Since DarcyвЂ™s botched wedding proposal and his elegantly restrained letter, Elizabeth had been growing in her regard for him as she learned more about him and saw him loosening up his prideful demeanor. But it wasnвЂ™t ElizabethвЂ™s uncle, it was Darcy who, at great financial and emotional cost, paid off WickhamвЂ™s huge debts in order to coerce the wayward young man - вЂњthe man he most wished to avoid,вЂќ Elizabeth acknowledges - to do right by Lydia. Gardiner, Wickham agreed to wed Lydia and accept an annual payment to keep the couple financially stable. Suddenly, though, after much negotiation seemingly carried out by ElizabethвЂ™s uncle Mr. Of course, as a 19 th century man, his reputation would suffer little from the episode while LydiaвЂ™s life in respectable society would be over.

This flighty, giddy teenager, swooning at soldiers in uniform, had run away with Wickham, asserting her love for him even if, for him, this affair was no more than a passing thing. In it, her aunt relates how Darcy - while seeking total anonymity - arranged to save the reputation of ElizabethвЂ™s youngest sister, 16-year-old Lydia. Many chapters later, Elizabeth receives the letter from Mrs. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded as having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers.Д®lizabeth recognized her own foolishness in believing the fast-talking Wickham and in ignoring the gaucherie of her family. When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were mentioned in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense of shame was severe. She grew absolutely ashamed of herself - Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurdвЂ¦. Instead, she did so with the open-heartedness of a lover of truth, with a willingness and desire to understand the world and the people in it, with a courageous intellectual and emotional vulnerability. Nonetheless, Elizabeth did not read DarcyвЂ™s letter with the rage of a wronged woman. This totally unexpected and, in its way, humble letter was from a man whom Elizabeth had strongly disliked for what heвЂ™d done to Jane and what she understood heвЂ™d done to Wickham - and a man who had put her into an exquisitely uncomfortable position by startlingly wooing her while also emphasizing her inferiority. In his defense, he details how Wickham, the son of his late fatherвЂ™s steward, was a wastrel who quickly squandered his inheritance and then tried to elope with DarcyвЂ™s 15-year-old sister Gloriana in order to lay claim to her substantial dowry.ДЄs for her second charge against him, Darcy acknowledges that, yes, he did counsel Bingley against Jane, believing that she was indifferent to his attention and feeling that her family had constantly shown a вЂњtotal want of proprietyвЂќ by talking and acting as if a marriage of Bingley and Jane were a fait accompli. The next day, as Elizabeth is walking, Darcy approaches and hands her a long letter responding - with straight-forward respect and deeply apparent restraint - to her two charges against him.

To this, Elizabeth responds with a dignified and, she feels, righteous anger, telling her would-be suitor that she has had a profound dislike of him ever since the delightfully charming George Wickham explained to her how Darcy had ruined his life, and that her dislike has just recently been heightened upon learning that Darcy had convinced his friend Charles Bingley to break off his courtship of ElizabethвЂ™s sweet older sister Jane.Дarcy was, she told him in no uncertain terms, вЂњthe last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.вЂќ His sense of her inferiority - of its being a degradation - of the family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit. Gardiner.Д«ut, before I get to that, letвЂ™s go about a hundred pages earlier to one of English literatureвЂ™s great scenes: The handsome, immensely rich and seemingly aloof Fitzwilliam Darcy, out of the blue, asks Elizabeth for her hand in marriage, even while asserting that, to do so, he has had to overcome his powerful reservations about the lowliness of her family and its place in the world. For me, the high point of my reading of Jane AustenвЂ™s Pride and Prejudice came near the end of the 1813 novel when Elizabeth Bennett receives a letter from her aunt, Mrs.

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