The major theme in Pride and Prejudice is quite obvious, and is given to us in the very first lines, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Austen focuses her novel about the Bennet family, and their challenge of marrying their 5 daughters. Mrs. Bennet is particularly concerned with these marriages, and in her efforts to ensure their marriages as quickly and advantageously as possible, creates a hilarious drama about family, society, and marriage. It is the latter specifically, though, that Austen is most thorough in presenting to us. Her novel is about the different types of relationships that people end up in and how they handle them. We encounter several proposals and marriages throughout the novel, each characterized by the persons involved, their statuses, and their families, among other things. What is most telling, though, is Austen’s use of humor in describing and exploring these different relationships.
There are two main types of humor used in Pride and Prejudice. The first is the very subtle, particular humor which usually comes out in the dialogue of the novel, especially from Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth, and Darcy. The second is a more obvious kind of awkward, ‘slapstick’ comedy as seen in Mrs. Bennet jumping between nervous breakdowns and excitement over a new rich man in town, or Mr. Collins’ incessant bowing. The former type of humor is mostly found between people in a relationship, and is used to show the level of familiarity and comfort that exists in relationships, such as that between Elizabeth and Darcy and between the Gardiners. The latter humor is used by Austen to mock and ridicule certain people and situations that she disapproves of, such as people who base their lives and relationships on flattery, or people who are too full of themselves. Here it would be most helpful to examine some of the main relationships that Austen presents to us and her use of comedy in describing them, in order to perhaps understand her use of humor here, and to see what her point is in doing so.
The Bennets are the first and oldest couple that appears in the novel, and also the most hilarious. Austen gives us a perfect introduction to them in the first chapter, letting us know what to expect in the rest of the novel; Mrs. Bennet is anxious to meet Mr. Bingley, a wealthy man who has just moved to the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Mr. Bennet can only taunt her with his disinterest and feigned ignorance of her intentions. When she states her intention of making Bingley fall in love with one of her daughters, Mr. Bennet says, sarcastically, “Is that his design in settling here?” It is almost as if he pities the man already, knowing that his wife is coming for him, and asks her to leave himself completely out of it. Mr. Bennets obvious distaste for his wife is where his wit comes through. And, it is all the funnier because Mrs. Bennet isn’t able to pick up on it. He tells her, when she is complaining of him vexing her nerves, “You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.” Austen ends the chapter summarizing their characters thus, “Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.”
The Bennets’ marriage is not only one of the more thoroughly explored relationships, but it also serves as a template for the relationships their daughters soon enter into. It is easy to trace Jane and Elizabeth, as their father’s favorites and the only ones with any sense, to their happy endings. Elizabeth especially takes after her father’s wit and intelligence; she is smart enough to recognize her mother as the basket case that she is and clever enough to not turn out like her. Jane is also intelligent, but has a naivety that comes from her mother. It seems that what really makes things happen for Jane are her sweet disposition and great beauty; she does not have the boldness to get herself into trouble as Elizabeth does, and so has no need for her father and Elizabeth’s cunning. The rest of the daughters are not cared for by Mr. Bennet. He says of them, “They have non of them much to recommend them, they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.” He makes his distaste for them hilariously clear. There is a scene where he asks Mary, the middle, bookish child, her opinion of Mr. Bingley. She is so preoccupied with sounding intelligent that she cannot even answer a simple question, and stands there dumb. Mr. Bennet says, “Well, while Mary is busy adjusting her ideas, let us return to Mr. Bingley.”
Though we are not given much information on the history of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, one is given the impression that he was a naive young man who simply thought she was good-looking, and then got suckered into marrying her. He has been paying for it for 23 years now. While one cannot help pity his situation, it’s hard to excuse him from being such a terrible father. He governs his house as a man who has given up long ago. This is made especially clear when Lydia asks to go away with Wickham’s regiment; while Elizabeth sees Lydia’s idiocy and Wickham’s bad intentions as the dreadful combination that it was. Mr. Bennet sees the situation only as a chance to get Mrs. Bennet off of his case and to get rid of Lydia at the same time. His apathy towards his family, though usually hilarious, actually does cause great distress for himself and his favorite daughter.
It seems that humor is the only way Mr. Bennet has kept himself from insanity for this long. He is unhappy with his life- he has a miserable wife, no heir to his fortune, and 5 daughters to marry. He appeases his wife as much as he has to in order to keep her from nagging him to death. When he can, he shuts himself away in his library, leaving the family to fend for themselves. When he is forced out onto his role as husband and father, he tolerates it only at the expense of his wife and three younger daughters. While this adds witty relief to the frantic setting of the Bennet house, it shows the problem of an imprudent marriage. There is neither love nor respect between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. To avoid an entirely depressing novel, Austen has Mr. Bennet endowed with wit towards his wife, which sometimes even comes out as endearment for her, but this is all that he is capable of showing. Poor Mrs. Bennet, however, is ignorant of her ridiculousness and shallowness, and even her husband’s disregard for her. It is perhaps better, then, that she is so naïve and self-focused.
A relationship such as theirs would not be tolerable for any of the other couples presented in the novel; it is the special mix of Mr. Bennet’s playful sarcasm and Mrs. Bennet’s preoccupation with the state of her nerves and her daughters’ courtships which allows the relationship to continue as it does. They are older, and as attraction and infatuation are over, they have settled into the separate roles necessary for them to get by- a sarcastic, distanced man for him, a frantic character for her. We see Lydia destined for a similar future in her marriage, but Elizabeth and Jane manage to escape such.
Jane and Mr. Bingley are both, unlike her parents, very pleasant and level-headed people. Neither of them is terribly interesting, and it should be noted, perhaps as a result, that there is no humor either between them or regarding their relationship. Austen shows Jane as a beautiful and respectable, but serious, sister, and that is about all. Though Jane and Elizabeth’s relationships are the only ones from the family to succeed, there is a great difference in how Austen portrays them. There is no humor in the former, but Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship seems to be actually based on humor.
From the very beginning, Elizabeth’s disgust for Darcy and his dismissal of her as merely ‘tolerable’ create a hilarious scene for the reader and, later, an even funnier dialogue between them. However, this mutual hatred and the familiarity they inevitably come to is what eventually causes them to fall in love. It is when they start making fun of and joking with each other that we see them as a truly great match. A great example of this is when they are asked when they first fell in love with each other. Elizabeth tells her sister that it must have been when she first saw his estate at Pemberly, and Jane, like always, begs her to be serious. Elizabeth has no other answer. When Darcy is asked, he seems to playfully dismiss the question, saying that he doesn’t remember the day, place, or time that it happened, only that he had found himself in the middle of it before he knew he had started, and before he could get himself out of it.
Austen seems to point out this joking relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth as an example of humor being crucial to true happiness in a marriage. While Jane is content in her marriage, Elizabeth seems actually challenged and intrigued by Darcy, having what Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, referred to as a “lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By Elizabeth’s instructions, she began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.” Elizabeth is the only one who finds a perfect match in that sense.
Austen does not use humor strictly between them, however. Their match is a surprise for just about everyone, and its irony is emphasized by several humorous situations which follow their announcement of marriage. Even before then, when Darcy first proposes to and is rejected by Elizabeth, the news quickly spreads to Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is not happy about the idea of her handsome, well-bred nephew marrying some middle-class ruffian. So Lady Catherine, being the self-righteous, all-knowing, dramatic woman that she is, comes knocking down the Bennet’s door to tell Elizabeth she cannot and will not marry Darcy. The dialogue here between her and Elizabeth is a battle of two very stubborn women, one who sees the conversation as quite funny (Elizabeth) and the other who is going mad from being challenged for, it seems, the first time in her life. The dynamic of the conversation here is reminiscent of one between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, one gently mocks and plays obstinate while the other loses her head.
Austen mocks the pomp of this family through Elizabeth earlier, as well. When Elizabeth is visiting Mr. Collins’ home, Mrs. Jenkins and Miss de Bourgh come to visit. There is a great clamor through the house when their carriage pulls up, and Elizabeth is yelled at to come quickly. When she gets to the door she says, “And is this all? I expected at least that the pigs were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady Catherine and her daughter!” Elizabeth’s disgust for the pomp and decorum of Darcy’s circle make their match even more ironic and enjoyable. She often teases him about his background, and his intimidating aunt, while he in turn teases her about her forwardness. They build up a great repoire of these playful and witty insults once Elizabeth has had her change of heart. But, still before the marriage is announced, Mr. Bennet hears news of the last proposal through Mr. Collins and confronts Elizabeth about it. He is nearly in hysterics by the time Elizabeth reaches his library, and describes to Elizabeth the letter stating Darcy’s intent to marry her as a huge joke, a great misunderstanding by the foolish Mr. Collins. He goes on to tell her that there is no way Darcy can think of marrying her, and on top of it, everyone hates him! This is quite an awkward situation for Elizabeth. But, it shows just how ridiculous the idea of their marriage is even to her father, who has always been most understanding and open-minded towards Elizabeth. Jane, Elizabeth’s sister and confidant, is equally surprised when Darcy’s proposal is accepted and made known. Mrs. Bennet shows her true self again at this time; she has, following everyone else in the neighborhood, held strong to her indignation for Darcy. But, as soon as she thinks of him in terms of a wealthy husband for one of her daughters, she is ecstatic and forgets everything.
Her mother shows this same ridiculousness when she hears that Lydia, her 16 year old daughter who has disgraced the entire family by running off with Wickham, is getting married. In simply finding a husband, Lydia instantly erases, at least in her mother’s mind, all the emotional and financial torment that she has put everyone through. Lydia is Mrs. Bennet’s special pet; she is just as ignorant, boy-crazy, and conceited as herself. While Mrs. Bennet is happy for Elizabeth to be married and out of the house, her excitement for Lydia is beyond comparison. Lydia’s relationship also begins to mirror her mother’s more and more through the end of the story. While Lydia sends everyone into a panic over her supposed elopement, she merely sees it as a game, as a silly trick she has played on them. She doesn’t realize the trouble people went through to actually have her married. Wickham is now stuck with her; it is evident even in Lydia’s letter to Elizabeth congratulating her on her marriage that he is not happy. Though the relationship between Lydia and Wickham, and its circumstances, is unfortunate, Austen still manages to find humor in the link between Wickham and Mr. Bennet. I had never understood why Mr. Bennet called Wickham his favorite son-in-law, but when I think that they are both stuck with two identical women, it makes sense for Mr. Bennet to have a certain endearment for him and the lifetime of headaches ahead of him.
We see through these relationships that Austen’s use of humor tells us more than just the dynamic of each one. The only couples that are truly happy, being exempt from the shame and drama that surrounds everyone else in this novel, are Elizabeth and Darcy and the Gardiners. The relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy is the most honest and comfortable, there is a sincere love and respect between them that otherwise exists only between the Gardiners. In discussing Jane’s happiness with Elizabeth one time, Mrs. Gardiner says that sure, she may be happy, but she only smiles; I laugh. Though Jane is happy in her marriage, it seems like her gentle disposition would make her content in just about any marriage she ended up in. As Mrs. Gardiner says, there is no laughter here, no mutual joking or playfulness. Jane takes things very seriously and seemingly objectively, as does Mr. Bingley. Therefore, their relationship is missing that extra level of intimacy that is humor. This is the greater point that Austen seems to be making; the greatest happiness in a marriage requires a sense of humor between two equals.
