There can be no doubt as to the fact that the title “Pride and Prejudice” suits Jane Austen’s novel much better than the original one – “First Impressions”, even though that this is not because the revised title corresponds more to the novel’s semantic properties. “Pride and Prejudice” implies high dramatism and suggests that the novel explores the issue of morality in-depth, which in its turn, increases the novel’s literary value, in the eyes of potential readers.
Moreover, the title “First Impressions” partly reveals the actual plot, which was the original reason for Austen to decide to revise it. It is important to understand that it is exactly because Austen’s novel deals with socio-political issues, which distinguishes her work from other Victorian “women’s tales”. We can say that in “Pride and Prejudice”, besides promoting her opinion on the issue of love and marriage, the author also strived to expose socially induced prejudices, in regards to people’s class affiliation, as such that often do not correspond to the objective reality.
For example, when Elisabeth comes to visit her sister Jane at Bingley’s on foot, she is being ridiculed by Miss Bingley for simply having her skirt spattered with mud: “Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must she be scampering about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair, so untidy, so blowsy! Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep in mud” (Austen, Ch. 8). In other words, Miss Bingley’s opinion of Jane does not include evaluation of traits of her character and corresponds merely to Jane’s physical appearance. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the value of Miss
Billy’s judgments, about the people that surround her, decreases as time goes by.
Words “pride” and “prejudice”, in connotation with each other, imply negative sounding. However, as we read through Austen’s novel, we get to realize that author’s attitude towards pride cannot be described as strongly negative. We can say that, in her book, Austen distinguishes pride that derives out of prejudice and pride that derives out of one’s acute sense of responsibleness.
For example, even though that at the beginning of the novel narrator describes Darcy as being an arrogant and snobby individual, by the time novel ends, Darcy is being presented to us as a man of strong moral stance, with the author referring to unsightly features of his character as only the side-effect of Darcy’s “existential nobility”, closely related to particularities of his upbringing: “I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle” (Austen, Ch. 58).
In her novel, Austen promotes the idea that the first impression about a particular individual, does not necessarily correspond to who such individual really is. However, had she named her book “First Impressions”, Austen would have downgraded the status of issues raised in it, because, as we get to learn from the novel, the first impression about an individual sometimes does relate to such individual’s existential mode.
For example, our first impression of Mrs. Bennett, as the person who is being totally consumed by her desire to have all her daughters married off, does not get to be altered, right up until the novel’s end. This is because Austen implies that a person’s behavioral nobility does not derive out of his or her belonging to a particular social class, but solemnly out of such person’s biological heredity.
Mrs. Bennett was born as an individual who considers ensuring the well-being of its children as her secondary priority, and it is very doubtful that she might have acted differently, had the circumstances of her upbringing been different: “Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have been very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering immediately, as her restoration to health would probably remove her from Netherfield” (Austen, Ch. 9). Thus, the author does not discuss her characters’ behavior as such that closely relate to who these characters are, in terms of social standing. At the same time, Austen does suggest that person’s social prominence often reflects his or her psyche, as is the case with Darcy.
By doing it, the author implies that the issue of people’s interaction is much more complicated in its essence than it is being generally assumed, which is another reason why she had decided upon the title “Pride and Prejudice” as the most applicable. The fact that Austen’s characters are being presented to us as three-dimensional beings adds a great deal of realism to “Pride and Prejudice”, and it is also the reason why readers do not get bored while reading the novel.
The author represents social interaction as something that is being in the state of constant transition, which actually corresponds to the objective reality. As result, we can now read “Pride and Prejudice” as not just a literary sublimation of women’s subconscious desires and anxieties, associated with the Victorian era, but also as a historical account of Victorian realities. Even though such realities often imposed social constraints on people’s behavior, it does not mean that people in Victorian times were less sophisticated, in the psychological sense of this word. This is the reason why it was only after “First Impressions” was renamed into “Pride and Prejudice” that Austen’s novel became instantly associated with commercial success.
Bibliography
Austen, Jane “Pride and Prejudice”. Guttenberg Project. 2008. Web.