Pride & Prejudice, ch. 29: De Bourgh Was A Lady

Credit to Eglantine Ceulemans. I am in love. 

Lady Bracknell better freaking watch out.

There’s obviously so much to say about Lady Catherine. She’s different than all the other female characters in Pride & Prejudice because of her wealth and title, both of which she uses as justification for her self-imposed position of authority. I don’t mean to downplay her leadership role in the boundaries of her community, which is widely accepted within that community (certainly, we can use Mr. Collins’s extreme genuflection as an example of how she’s viewed in general). But with passages detailing that “whatever she said was spoken in so authoritative a tone as marked her self-importance” and gestures such as rising from her chair to greet them that imply as much grandness as it does generosity, Austen takes great pains to illustrate Lady Catherine’s overblown ego.  

It is both a mark of Elizabeth’s maturity and a fascinating insight into how she maintains perspective that she is able to greet Lady Catherine with composure and take in “the fine proportion and finished ornaments,” not to mention the overall “grandeur,” of Rosings. (The name of the estate evokes so many meanings—growth, flowering, having arisen—while also suggesting a lack of something by its shortness.) Lizzy is here to observe the absurd: this is a sideshow to her. The wealth on display, and both Lady Catherine’s and Mr. Collins’s drawing attention to it, is there for show. I mean, of course it is, these mansions were built to look imposing. But it’s the showiness of it all that reveals a severe lack of manners and genteel breeding. These things are status symbols. Lady Catherine almost says it herself: her chimney, her windows, the view from her parlor, her pianoforte is better than yours. 

I’m going to get into this right now: I think there is some proof, or at least circumstantial evidence, that Lady Catherine comes from new money—or at least, money that’s newer than Sir Lewis de Bourgh’s family had—which results in her materialism and obsession with rank. The reliable David Shapard has a long footnote that muses about the “social and economic inequality of Lady Catherine and her husband” and that she “may have brought a substantial infusion of wealth” that allowed old Louie to build a “modern” home. Lady Catherine is the daughter of an earl (the best of both worlds—rich and titled), which would, admittedly, point to old money. But guess who else has a title and is also new money? The hapless Sir William, featured in this very chapter as a man out of his depths, who tries to memorize Lady Catherine’s “anecdotes and noble names,” presumably hoping to  use them later as a kind of social currency, as a status symbol. 

All this isn’t to say that Lady Catherine is secretly a hick or even meant to reflective poorly on new money families (that’s what the Bingley sisters are for). What I mean to suggest is that Lady Catherine’s sense of entitlement is made all the more ironic by the subtle hints that her background isn’t as noble as she’d like.* Thus, she can be rudely curious under the guise of “frankness” and no one, definitely not a nameless, “genteel, pretty sort of girl,” can throw it back in her face thanks to her social position.  

Another example of Lady Catherine’s bad manners is her remark on the entailment of Longbourn and telling Charlotte how lucky she is. Even in a world where characters are rather frank about discussing wealth, worth, and per annum, this strikes me as particularly rude. She could at least refrain from mentioning it in front of Lizzy.

Lady Catherine then inquires after the Bennet girls’ education and manages to find something shocking in almost every reply Lizzy makes. Why, no governess? No London schooling? Only some books and a few “masters”? Tch, tch. Lady Catherine, you see, would have corrected all that—why, she helps families find governesses all the time. And so on. This is, of course, how she operates: she opens a topic, makes “minute” inquiries, and ends up either telling the object of her lecture what they did wrong or taking the opportunity to brag about her own accomplishments. She does the same thing with the damn pianoforte. And the freaking card game!

It’s a bit different when Lizzy reveals that all of the Bennet girls are out at once (in contrast, Charlotte’s younger sisters had to wait until her marriage to come out). She’s quite a bit more honest in her thoughtful answer than I would be in her position, admitting that Lydia might be too young, but adding that “the last born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth, as the first.” Lady Catherine is intrigued by her confidence and demands to know her age. In a small bit of foreshadowing, Lizzy gives her a hilarious non-answer before giving her the actual one. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see Mr. Collins’s reaction upon seeing that Lady Catherine’s rank does not, in fact, excite silence or respect on Lizzy’s part. Now that’s some Jane Austen fan art I’d love to stumble upon.

The rest of the Rosings household is composed of duds. Anne de Bourgh appears to be pretty but pitiful, while Mrs. Jenkinson the governess is more of a personal servant than a woman who gets around to any teaching (later on, we’ll see another governess-student pairing in action). Mr. Collins has a field day, as he has the honor, and I say that with sincerity, of carving the meat and leading the conversation parade of compliments. Charlotte takes it in stride when Lady Catherine buries her under a mountain of unsolicited advice; Lizzy notes that “nothing was beneath this great lady’s attention,” including the running of a smaller and poorer household, which you wouldn’t think such a grand, high-ranking person would know much about. 

I wonder, as I’m sure other Austen academics have, whether Anne d.B.’s poor health is meant to be a comment on the inbreeding between noble families. On the flip side, maybe it’s meant to indicate the stress of having someone like Lady Catherine as a mother.

At the end of the evening, Mr. Collins, so convinced of his patroness’s goodness, enhances Lizzy’s “commendation” of her. He’s not going to lose any opportunity to try to rub it in Lizzy’s face that she missed out on marrying him, is he? 

Next chapter: Life resumes at the Parsonage, Lady Catherine has a habit of barging into people’s

houses, and an old acquaintance pops back into the narrative. FINALLY.

*There is also the broader argument of nobility being a social construct with no inherent value expect, obviously, the value we agree to place on it. But this might be taking us out of the realm of literary analysis, so I won’t venture further. This may be something I come back to later, since it’s genuinely interesting to me, though only if I can tie it into the themes of Pride & Prejudice.