Elizabeth Bennet

Who is Elizabeth Bennet?

Elizabeth is the second daughter of Mr and Mrs Bennet of Longbourn, a small estate a mile from the market town of Meryton. Because the estate is entailed on a male cousin, the five sisters will have almost nothing when their father dies, which is why their mother’s whole business in life is getting them married. Elizabeth is her father’s favourite. In the very first chapter he says “Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters”; her mother, by contrast, likes her least of all her children.

Austen introduces her through one quality above all: “a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous” (chapter 3). She reads character for a hobby, argues for the pleasure of it, and refuses to be bullied by anyone, from Mr Collins to the great Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is also physical and impatient in a way polite society notices: when Jane falls ill at Netherfield, Elizabeth walks three miles across muddy fields to nurse her, and Bingley’s sisters spend the evening sneering at her petticoat, “six inches deep in mud”.

“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”

Jane Austen herself adored her. In a letter to her sister Cassandra on the novel’s publication in January 1813 she called Elizabeth “as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print”.

Elizabeth Bennet’s fatal flaw: quick judgement

If Darcy is the pride of the title, Elizabeth is the prejudice. Austen’s first title for the novel was First Impressions, and Elizabeth’s are fast, witty and often wrong. Wounded by Darcy’s remark at the assembly (“She is tolerable: but not handsome enough to tempt me”), she decides he is proud and unpleasant, and when the charming Mr Wickham tells her Darcy cheated him of a living, she believes every word, because she wants to.

Her other weakness is vanity, and she names it herself. After reading Darcy’s letter in chapter 36 she sees that she has been flattered by Wickham’s attention and offended by Darcy’s neglect, and has reasoned from both:

“Till this moment, I never knew myself.”

A few lines earlier: “vanity, not love, has been my folly.” It is the turning point of the novel, and the reason readers trust her afterwards.

What makes Elizabeth a heroine rather than a cautionary tale is what she does next. She does not excuse herself, and she does not swing to the other extreme. She revises her opinion of Darcy slowly, on evidence. She tells Jane the truth, but refuses to make his letter public, because “every particular relative to his sister was meant to be kept as much as possible to myself”.

Who falls in love with Elizabeth Bennet?

Refusing Mr Collins was a real risk. He would inherit Longbourn, and her mother insisted she accept. Her father’s ruling is one of the best jokes in the book: “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

Elizabeth Bennet’s best quotes

More from every character in our collection of Pride and Prejudice quotes.

Elizabeth Bennet’s dress and costume

Austen tells us almost nothing about what Elizabeth wears, apart from the mud on her petticoat, but the novel’s world is the 1810s, and a young gentleman’s daughter of modest means would dress like this:

• By day: a high-waisted round gown of white or pale printed muslin, falling straight from just under the bust, with long or short sleeves and a chemisette or fichu filling the neckline.
• For walking: a short, close-fitting spencer jacket or a longer pelisse over the gown, a straw bonnet, gloves and sturdy half-boots, which Elizabeth, the great walker, would wear out quickly.
• For a ball: a lighter evening gown in silk or fine muslin, short puffed sleeves, long gloves, satin slippers, and flowers or ribbons in her hair, as at the Netherfield ball.

For the whole wardrobe, with fashion plates from 1809 to 1811, see our guide to Regency era fashion.