Pride & Prejudice: ch. 27: A Clean (Spring) Break

Credit to Alice Pattullo.

Austen decides to cheat just a little bit by employing a small but significant time skip. Don’t get me wrong: I am eternally grateful for this narrative device, especially if it saves us from the repetition of trips to Meryton, which only have Wickham in the offering. Lizzy realizes that the prospect of a road trip to Hunsford, even if it takes her back to Mr. Collins, will be a new experience for her—and those are rather few and far between, a point that we’ll expand on in the next chapter.

Mr. Bennet “almost promise[s]” to write her while she’s gone, making it slightly hard for me to see what, exactly, she’s going to miss about her dad, or vice versa. Aside from his general neglect, he seems pretty content to isolate himself day after day. Surely by now he has enough cotton to stuff his ears whenever the tweebs start squawking?

Lizzy also says goodbye to Wickham, who gives her a more charming send-off (reminding her about Lady Catherine and giving her the impression that their “opinions” of the people they talk about “would always coincide”). Though she doesn’t appear to be pining for him, as she decided earlier that she was never in love with him, she awards him the honor of being “her model of the amiable and pleasing.” Given that she’s about to visit “a man who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him,” I can see why she places so much value on Wickham’s good nature … though that good nature seems to have a lot to do with the fact that the both of them agree on every point. In fact, that seems to be her criteria for deciding whether any man she meets is worthy of her respect. Hm.

A half-day’s journey to London later, Lizzy greets the little Gardiners and tries to gauge Jane’s current level of happiness. At the theater that night, Lizzy seeks out a private convo with Aunt Gardiner (for funsies, I googled “plays of 1813 Britain” and found Remorse, a play that ran in mid-winter of that year, the title accurately reflecting Jane’s true feelings). Aunt Gardiner confesses that the endearingly sweet Jane has shown symptoms of a broken heart. At least she’s no longer BFFs with Caroline, so … there’s that.

Then Aunt Gardiner asks for an update on “Wickham’s desertion” (a phrase that doubles as a clever pun and artful foreshadowing), and Lizzy finds herself defending him from her suggestion that his behavior is “mercenary.” Aunt Gardiner points out that Wickham didn’t pay Miss King “the smallest attention” until after her inheritance was reported, which smacks of bad timing to say the least. Lizzy notes that Miss King doesn’t seem to mind, as if that ought to lay the matter to rest. But “[h]er not objecting, does not justify him,” Aunt Gardiner argues, offering a sensible and, in this book, nearly unique philosophy of judging others’ actions by a universal moral code rather than the perceived outcome.

Lizzy is rather snappish here, which I think affirms my previous hypothesis that she has tied her ego to Wickham and his appeal, which she’s already put on a pedestal. When her aunt expresses doubt in Wickham’s sincerity, Lizzy subconsciously views it as an attack on her own principles. After all, she would never be mercenary. Her rejection of Mr. Collins and her refusal to make nice with Darcy proves, in her mind at least, that she doesn’t value rank or money the way most people do. Beyond her attitude, however, she does make an interesting point: “Where does discretion end, and avarice begin?” I’m not sure she herself knows, and it’s easy to read this as more of a verbal shrug of the shoulders. Notice that her aunt has no direct answer to this question, implying that the answer is complex—and maybe rather personal. 

Aunt Gardiner, perhaps alarmed at her niece’s bitterness toward “young men who live in Derbyshire and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire,” invites her to go on a vacation to the Lakes later that year. Lizzy is ecstatic at the idea of being out in nature (and away from society). “We will know where we have gone,” she cries, “[and] we will recollect what we have seen!” This is the one thing Lizzy desperately needs: a new setting in which she can sharpen and enjoy her powers of observation. “[R]ocks and mountains,” after all, don’t change much, so they can’t disappoint you the way people can.

By the way, this is the fourth chapter in a row that Lizzy has alluded to (or outright blamed) Darcy without prompting. Just gonna leave that there.

Next up: The long-awaited return of Mr. Collins and the debut of Mrs. Collins.