P & P ch.13-15

Stephen Simmons
AP English 11/Mr. George
11/19/09
P&P

"Mrs. Bennet was privileged to whisper it to Mrs. Philips, and she ventured, without any permission, to do the same by all her neighbors in Meryton. The Bennets were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the world"(267).

The end of the novel is near and the one things that still astonished me are the altering moods of society. Just a few pages before this chapter, the Bennet family adopted a bad name and bad gossip. Now that Jane and Bingley are engaged, their social status has jumped and it is almost as if the situation with Lydia and the families absurdity never existed. This promotes the idea that relationships and people were the only things to talk about back then. People didn't talk about sports that happened the night before or how their children were doing in school, or anything we do today. There was no technology or what we consider modern entertainment, so you can imagine the boredom that must be felt. Because there is so little to talk about, everything about everyone is known. And because the towns are so small, people are so close, and because of the Bennet family is engaged to a higher class, people worship them more and are more friendly to them. Society in those times were full of bored and snobbish people who would do anything to be noticed and envy those who are.

"Elizabeth had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried"(278).

Now that the man she loves is being verbally tormented in front of her face, Elizabeth develops mournful feeling. Now that she is listening to the tormenting from a different perspective she truly realizes the awfulness and crudeness of what Mr. Bennet was saying. I think she has forgotten the fact that she had said worse, and now that she is the spectator, she becomes more like Darcy in the sense that she is now the one enduring the emotional attack that his words have uncovered. Furthermore, she seems to be blinded by love, for her argumentative character that we have followed through out the novel, has nothing defensive or contradictory so say.