His Appearance Was Greatly in His Favour

Pride and Prejudice, chapter fifteen.

Pride and Prejudice is a coming-of-age novel as much as, or maybe more than, it’s a romance. The rather uncomfortable (to a contemporary feminist, anyway) fact is that for a young woman of Elizabeth’s time and place those amounted to much the same thing. Growing into an adult, for a woman like her, meant growing into a woman who was ready for marriage. Putting aside childish things meant putting aside the family that brought you up so that you were ready to join (and make) a new one. It’s something perhaps particular to Austen that she explores this change as a largely internal, personal development, one that enhances individuality rather than restricts it.

All of this is to say that Austen does something in this chapter that she has done before, which is to make Elizabeth, her main character, disappear into a mass of Bennet girls. This tendency - to flatten the very different sisters into a single unit of “the girls” or “the ladies” - is the primary way she presents them in the first several chapters before Elizabeth takes primacy; it recurs less and less throughout the novel until by the end Austen doesn’t do it at all, and you hardly notice the change. That’s the story, as much as anything: Elizabeth grows out of being a Bennet and instead becomes only herself.

All of the Bennet sisters apart from Mary walk to Meryton, and though the younger girls (Kitty and Lydia) are singled out as particularly silly, particularly interested in handsome officers, it is notable that Elizabeth and Jane are not notably acting differently. It’s significant that Elizabeth is not standing apart in this chapter, but is instead acting like any other Bennet: this is where we meet the character who will bring to the fore her primary fault, and test her ability to overcome it.

George Wickham is really, really handsome. Several characters in this novel are good looking, and two we’ve met are repeatedly described as more good looking than most other people (Jane and Darcy). George Wickham, though. George Wickham is beautiful enough to make people stop and stare in the street:

But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man, whom they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike appearance, walking with an officer on the other side of the way…the young man wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming. His appearance was greatly in his favour: he had all the best parts of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address. The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation—a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming.

It is important that Elizabeth is not singled out in this passage — she is only mentioned at all when Darcy appears and does his best not to look at her. Instead, “every lady” looks at Wickham, and every lady follows when “Kitty and Lydia, determined if possible to find out, led the way across the street.” Elizabeth – clever, funny, perceptive Elizabeth – has been disappeared into the Bennet sisters, led by the two silliest of them. Though we do not see (yet) any particular interaction between Elizabeth and Wickham here, we are being told to notice something, to notice how he ignites Elizabeth’s weakness for beauty, and how that weakness diminishes her.

Because significantly, another character in this chapter has been highlighted for exactly the same weakness, and the reader is encouraged to laugh at him. Mr. Collins, “not a sensible man,” decides immediately upon meeting the Bennets to marry Jane, and to do it for one reason only: “Miss Bennet’s lovely face confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of what was due to seniority; and for the first evening she was his settled choice.” But he learns that Jane is probably spoken for, and quickly and seamlessly shifts his attention:

Mr. Collins had only to change from Jane to Elizabeth—and it was soon done—done while Mrs. Bennet was stirring the fire. Elizabeth, equally next to Jane in birth and beauty, succeeded her of course.

This one, that one – it doesn’t matter. Beauty is the only thing that apparently moves him. Elizabeth is not quite so shallow – she ends up liking Wickham more for the way he flatters her personal vanity – but the parallel here does not do her credit.

There is hope for Elizabeth, however, in a way there is not for Collins. He is acting purely as himself when he makes judgements based on appearance; for better and mostly worse, Collins has grown up into himself in a way that Elizabeth hasn’t yet. When Elizabeth is so swayed, she is following – her younger sisters can be understood as standing in for her own worst instincts. Elizabeth is diminished by the narrator only when she is not acting by herself, or like herself. Austen is telling us what Elizabeth’s foibles are, but she’s also telling us that Elizabeth can still learn.