Pride & Prejudice, ch. 34: Oh My God It's Happening!

I mean, where do I even start? Don’t we all know this chapter by heart, anyway? Isn’t this the most well-known pivotal plot development in the history of English fiction (or at least English satire)?

No disrespect to the old- and new-school academics who have spent decades writing on the nature of Lizzy and Darcy’s prickly dynamic, but I’m gonna forge ahead anyway.

We start off with the narrator metaphorically raising an eyebrow at Lizzy’s choice of re-reading Jane’s slightly melancholy letters “as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against Mr. Darcy.” Lizzy’s self-inflicted mental torture is at once unproductive and extremely relatable (sort of like how I’ve been addicted to my news feed lately thanks to the pandemic). She acts out of love for Jane and hatred for Darcy, thus mingling her purest trait with her worst and guaranteeing that she is not in the best head space for any sudden visitor who might happen to—

Knock, knock.

You guys, it really has to be emphasized that Darcy is at his weirdest here. He greets Lizzy “hurriedly,” she responds with “cold civility,” and then he does not speak for “several minutes” as he paces around the room. Think of the length of your favorite pop song and now imagine a man with an anti-social streak walking around in silence for the same amount of time. He must be thinking something like, I can turn back now. I haven’t asked her yet. I can turn back now and it’ll be okay. But what if she knows why I’m here?

Psst. She doesn’t, Fitzwilliam.

At last, he stops in front of her and says the magic words: “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

This means—other than the obvious—that Darcy had been trying to repress his “feelings” until the very last possible minute. That is AMAZING. This man cannot lie even to save face! That is a very particular type of person. 

Lizzy has trouble processing all this, as she senses that Darcy could not, would not tease her like this, despite there being (in her mind) no basis for his claim. At first, she feels bad for the guy, knowing what her answer is but having to wait for him to finish before being able to speak. But then he goes off on a tangent about “her inferiority” and “the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination,” and it becomes painfully obvious that he expects her to accept his proposal despite his consistent dissing of her and her background. This harshness is conveyed to the reader through the chilly summation of his proposal, which for years has frustrated me. But that is the point: Mr. Collins’ proposal is in dialogue to show his stupidity; Darcy’s is not in order to emphasize his coldness. He may be in love, but dude doesn’t know how to show it.

A furious Lizzy responds with a firm negative: “I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any one. It has been most unconsciously done[.]” She adds that, considering all the obstacles he found in deciding whether to pop the question, he’ll probably get over her sooner than later. Oooh. Just oooh!

Darcy really doesn’t know how to respond to this, as he takes another long pause (which feels “dreadful” to Lizzy). At last, he passive-aggressively accuses her of not being polite in her refusal. What’s that tinkling I hear? Could it be a visit from the irony fairy? Lizzy must hear it too, as she points out that he used his proposal largely “to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character[.]” And then she gets into the Jane/Bingley debacle, accusing Darcy of “ruining” Jane’s chance at “happiness,” and, oh, there’s another tinkling sound, because Darcy understands the irony of going for one sister after separating his best friend from the other.

Things are starting to get ugly here. Suddenly, Darcy is acting weird in a different way, offering “a smile of affected incredulity” and an air of “assumed tranquility.” In other words, he’s not being honest anymore—not with Lizzy, and possibly not with himself. Why? It helps make him look like the bad guy that she believes he is, for one thing. But he also believes he has the right to be derisive. We learn later that his motivation for diverting Bingley away from Jane is because he truly doesn’t believe that Jane was in love. So maybe when he hears Lizzy talk about Jane’s “happiness,” he thinks that it’s code for materialistic happiness, and that Jane’s “disappointed hopes” are those of ambition rather than of the heart. He has seen this kind of person before, a person with the right manners and a pretty face, but no real substance. (This perhaps makes his proposing to a Bennet sister less ironic, as he has reason to believe that Lizzy does not possess this materialism and is therefore deserving of his attention and love—though obviously his aversion to her socio-economic background remains.)

Then Lizzy accuses Darcy of ruining Wickham’s future happiness as well (and the subtext suggests that she is thinking of her own), and this gets under Darcy’s skin. As he deploys withering sarcasm, he walks across the room again in a possible effort to calm himself down (I can freakin’ relate). You can practically hear a sneer in his voice when he accuses her of … well, being really shallow: “These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I with greater policy concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination.” This appears to be an impression of the moment, something said in anger—something that might make him feel better about the rejection. If he had truly thought her to be this shallow, would he have asked to marry her in the first place?

Lizzy corrects him at once: “[T]he mode of your declaration … spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.” This is what throws Darcy off his guard the most, as he gives her “an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification.” Does he find this more embarrassing than her rejection? Whoa. She goes on to essentially re-write the story of their encounters and conversations: while Darcy thought that he was simply getting to know this independent, sassy young woman, she was forming a negative opinion of him that she harbored from “the very beginning,” observing “[his] arrogance, [his] conceit, and [his] selfish disdain of the feelings of others.” He stops her, and though he is master of himself enough to issue a polite goodbye, he can’t stop himself from noting his shame.

Tense stuff. Lizzy actually “crie[s] for half an hour” from the stress of it all, including her mixed feelings on the whole thing. She’s surprised to find out that he was “in love with her for so many months” and finds it “gratifying” that he should love her at all, and yet is so turned off by his “abominable pride,” the nasty stunt he pulled concerning Jane, and his apparent cruelty toward Wickham, that she no longer feels “pity” for Darcy’s hurt feelings. That’s lot for a woman who’s not one-and-twenty to take in all at once.

Taking a step back, it’s strange that only in such an intimate interaction—a proposal—could Lizzy be free to actually spell out her extreme dislike for Darcy. She hasn’t exactly been shy about it, either (even heavily implying that she’s on Team Wickham way back at the Netherfield ball). Darcy, however, has been too impressed with her wit and intelligence to examine the sharp barbs she aimed at him. Lizzy has yet to fully realize how much her own wounded pride played a part in her view of Darcy (had she never overheard his remark at the assembly, she may not have looked for more reasons to hate him). The Bingley thing … the Thingley … that’s harder to square away; that is a direct action that displays Darcy’s own blindness and prejudices while also being the action of a good friend trying to do the right thing. What I’m trying to say is that there are good and bad motivations for every claim they both make. Darcy is correct that his choosing to marry Lizzy would be a step down for him and that the Darcy name would lose some prestige. He tells her this in so many words because, I think, he wants to show her that he’s not a dummy who’s simply throwing caution to the wind out of love. Unfortunately, he gets carried away and lets his not-so-inner snob roam free.

Lessons will be learned.

Next chapter: We hear exclusively from Darcy.