THE REGENCY NOVEL

Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

 Melancholy of Charlotte Smith’s poems was no mere a literary posture.
 She was married at the age of 15 and bore a dozen children before permanently separating
from her husband, Benjamin Smith due to his abusive temper, infidelities and financial
irresponsibility.
 She began writing to make money when her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1783.
 1st book Elegiac Sonnets, and Other essays by Charlotte Smith of Bignor Park, in Sussex
went through nine expanding editions in the following 16 years.
 Beginning with the 1788 publication of Emmeline, Smith enjoyed considerable success as a
novelist, rapidly producing nine more novels within the decade.
o Desmond (1792)
o The Old Manor House (1793)
o The Banished Man (1794)
o The Young Philosopher (1798)
 Liberal political view espoused in these fictions made the books
key contributions to the Revolution Controversy in Britain.
 The Sonnet as a form after his great flourishing in the
Renaissance in the hands of Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare,
Donne and Milton, dropped out from fashion in the eighteenth
century.
 It was not very suitable to the English language according to
1Charlotte Smith
Samuel Johnson.
 Its revival toward the end of that century by Coleridge in the 1790s.
 Wordsworth (wrote some five hundred sonnets beginning 1802) and in the next generation,
Shelley and Keats – was the result of Smith’s influential refashioning of the sonnet as a
medium of mournful feeling.
 Coleridge noted in the introduction to his privately printed “sheet of sonnets” in 1796 that
“Charlotte Smith and [William Lisle] Bowles are they who first made the sonnet popular
among the present English”
 Bowles Fourteen Sonnets of 1789 imitating those that Smith first published five years
earlier.
 Coleridge in his 1796 introductory essay on the sonnet, using Smith as a principal example,
remarked that “those sonnets appear to me the most exquisite, in which moral sentiments,
affections, or feelings are deduced from, and associated with, the scenery of Nature”.
 Subsequently, the connecting of feelings and nature became a central theme and strategy in
Romantic poetry, especially in the genre that has come to be known as ‘the greater
Romantic lyric’
 Smith engagement with nature differs from Coleridge’s and Wordsworth’s in its quasi-
scientific insistence on the faithful rendering of the detail: It is not surprising to learn that
she addressed a sonnet to the ‘goddess of botany’.

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849)

 Earned more than £11,000 (an enormous sum)
 It also made the novel reviled by the critics in the late 18th century, a respectable form.
 After 1804, Francis Jeffrey (editor)attended in the pages of his Edinburgh Review to each
Edgeworth’s publications, remarking how fiction had become an
edifying medium for serious ideas.
 She was born in Oxfordshire on New Year’s Day 1768.
 She was the second child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna
Maria Elers, who died when her daughter was five.
 Maria Edgeworth spent most of her childhood in fashioning
boarding schools in England until her father decided to dedicate
himself to the family estate in Ireland that had been his
birthplace.
 In 1782 he sent for Maria to join him, his third wife, and Maria’s
half-brothers and half-sisters at Edgeworthstown, source of the
Protestant Edgeworths’ wealth since the early seventeenth
2 Maria Edgeworth
century.
 In 1802 rejected a marriage proposal from a Swedish diplomat.
 From the age of 14, Edgeworth assumed a central role in experiments of education.
 She took up the business of estate management.
 She taught the younger children.
 At her father’s prompting, she began a course of reading in political and economic theory
starting with Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.
 Maria Edgeworth also began to write, Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), a novelistic
defense of women’s education, was followed by The Parent’s Assistant (1796) and
Practical Education (1798) treatises on pedagogy she coauthored with her father.
 In 1800 she published Castle Rackrent her masterpiece.
 Rackrent inaugurated Edgeworth’s series of narratives memorializing the vanishing ways of
life of rural Ireland.
 IMPORTANT WORKS: Ennui (1809), The Absentee (1812) and Ormond (1819).
 Edgeworth’s study of Enlightenment social sciences is easy to trace in these regional
fictions, and these concerns were a factor that helped secure their reputation among the
reviewers.
 Edgeworth managed to associate the novel with a more intellectually prestigious discourse;
by packaging her representations of Ireland’s picturesque folk culture.
 The year Richard Lovell Edgeworth settled in Ireland, 1782, seemed an auspicious moment
for a reformer like him.
 The parliament in Dublin had won legislative independence, and it appeared as though penal
laws targeting Catholics would soon be relaxed.
  In 1798-armed insurrection, involved Catholic peasants and repressed and middle-class
Protestants from the North, engulfed Ireland.
 The rising was soon repressed.
 Introduced in 1800 as a security measure by a British state horrified at the news that Frech
expeditionary forces had planned to aid the rebels, an Act of Union abolished the Dublin
Parliament and incorporated Ireland to the UK.
 Edgeworth died in 1849 at the age of 83, Ireland was once again a scene of violent
insurrection as well as of horrendous famine.

Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (1775-1817)

Jane Austen spent her short, secluded life away from the spotlight. She was one of eight
children born to an Anglican clergyman and his wife. Two of her brothers fought as
naval officers in the Napoleonic War; another became the banker of the flashy London
set of the prince regent; her cousin Eliza, born in India, wed a captain in the French
army who perished by the guillotine.

Austen spent most of her life in Hampshire, the rural area where she was born. Her
formal education was limited to a short time at a boarding school. She and her sister
Cassandra had to scramble, like most girls of their class, into what education they could
while at home and amidst their father’s books.

Jane Austen turned down a proposal of marriage in 1802, intuiting how difficult it would be to
combine authorship with life as a wife, mother, and gentry hostess. She started writing at the age of
12 and in 1797 began sending work to publishers in London. At that stage they werefor the most part
unreceptive. In 1803 one paid £10 for the copyright of the novel Northanger Abbey, the declined to
publish it.

She finally published:

 Sense and Sensibility (1811)

 Pride and Prejudice (1813)
 Mansfield Park (1814)

Next under the prestigious auspices of John Murray (also Byron’s Publisher) came:

 Emma (1816)
 Posthumously:
o Persuasion
o Northanger Abbey

The Austen name was never publicly associated with any of these books, whose discreet title pages
merely identifies ‘a lady’ as the author.

The modesty of that signature, is belied by the assurance of Austen’s narrative voice, the confidence
with which it subjects ‘truths universally acknowledged’ to witty critical scrutiny.
The six novels are all ‘pictures of domestic life in country villages’. The world they depict seem
provincial and insular. For the most part of the working classes are absent or present only as silence
servants; the soldiers and sailors who were protecting England from Napoleon are presented mainly
as welcome additions to a ball. The novels also document with detail how the boundaries that had
formerly defined the category of ‘the gentleman’ were becoming permeable under the influence of
the changes wrought by revolution and war and how competition for social status was becoming that
much fiercer. Readers can see how harshly the hard facts of economic life bore down on
gentlewomen during this period when a lady’s security depended on her making a good marriage.

The conundrum at the center of the fiction is whether such a marriage can be compatible with the
independence of mind and mora integrity that Austen cherishes.

Austen wrote to explore what the novel form could be and do. She criticized the form, she did so to
perfect it. With striking flexibility the new narrative voice that she introduced into novel writing
shifts back and forth between a romantic point of view and an irony that reminds us that of romance
limits – that reminds us that romance features its own sort of provincialism.

Austen also distanced the novel form from the didactic agenda cultivated by her many
contemporaries who were convinced that the only respectable fiction was the antiromance that
weaned it readers of their romantic expectations. Her delight in mocking their preachy fictions in the
parodies that she wrote in the 1790s, a feature of her mature novels, which as a rule conclude in
ways that deviate quite flagrantly from the patterns of rewards and punishment a moralist might
prefer.

I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern

A sentence extracted from Northanger Abbey, the narrator of it declared in a parting shot and in
characteristic epigrammatic style.

Austen’s example: CENTRAL to what the novel as a form has become that it can be difficult from
our present-day vantage point to recognize the iconoclasm in her depictions of the undervalued
business of everyday life. Her ORIGINALITY (her creation of characters ordinary and
unforgettable) challenged her contemporaries’ expectations about novels about novels’, plots, setting
and characterization. In “Plan of a Novel, According to Hints from Various Quarters” (satire after
Emma) assembles the various ‘hints’ she had received from well-wishers about what she should
write next.

The immediate occasion for the ‘Plan’ was the series of letters Austen received from the Reverend
James Stanier Clarke, librarian to the prince regent, who having conveyed to her the prince’s wish
that Emma should be dedicated to him, continued the correspondence so as to suggest topics that
Austen should engage for the next novel – in particular, a historical romance about the royal house
of Saxe Cobourg.
 Remember

ANALYZING A NOVEL
 Setting
Time (period, epoch in history)
Place (actual geographical location[s]; is it realistic or symbolic?)
Social environment (rural or urban? social class, occupations and daily manner of living
of the characters)
 Characterization
The protagonist (who is it? why? what are his/her attributes? does h/she change? how?
look for words and phrases that describe or identify the protagonist)
Other important characters (who are they? what are their attributes? do they change?
look for words and phrases that describe or identify them)
 Plot
The main action (what happens? is the plot chronologically linear? how does the plot
move forward? how are events linked? do events follow our expectations? what
characters are linked to which events?)
 The structure: ways of presenting reality
Narrative divisions (chapters? sections? sub-sections, such as letters?)
Time (linear? sequential? broken? are there any flashbacks? any flashforwards?)
Point of view (whose point of view are we given? is it always the same one? is it
reliable? how is it presented: direct speech, indirect speech, omniscient commentary, free
indirect speech?)

Origins of the novel

The modern European novel came from:

 Medieval Romance
 The Italian novella
 Spanish Picaresque Novel (Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra in 1605)

A great number of varied writings have the term ‘novel’ applied to 18th and early 19th centuries the
term novel carried a more innovative and more precise meaning.

Most historians look at Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding PRECURSORS OF
THE NOVEL.

Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders; Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded and
Clarissa; and Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones PROGENITORS OF MODERN LONG PROSE
NARRATIVES IN ENGLISH.

These early narrative fictions combine elements of the picaresque novel (Lazarillo),
with those of the novel of character. 1st FEATURE
Another important feature is their realism (2ND FEATURE): We could say that what characterizes
the novels of Defoe, Richardson and Fielding and most of the 19th Century, is the attempt to create a
realistic effect.

Characters are represented as complex individuals with complex motives and belonging to a
distinct social class may be contrasted with other social classes.

Plausible interaction among characters giving rise to believable experiences, all unfold against a
realistic series of events. This type of novel is the one within which Jane Austen may be
accommodated most readily.

Point of View is the perspective from which the story is told, has also been a practical concern
since the early novel. The way in which a story is presented may be:

 Distributed, broadly speaking, between 1st person and 3rd person narrator.
o The 3rd person narrator in 18th century and 19th century was an omniscient narrator.

OMNISCIENT NARRATOR
The one who moves freely within the narrative and is privy to everything that is known about the
characters and events.

o There was frequently an INTRUSIVE NARRATOR.

INTRUSIVE NARRATOR
The one who reports and also comments on characters and events.

The comments and evaluations of the omniscient intrusive narrator are to be taken as authoritative.

Plot Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice began life as a manuscript written in 1796-7, entitled "First Impressions".
Originally refused in 1797 by Cadell, a publisher in London, it was not published till 1813, four
years before the author's death. It is one of Austen's most enduring and popularized fictions – as in,
for example, such highly successful adaptations as the BBC 1995 televised version.

The novel opens famously with a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet regarding the
matrimonial prospects of their five daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Lydia and Kitty. The family
home is at Longbourn in Hertfordshire (a county near London) and, in the absence of a male heir, the
property is due to pass on Mr. Bennett's death to a cousin, William Collins. Thanks to Lady
Catherine de Bourgh, Collins occupies a position as the local clergyman near Rosings, Lady
Catherine's country seat in Kent. A wealthy young bachelor, Charles Bingley, rents Netherfield, an
estate near Longbourn. He arrives accompanied by his two sisters and a friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy,
who is Lady Catherine's nephew. Bingley and Jane, the eldest of the Bennet sisters, fall in love,
while Darcy feels drawn to Jane's vivid, witty sister, Elizabeth, whose feelings he greatly offends by
his arrogant conduct at a ball. George Wickham, a handsome young army officer and son of the late
steward (= a person employed to manage another person's property) of the Darcy estate, intensifies
Elizabeth's dislike by relating to her the unjust treatment he has received from Darcy. Her opinion of
Darcy worsens when, in collusion with Bingley's sisters, he separates Bingley from Jane as a result
of Mrs. Bennet's coarse, vulgar manners.
In the meantime, Lady Catherine urges the foolish Mr. Collins to find a wife. Bearing his patron's
advice in mind, and thinking to solve the Bennet girls's inheritance problems, Collins asks Elizabeth
to marry him during a visit to Longbourn. Horrified, she turns him down, whereupon he speedily re-
directs his attentions towards Elizabeth's neighbour and friend, Charlotte Lucas who, foreseeing no
other or better matrimonial prospects, accepts him.

On a visit to the newly-weds some time later, Elizabeth comes across Darcy, who is paying a visit to
Lady Catherine. Still attracted to her, Darcy proposes marriage, while not concealing that his love
for her cannot compensate for their disparity in social rank. Outraged, Elizabeth rejects him, stating
his insufferable pride, his separation of Jane from Bingley and his treatment of Wickham, as her
reasons. Later, Elizabeth receives a letter in which Darcy explains, while regretting, his separating
Bingley and Jane, and reveals that Wickham is an opportunistic rogue.

On a trip to northern England with her beloved uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, Elizabeth
visits Pemberley, the Darcy Derbyshire family seat. Thinking Darcy is absent, Elizabeth is startled to
run into him. For his part, Darcy welcomes the visitors, introduces them to his sister and displays a
serious, attentive manner towards Elizabeth. The visit coincides with the sudden news that Wickham
has eloped with Elizabeth's younger and more scatter-brained sister, Lydia. A potentially disastrous
social situation is averted thanks to Darcy's speedy intervention: the fugitive couple are found,
married and financially provided for.

Jane and Bingley are eventually reunited and arrange to be married. Likewise Elizabeth and Darcy,
who overcome past mutual misunderstandings and Lady Catherine's malicious scheming tokeep
them apart. The narrative closes with the two couples' marriages and a clear suggestion of their
future happiness.

Analysis of Pride and Prejudice.

 Society and class

Critics viewed Jane Austen’s novels unconcerned with the great currents of history, untouched
by the intellectual, artistic and political upheavals of her time. Austen herself chose to
circumscribe her range of representation to ‘the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I
work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after so much labor”.

While Austen works within the range of her immediate social experiences, foregrounding the
life of English country gentlefolk, from the wealthy landed to the aspiring rural Anglican clergy.

Raymond Williams concedes that “It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen chose
to ignore the decisive historical events of her time. Where…are the Napoleonic wars: the real
currents of history?”

For Williams, Austen’s novels reveal an acute concern with the social and economic movements
that affected her time. While the works may not take account of the massive social migrations
from rural to urban areas due to the industrial revolution. There are numerous examples in Pride
and Prejudice. One of the earliest is in reference to Sir William Lucas, whose family lives within
short distance of Longbourn on close terms with the Bennets.

[…] had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune and risen
to the honour of knighthood by an address to the King, during his mayoralty. The
distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a disgust to his business
and to his residence in a small market town; and quitting them both, he had removed with
 his family to a house about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lucas
Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance... (Vol. I, Ch. V: 12)

The trajectory of Sir William’s life could be described as ‘upwardly mobile’: he has moved from
being a wealthy tradesman to being knighted by the King. His ‘tolerable fortune’ provided an
opportunity thanks to which he was able to move from one social class to another, and no longer
depend upon earned income.

Do you detect any narratorial comment either on Sir William’s social

nobility or on his social attitude in the above passage?
The first sentence gives a compact account of Sir William’s social ascendancy, from being ‘formerly
in trade’ and making ‘tolerable fortune’ he occupies the mayoralty (position of mayor) during which
he addresses the King and ‘rise[s] to the honor of knighthood’.

The next sentence is a clear instance of narratorial intervention providing both insight into Sir
William’s reaction and judgement respond to the question of class. The naming of his new country
residence “Lucas Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance” confirms Sir
William’s grossly inflated self-regard as a result of knighthood.

Class, wealth, snobbery…all provide the social context for Austen’s character. Despite the self-
acknowledged ‘confines’ of her novels (the ‘two inches’ of ivory within which Austen circumscribes
her fictional worlds) interpreters have detected among the wide range of themes or subjects in her
work the representation and unflinching exposure of her society’s small-mindedness and petty
adherence to social decorum. Austen heightens this aspect most effectively when she pits an
individual against the social or genre mores of her day, whether embodied in another individual
(Mrs. Bennet) or group of individuals (Gatherings at Netherfield). A major concern in the novel lies
in the ways in which individual and society interact.

"To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles
in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to shew an
abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to
decorum"
[...]
"I have an excessive regard for Jane Bennet, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish
with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such
low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it"
 "I think I have heard you say, that their uncle is an attorney in Meryton".
"Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside".
"That is capital", added her sister, and they both laughed heartily.
[...]
"[I]t must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in
the world", replied Darcy. (Vol. 1, Ch.VII: 25).

Note how social class and gender interact. Elizabeth is criticized for her family connections and her
independence is declared to be inappropriate in a woman: she walks to Netherfield, instead of riding
or travelling by carriage.

Note also that class also intersects with marriage prospects: the Bingley sisters pour scorn on
Elizabeth’s non-aristocratic family and Mr. Darcy questions her chances of finding a husband ‘of
any consideration’ as a result of her lack of social distinction.

Character: Moral and psychological development

19 and early 20th century readers initiated a still-thriving interpretive tradition which stresses the
th

moral and psychological dimensions of her stories. These interpreters place character development
based on individual choice and the attainment of self-knowledge, at the center of their readings.
Austen’s acute powers of observation trace, the development of Darcy and Elizabeth’s characters
against the backdrop of their growing mutual affection. Darcy is the first to acknowledge his feelings
for Elizabeth, and secondly in a letter in which he reveals the true nature of his connection with
Wickham and his role in separating Jane and Bingley.

She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. –Of neither Darcy not Wickham could she
think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.
"How despicably have I acted...I, who have prided myself on my discernment! –I,
who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous
candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust.–How
humiliating is this discovery!–Yet, how just a humiliation! [...] on the very beginning
of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason
away [...]. Till this moment, I never knew myself" (Vol.II, Ch. XIII: 137).

By the time of Lydia's intended elopement, of which Elizabeth informs Darcy, her
feelings and self-awareness have matured to the extent that she now concedes her
love for him:
What a triumph for [Darcy] could he know that the proposals which she had proudly
spurned only four months ago, would now have been gladly and gratefully received
[...]. She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who, in disposition
and talents, would most suit her" (Vol. III, Ch. VIII: 202).

Elizabeth’s uncompromising self-scrutiny is matched by Darcy’s when their love has been mutually
declared at the very end of the novel acknowledges:

I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle[...]. As a
child [...] I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit[...].
Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for
you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson [...].
By you, I was properly humbled (Vol. III, Ch. XVI: 241).
These 3 extracts reveal that Austen does not contemplate character as something static: identity is
fluid, as human relations are whether on a small or large scale. This would support Raymond
William’s understanding of Austen’s novels as works that reflect a moment of considerable upheaval
and change in English society.

Two words from the above 3 passages should catch your attention. They are of course ‘pride’ and
‘prejudice’, both indicative of inflexible, unyielding qualities. Austen challenges rigid patterns of
behaviour and one of the most striking ways she does this, is by placing the words ‘pride’ and
‘prejudice’ and related words in varying contexts: the words are fluid and can be attached to more
than one situation. By the end of the novel, we are left to ponder just who has revealed themselves to
be ‘proud’ or to be ‘prejudiced’, or both and whether these terms can be applied to Elizabeth and
Darcy.

Note also who is wielding the terms – the omniscient narrator, a character, or a chorus of characters,
as Meryton Society. A little further on, it is Bingley’s sisters who are judged (by Elizabeth? By the
narrator?) to be ‘proud and conceited’. Still further in the novel, the entire Bennet family discusses
the matter of Mrs. Darcy’s ‘pride’ and Mary launches into a pompous, long-winded definition,
which is memorable less for its penetrating insight into the terms itself, than for the insight it
provides into Mary’s own intellectual pedantry and no small measure of pride.

Note the near synonyms ‘vanity’ and ‘conceited’. Mary appears to be afflicted with pride and
Elizabeth herself is accused by Darcy about half-way through the novel of harbouring sentiment. We
learn from Darcy’s housekeeper Mrs. Reynolds during conversation with the Gardiners and
Elizabeth on their visit to Pemberley, the term ‘proud’ has become profoundly unstable or fluid as
the human relations the novel depicts.

Gender, marriage, wealth

Letter-day readers pointed out that not the least interesting aspect of Austen’s novels, especially
Pride and Prejudice, is the representation and complex interplay of class and gender, and how these
either comply or are in tension with the prevailing ideology and culture.

‘Novel of manners’ – a realistic work that recreates with detailed observation the customs,
values, and mores of a given society or social group. Satire might be present in the novel of
manners, to different extents and degrees.

Class and gender intersect with a marked emphasis on the role that money, plays in guiding
individuals’ conduct, choices, interaction. In summarizing how historians and literary critics have
interpreted Jane Austen’s works, David Spring states that these interpreters have acknowledged the
all-pervasive presence of money or ‘monetarization’ in her novels.

Austen links money and the question of social status to the marriage institution (as in The Way of
the World happened), all three potential goals for women at that time.
Money class and gender remain in simultaneous play when, still smarting from Elizabeth’s
unexpected rejection, Mr. Collins proposes marriage to her friend Charlotte Lucas, who accepts,
reflecting that:

marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-
educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness,
must be their pleasantest preservative from want (Vol. I, Ch. XXII: 83).

Charlotte’s cool acquiescence in gender, class and monetary codes is in striking contrast with
Elizabeth’s no less clear-sighted critique of the very institution her friend has fixed as ‘her object’.

Elizabeth refuses for material gain alone and is not blind to the pitfalls of marriage in general.
Considering her parents’ own uneven match, Elizabeth understands there are good marriages and
bad marriages, that marriage is not by definition necessarily a positive thing and neither men nor
women are necessarily ennobled by it.

Elizabeth remains firmly a woman of her time: Lydia’s running away with Wickham, whom she
doubts, she views as nothing short of disastrous. Darcy saves the day by providing Wickham with
the financial incentive morally and socially to reinstate himself and Lydia by marrying her, thus
prompting Elizabeth’s gratitude and intensifying her attachment to him. His upholding of the
prevailing codes of conduct is what – for Elizabeth, narrator, reader – adds to his moral stature.

Narrative Technique
An essential aspect to highlight is the way in which the story is told.

Who informs the reader and/or other characters of what is happening?

What devices move the narrative forward?
A fictional text is presented through a narrator or narrators, each of which offers his/her point of
view. This point can be unmediated as in direct speech or 1st person narratives, mediated through the
3rd person narrator as an indirect speech.

Sometimes you will encounter a combination of two, where you are presented with the
consciousness or point of view of a character, but through a 3rd person form. This is called FREE
INDIRECT SPEECH or FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE. It will be developed as a literary device in
the early 20th century with James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. There are moments when Austen uses it,
giving the reader much closer access to a character’s mind.

[D]eeply was she vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady
Lucas) freely, openly, and of nothing else but of her expectation that Jane would be
soon married to Mr. Bingley[...]. Mrs. Bennet seemed incapable of fatigue while
enumerating the advantages of the match. His being such a charming young man, and
so rich, and living but three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation;
and then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of Jane, and to
be certain that they must desire the connection as much as she could do. It was,
moreover, such a promising thing for her younger daughters, as Jane's marrying so
greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at
 her time of life to be able to consign her single daughters to the care of their sister,
that she might not be obliged to go into company more than she liked (Vol. I, Ch.
XVIII: 68).

I can detect one mediated or indirect (Elizabeth) and two unmediated or direct narratorial layers, It is
the omniscient narrator who reports on Elizabeth state of mind (‘deeply was she vexed’). The rest of
the passage it is written to exposing Mr. Bennet’s consciousness without resorting to the first person
form. We know it Mrs. Bennet’s voice because of the language which, in style and content, leaves us
in no doubt who is speaking or narrating.

You will have noticed that much of Pride and Prejudice is told through the dialogue or direct
speech. Direct speech need not, be limited to persons actually in conversation with one another.
Direct speech may take other forms such as diary entries or, in Pride and Prejudice, letters. The
letters here are crucial. Letters are the chief vehicle in the novel for communicating incontrovertible
facts:

 Darcy’s proposal and revelations about Wickham

 The news of Lydia’s elopement
 Mrs. Gardiner’s disclosure regarding Darcy’s role in saving the situation

The sincerity which obtains from the unmediated voice of the letter’s signatory combines with the
reliability of external, omniscient narrator who is chiefly responsible for telling the story.

Letters are so important that they can be said to provide a frame within the larger narrative frame
established by the omniscient narrator. Early in the novel, while Elizabeth is staying at Netherfield to
look after her sick sister, Austen foregrounds an otherwise unremarkable event: Darcy is writing to
his sister, during which he is interrupted by Miss Bingley’s persistent comments and observations.
We as readers are drawn to incident because Elizabeth herself ‘was sufficiently amused in attending
to what passed between Darcy and his companion’.

Letter-writing establishes unconscious bond between Darcy and Elizabeth as well as extending
future connections with all subsequent letters in the novel. The narrative arc is complete when in the
last exchange between Darcy and Elizabeth before their wedding, she declares ‘if I had not a letter to
write myself, I might sit by you, and admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady
once did’

TIP
In your reading of Pride and Prejudice, you may find it helpful to consider the narrative
subdivisions bellow under which you should note down relevant observations and comments.