Pride and Prejudice, chapter eighteen
Elizabeth is what I like to call a high-functioning introvert. She is remarkably socially intelligent, as I’ve written before, and she likes people and gains a lot of enjoyment from society. But her enjoyment is always at a bit of a remove; she interacts with others and is good at it, but she partly likes it because it gives her material: she’s a comedian, and a performer, and she loves to make fun of people just as her father does. Elizabeth shines in conversation, but her development throughout the novel tends to be internal, and achieved through solitary reflection. Elizabeth very rarely comes to learn something about herself through talking to another person, but instead through hashing it out to herself privately. The only character to challenge that tendency is Darcy, but crucially even when she changes after interacting with him or listening to him, it happens later, when he is gone, and she can think about it herself without distraction.
Parties, like the ball at Netherfield, are work to Elizabeth – work she likes, and is good at, but still work, effortful and often exhausting. She credits her immediate dissatisfaction with the ball to Wickham’s absence, but one wonders whether she would be just as stressed out if he were there. The main source of stress, as per usual, is her family, every one of whom is doing their best to embarrass themselves (apart from Jane, who is fine, but is still a source of anxiety as everyone is talking about her and Bingley). It’s like Elizabeth wants, badly to enjoy herself, but no one is letting her.
This trait of hers – a basic introversion that is masked by a high level of social skill – goes a long way towards explaining both her affinity with Darcy and her initial dislike of him. She knows interacting with people who are dumber than you (which for both of them is most people) is effortful and irritating, but she manages to do it, so why can’t he? She manages to avoid offending most people, so why can’t he? There’s gender and class at work here too, though Austen mostly leaves the way it works unsaid: Darcy can get away with impolite behavior in a way Elizabeth can’t, because he is a wealthy man and she is not. She’s right to notice the injustice in that.
All of this means that Elizabeth has a rotten time at the Netherfield ball. Her family is embarrassing, Mr. Collins won’t leave her alone, Miss Bingley keeps trying to condescend to her, and she doesn’t even get to see her crush. Despite herself, she does rally to a spirited – if awkward – conversation with Darcy. He tends to wake her up in a way few other characters do; she convinces herself that she doesn’t care what he thinks but she can never ignore him.
One of the interesting aspects of their dialogue is the way Elizabeth keeps contradicting herself without realizing it. She tells Darcy that she likes to focus on the present while the reader knows her to be (currently) unfocused and distracted. She even does this internally: she keeps insisting that she does not care for Darcy’s opinion, but after their dance she is almost overwhelmed with worry over what he thinks of her family, in a way she hasn’t been before. It has been some time since all of these characters were in one place, and the socially intelligent Elizabeth is aware of the way that all of them may influence each other, and is desperate to manage it. She is – suddenly – keenly cognizant of the fact that Mrs. Bennet’s low opinion of Mr. Darcy could harm Jane’s prospects with Bingley. Everything is connected to everything else: the way one Bennet behaves must influence the outcomes for every other Bennet, one way or another. Elizabeth seems to be the only character who understands herself as living in a society.
Elizabeth is so distracted by all of this that she discovers something without noticing: every single person seems to know some version of Wickham’s sad story. When he told it to her, it was with a (rather too obviously fake) pretense at reluctance. He said that “it gives me pain to speak ill of a Darcy,” but all of the officers and most of the guests know all about the rancor between him and Mr. Darcy, such that they are unsurprised when Wickham does not attend the ball. Wickham flattered Elizabeth’s vanity by sharing his sob story with her; she does not notice that he has apparently shared it with everyone. She also does not notice that though Wickham assured her that he was not afraid to face Darcy, he has not shown himself in any place where Darcy is sure to be. Elizabeth will eventually put all of this together. For now, she’s got other stuff on her mind, like how to get rid of Mr. Collins. We’ll see more of that next time.