Mr. Darcy's Proposal to Elizabeth in the Novel Pride and Prejudice by Charlotte Bronte

One thing that really surprised me in this section of Pride and Prejudice was Mr. Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth. Even though I knew that Mr. Darcy had feelings for her, I never expected him to come right out and state “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” (161). I can only imagine how hard revealing his feelings must have been for such a stubborn, arrogant man such as Darcy. Not only is he incredibly socially awkward, but he also frowns upon those in a lower class than his- which Elizabeth is. He even goes on to carefully explain how he “liked [Elizabeth] against [his] will, against [his] reason, and even [against] his character” (163). Because Darcy felt the need to point this out to Elizabeth during his proposal, it is obvious that it was something that weighed heavily on his mind; he felt as if he was doing her a favor of the sort by stooping down to accept her despite her class. Ever since the beginning of the novel, I had a feeling that Darcy was going to propose to Elizabeth.

However, I did not expect it to happen so soon; I had figured that Darcy and Elizabeth would somehow resolve their differences, learn to accept one another, and fall in love. Instead, Darcy proposed to Elizabeth in the middle of what came off to be as a begrudged and awkward relationship! To me, it seemed to jump around from Darcy finding Elizabeth ugly, to find her oddly fascinating, to straight out proposing to her- despite his lacking ability of “conversing easily with those [he] has never before” (150). It just seemed to me like really bad timing on his part. The fact that Elizabeth had recently found out about his interference in the relationship of Jane and Mr. Bidley made it all the worse. Seriously, he could not have picked a worse time to come out of his shell of social awkwardness and profess his feelings! On top of that, I can only imagine that Elizabeth’s outright rejection and denunciation of him further intensified his dislike of being open with people. It probably didn’t rectify his distaste for those in a lower class, either. In the end, I hope that Darcy is able to overcome his pride, Elizabeth is able to overcome her prejudices, and that the two can at least be amiable towards each other!

Cite this page