Continuing reading the book Pride and Prejudice, we know more other characters instead of the main characters. In the upcoming chapters, it’s still focusing on the marriage of the characters, especially the daughters, which is how Mr. Bingley admires Jane, and the ‘unbreakable’ prejudice between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. Apart from these, Austen also introduce more other characters such as Mr. Collins, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, and the Lucas family add into the story to extrude the different theory of marriage from different people, separating into two parts: no matter who, but benefits the first, or it’s important to know others better before marriage. Still with marriages, the neighbors that showed up in the story also had a significant effect on the whole plot, which based on their different characteristics, has different functions in the book.
There’s one very special character in the book that is only ‘alive’ from others’ words, who is Mrs. Long. Being “alive” in others’ words means that the author is never showing her as a fully described, or a real character. What the reader can capture her characteristics is from the other character’s conversation. From the conversation between Jane and Mrs. Bennet about Mr. Darcy’s behavior during ball, there’s an obvious diverse between what they see and heard, and comparing their words, it’s quite obvious that Mrs. Long could have exaggerated some of the truth. Mrs. Long’s first debut is in the very beginning of the story and she herself is a very gossipy and competitive person in the neighborhood, likes to compete with her own two nieces with others’ daughters and is bound up in seeking joy and pride from this. So from Mrs. Bennet and Jane’s words, we can prove that she really can’t tolerate others having a better opportunity than her, and try to destroy it at all costs. Therefore, Mrs. Long is being a role of a snot person in the book and maintaining her own advantages to make herself as the highest social status person in the neighborhood, but never come up to stage and presenting what she’d done.
Different from Mrs. Long who always gossip and live in other’s mouth, Miss. Charlotte Lucas often appears with Elizabeth as her best friend and often tries to persuade Elizabeth about marriage. Miss Charlotte Lucas is Elizabeth’s best friend, and she’s having a substantial effect on the part of marriages, that she indirectly promotes the marriage between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. In the story, Charlotte usually is as an enlightening of Elizabeth’s confusion. She has the similar theory with Mr. Collins which means that she thinks it’s no use for getting well known of who you’ll be married to, but wealth is quite important for the purpose of the marriage. This interpretation that the author makes a diverse marriage theory between the two good friends to emphasize the weight of Materialistic marriage during that time and had interiorized in people’s mind. Charlotte persuading Elizabeth to not be too focused on the feelings of each other in a marriage also shows that she really wants her friend to marry someone at a high social status and power but not someone who she’s interested in but not that wealthy and powerful person, which material support is more stable than emotional support. Therefore, we can see that from Miss Charlotte Lucas, we can see various theories and targets of marriage and deepen the discussion of marriage in the whole book.
Besides the neighbors and friends, another character who acts differently to Mrs. Long and Miss Lucas, is Mrs. Philips, born Miss Gardiner. Mrs. Philips is actually the sister of Mr. Edward Gardiner and Mrs. Mary Gardiner which means she’s a relative of the Bennets, and married her father’s clerk, Mr. Philips, who is now running her father’s business. In the book, Mrs. Philips had always been a competent elder of the Bennets, and always glad when seeing her nieces. When they come to visit her, she makes them get to know the officers and even “throws up the parlour window and loudly secondes the invitation”. She’s being very enthusiastic to her nieces and suggesting great affection between them. Apart from her treating her nieces so well, she also makes Mr. Collins admired her by her manners and politeness, which had emphasized her elegance but her actions of throwing up the window also presented another personality of her as an uncourteous person. This interprets the extensive personalities of Mrs. Philips shows the character just like a real person with complicated and diverse thoughts.
To sum up, the neighbors in the story all had a significant impact on building up the plot of the story. Their functions are all related to marriage but to different degrees and different identities of the main characters. Mrs. Long is an aggressive person in the neighborhood and likes to flaunt what she’s better than others, defaming others behind, which can easily make people detest her. Miss Lucas, who’s Charlotte, is Elizabeth’s best friend. Even though she had a dissimilar aim of marriage with Elizabeth, she still had a lot of influence on Elizabeth’s marriage and persuading her not to be too controlled by her feelings. For Mrs. Philips, as a relative of the Bennets, and her affective of her nieces, she might be doing her best to make her nieces have a nice marriage. Hence, from doing this, what we can see is that the neighbors in the story.
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