sensibility, two sisters, Jane and Elizabeth, occupy central roles, each counterbalancing the other, and together counterbalancing the unrestrained passions and follies of their younger sisters; Mrs Bennet is another of Austen’s stereotypic, ineffectual, yet conniving mothers, a neurotic who is largely preoccupied with the effects of events on her own nerves; Lady Catherine de Bourgh is reminiscent of Mrs Churchill in her snobbishness and self-interested controlling behaviour, and Wickham bears a strong resemblance both to Willoughby and to Mr William Elliot.
Furthermore Austen once again focuses to a degree on illness and accident. But although Mrs Bennet is obsessed with her nerves, and her fears of Mr Bennet’s death, highlighting the non-physical dimension of her ill health, and although the story could not proceed in the absence of Jane’s illness, and its consequent exposure of Elizabeth to Darcy, and Jane to the Bingley household, physical illness appears to play no significant role in character growth in Pride and Prejudice.
Austen, in this novel, just as in Sense and Sensibility, also distinguishes between illnesses that merely further plot, and illnesses that either lead to changes in her characters or to their emotional growth: Jane’s fever is central to the plot, for even though Bingley is struck by her beauty at their first meeting, if Jane had not caught a cold, Bingley might never have had an opportunity to fall in love with her. This illness thus becomes the base on which Jane is able to further her acquaintance with Bingley, in his own home, at closer quarters than would have normally been permissible. But Jane’s illness does not bring about a change in either her outlook or in her personality, and for this reason Jane’s cold more resembles Marianne’s accident, in Sense and Sensibility, which facilitates her meeting with Willoughby, than Marianne’s subsequent emotional illness.
While Austen fails to include illnesses of a life-defining nature in Pride and Prejudice, other than for the timely death of Miss King’s grandfather, apparently restricting the role of ill health to plot development, this is not to say that every character in the novel is physically, mentally and emotionally healthy. For Mrs Bennet and her daughters all exhibit interesting, unhealthy traits that require scrutiny, and even Mr Bennet’s conduct as a husband and a father is worthy of attention.
It is well documented that Austen had read and was familiar with novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison, Charlotte Smith’s Ethelinde, Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote, and plays such as Sheridan’s The Rivals and The School for Scandal. She accordingly knew and understood excessive sensibility and its connection with hypochondria and hysteria.
The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology provides a useful definition of hypochondria (Reber,1986:335):
A condition characterized by imagined sufferings of physical illness or, more generally, an exaggerated concern with one’s physical health. The hypochondriac typically displays a preoccupation with bodily functions such as heart rate, sweating, bowel and bladder functions, and the occasional minor problems like pimples, headaches, a simple cough, etc.
Bourne and Eksktrand also define hypochondriasis, commenting that this illness reveals itself as “a preoccupation with physical health, usually pertaining to a single organ or disease”. Thus they argue that hypochondriacs distort the meaning of minor aches and pains, imagine discomfort in various parts of their bodies, and constantly complain of ill health, although a physician can seldom find anything physically wrong (1985:428).
And on testing for hypochondria, Groth-Marnat has shown that typically hypochondriacs not only show a high concern with illness and disease, but are likely to be egocentric, immature, pessimistic, sour, whiny, and passive aggressive. Their complaints are usually related to a wide variety of physical difficulties. An important purpose of these complaints is to manipulate and control others (1990:200).
It seems therefore that hypochondria is generally understood as being a rather non-specific, diffuse condition, which appears to follow no logical pattern, which involves “general areas of the body” (Shroth and Sue,1975:287), and is diagnosed only through certain characteristic behaviour patterns.
On the other hand, Groth-Marnat’s tests reveal that hysteria, that other psychosomatic illness, is diagnosed through its more specific symptoms, which include fitful sleep, nausea, vomiting, headaches, and heart or chest pains.…[Sufferers]
simultaneously report specific physical complaints but also use a style of denial in which they may even express an exaggerated degree of optimism. One of the important and primary ways in which they deal with anxiety and conflict is to channel or convert these difficulties onto the body. Thus, their physical complaints serve as an indirect expression of these conflicts.…[They] demand affection and social support but do so in an indirect and manipulative manner. They are also likely to be socially uninhibited and highly visible. They can easily initiate relationships, yet their relationships are likely to be superficial. They will approach others in a self-centred and naïve manner.…[They] have a convenient lack of insight into either their underlying motives or the impact they have on others (1990:202).
Gorman offers a useful and unusually clear set of distinctions which relate to these illnesses in the manner in which they are manifested in Austen’s novels, suggesting that hypochondria or valetudinarianism remains a static phenomenon, something that defines certain (mostly comic) characters, both male and female, a personality trait that finds expression in action every now and then, but more often in speech which records worries and advice. By comparison, hysteria…contains dynamic properties…increased emotion and debility and reach[es] a climax in outward behaviour… (1993:7).
Acknowledgements
A Note on the Texts
Introduction
Chapter 1: Northanger Abbey
Chapter 2: Sense and Sensibility
Chapter 3: Pride and Prejudice
Chapter 4: Mansfield Park
Chapter 5: Emma
Chapter 6: Persuasion
Chapter 7: Minor Works
Conclusion
Bibliography
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