In the late eighteenth century, letters were often self-contained artifacts.  Cunningly folded into their own envelopes, they conveyed messages in private interiors unmarked by stamps and seals.  This material integrity allowed letters to travel well; so too did their self-contained imaginary spaces effectively import into the English novel.  Within its intimate architecture, the letter carried its wealth of curious, creative confidences, making it a compelling narrative tool for Jane Austen, who grew up reading epistolary fiction.

It is not quite a “truth universally acknowledged” that Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was originally formatted as a novel-in-letters as the manuscript First Impressions.  Scholars have turned to the Austen family, including the letters of Caroline Austen and accounts from William and Richard A. Austen-Leigh, to construct a general recollection that Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice were drafted as epistolary texts, despite a lack of material evidence to support these claims (Bray 114).  Whether Pride and Prejudice began as a novel solely composed of letters, its ultimate published version reveals the author’s continued interest in the epistolary mode through numerous scenes of letter writing and reading, as well as wholly reproduced letters from major characters. 

Eve Tavor Bannet considers Pride and Prejudice a narrative-epistolary novel, a category I find useful for resisting the narrowness of arguments like B. C. Southam’s claim that “the course of Jane Austen’s development . . . is away from the letter, which she discarded in favour of direct narrative” (qtd. in Bray 115).  Austen was far from “discarding” the letter as a narrative tool in Pride and Prejudice.  In fact, her enduring preoccupation with letters and letter writing becomes increasingly apparent upon a second, a third, or an umpteenth reading of the ultra-rereadable novel.  Scenes of letter writing and epistolary reception occur frequently, with enriching effects:  exposing characters’ foolishness, transmitting news of romantic disappointment, mapping the flow of local gossip, and advancing the marriage plot.  By remaining attentive to Austen’s enduring epistolary interest, we can more accurately understand her stylistic development not as part of a “decline of the novel-in-letters” (Bray 108) but as a complex redeployment of this familiar eighteenth-century literary tradition. 

Pride and Prejudice features many fully transcribed letters and numerous scenes in which characters allude, respond, or react to epistolary correspondence.  Why, then, do readers go almost the entire novel without reading a letter from its protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet?  And why does the one wholly reproduced example of her letter writing—a few lines addressed to her Aunt Gardiner—come in the final pages of the penultimate chapter?  If Elizabeth is not one of the novel’s major letter writers, what do readers see her doing instead? 

These questions help me connect Austen’s epistolary approach to the development of a new kind of female protagonist on whom to center social novels about romantic love.  As Megan Stoner Morgan puts it, “Pride and Prejudice is about Elizabeth Bennet,” even without Austen making her an eponymous heroine like Frances Burney’s Evelina.  Many critics have read Elizabeth as a feminist character, more outspoken and independent than her peers and the eighteenth-century heroines that preceded her (Chang 76).  Amid Pride and Prejudice’s flurry of epistolary material, Elizabeth contributes little to the flow of ink.  But what she lacks in writing letters, she makes up for in her voraciousness as the novel’s primary reader.  While the text does little to construct Elizabeth’s identity as a letter writer, its pages are rife with scenes in which she reads (and rereads) epistolary and non-epistolary materials alike. 

Take, for instance, the memorable scenes during Elizabeth’s stint as a house guest at Netherfield Park.  On an afternoon in the drawing room during this awkward stay, Caroline Bingley makes some pointed remarks about Elizabeth’s choice of amusing herself with a book rather than joining the group’s card game: 

“Miss Eliza Bennet,” said Miss Bingley, “despises cards.  She is a great reader and has no pleasure in any thing else.”

“I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,” cried Elizabeth; “I am not a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.”  (40–41) 

Miss Bingley characterizes Elizabeth as a “great reader” as an insult, insinuating that she fancies herself above the rest of the company by choosing a solitary pastime over the participatory amusement of cards.  Even though “great reader” is leveled as an accusation that Elizabeth herself denies, her identification as reader is nonetheless real.  One recognizes the readerly identity’s salience in its ability to survive the veneer of dismissiveness in which it is presented.  This playful misdirection functions within Austen’s ironic strategy, where the additional dismissiveness that readers are meant to feel toward Caroline is undercut by the truth she unwittingly delivers.  Describing a similar gesture when Mrs. Bennet touches on a hidden point of a letter from the clergyman Mr. Collins, Bannet writes that Austen “plac[es] her ‘hint,’” in this case, that Mr. Collins is going to propose marriage to a Bennet daughter, “in the mouth of the most vulgar character and lowliest intelligence present” (69). 

Soon after her exchange with Elizabeth, Caroline returns her focus to Mr. Darcy, remarking on the extensiveness of the library at his estate, Pemberley.  Perceptive first-time readers, who already know that Darcy is taken with Elizabeth, might wonder if she will experience this impressive collection of volumes for herself.  Returning readers will perhaps share a knowing smile as they realize that Elizabeth will have unlimited access to one of the best private libraries in the country when she becomes Mr. Darcy’s wife. 

The drawing-room discussion turns to feminine accomplishments, and Mr. Darcy takes the opportunity to pay Elizabeth a subtle compliment about her reading.  To Miss Bingley’s list of art, language, and social graces in which the accomplished woman must be proficient, he adds, “‘All this she must possess, . . . and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading’” (43).  His comment is laughed off by Elizabeth, who only sees in it the judgmental nature of which she believes him to be guilty. 

Here again, the dismissive reception elides more serious truths at play.  Darcy’s understated manner of paying Elizabeth a compliment speaks to a character more reserved than haughty.  His remark is also his way of defending Elizabeth from Miss Bingley’s derision, turning her intended insult into an indication of merit.  What’s more, Darcy makes a point of communicating his appreciation for Elizabeth as a reader, suggesting a non-superficial and seemingly authentic regard for who she is.  Caught up in Austen’s command of upper-crust repartee, some readers might miss the subtle implications of Darcy’s remarks, set against Caroline’s overwrought performance crucial to Austen’s development of irony.  Darcy’s affirmative response to Elizabeth’s status as a reader serves as an almost metonymic appreciation for the different attributes her identity comprises.  If he can appreciate the significant readerly identity endorsed by the novel, he can likely connect with her in other meaningful ways. 

Austen pairs the drawing-room discussion of reading with a drawing-room discussion of letter writing the following evening.  Caroline Bingley is once again comically, intrusively present in the exchange, as she hovers over Mr. Darcy as he attempts to write a letter to his sister, Georgiana.  Caroline fawns over his brotherly attentiveness, his orthographic skills, and his writing speed, each compliment stalling the progress of his letter.  Again, Miss Bingley serves as an unwitting agent of Austen’s irony, which tasks this most unsympathetic character with establishing Elizabeth's and Darcy’s roles as reader and writer.  If Austen’s irony, as Rachel Brownstein writes, “questions a statement as it is made,” its subtle final stroke is to validate the truth that has just been dismissed (68).  With wry humor, Austen prepares readers for a future where the couple’s readerly and writerly identities relate as essentially kindred orientations. 

At other moments throughout the novel, Elizabeth serves as an attentive letter reader.  From her father’s oral delivery of Mr. Collins’s letter of introduction, she can immediately identify the “‘pompous . . . stile’” (71) with which it bristles.  Before Darcy’s first marriage proposal to Elizabeth, he comes upon her reading Jane’s unhappy letters from London, “as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against [him]” (210).  Eventually, Elizabeth becomes a reader of Darcy’s letters when, after she rejects him, he pens her an epic confessional letter: 

With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity, Elizabeth opened the letter, and to her still increasing wonder, perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter paper, written quite through, in a very close hand.—The envelope itself was likewise full.—Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it.  It was dated from Rosings, at eight o’clock in the morning, and was as follows:—  (218) 

Austen launches readers into a wholly reproduced version of Darcy’s letter to Elizabeth, as lengthy and informative as the closeness of the handwriting and the fullness of the envelope would suggest.  As Darcy recounts his efforts to separate Mr. Bingley from Elizabeth’s sister Jane, plus rakish Mr. Wickham’s attempted elopement with Darcy’s younger sister, Elizabeth undergoes a dramatic range of emotions.  Darcy’s letter moves toward intimacy with Elizabeth, materially represented and emotionally received.  Sealed by his hand and opened by hers—delivered in person and carried on her person—the letter evokes an almost erotic closeness (Eagleton 54).  In a social context with few opportunities for physical touch between the sexes, the letter’s intimate material dimensions take on heightened intensity.  The rude awakening of the letter can also be read as a sexual awakening, where intimacy with Mr. Darcy means appreciating him for who he is and possessing something he intends for Elizabeth alone. 

The message places Elizabeth in mental proximity to Darcy, made vivid in an ensuing scene of rereading in which she weighs every sentence and its bearing on the writer.  The lengthy letter represents an investment of Darcy’s time, and his decision to express himself in writing caters to his epistolary strengths and to Elizabeth’s skills as a reader.  Darcy chooses a written mode with which Elizabeth can linger and to which she will soften across multiple readings. 

Darcy makes himself vulnerable by explaining his motives and communicating sensitive information about Wickham’s attempt on his sister.  A similar seduction plays out later in the novel, when Wickham runs away with Elizabeth’s sister Lydia, allowing Darcy to deliver the Bennet family from ruin.  In the letter, Austen plants the germ of this future plot point as well as the clue to Wickham’s next seduction, generating another narrative pairing unbeknownst to Elizabeth and first-time readers. 

This epistolary intervention, situated as a hinge at the approximate center of the novel, initiates an emotional reckoning in Elizabeth as a reader of Darcy.  The letter sets in motion the re-assessment and interior work that prepare both parties to start afresh when they cross paths in Derbyshire.  The work of many hours, Darcy’s message is intended to vindicate its author.  At its outset, he describes penning the message as an imperative of his character:  “‘the effort which the formation, and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written and read’” (218). 

Darcy’s desire for the completion of the epistolary cycle emanates from deep within him, an urge that he locates in his own character.  The life cycle of the letter lends itself to the structure of pairs on which Austen relies, contributing to the sense of a conjugate relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy’s readerly and writerly roles.  The complementary processes of the epistolary exchange map onto the pairing of the marriage plot, which promises to unite two spouses by story’s end.  Even without showing Darcy writing his letter, the effort and intensity evoked by the closeness of his handwriting and the fullness of the envelope conjure a ghostly scene of composition. 

Austen rewards rereading, both for Elizabeth and readers of Pride and Prejudice.  The reception scene is marked by fraught epistolary interaction:  in one moment, Elizabeth is filled with rage toward Darcy; in the next, she finds herself marveling at the blamelessness of his conduct toward Wickham.  She rethinks both acquaintances and is made to feel ashamed of her failures of discernment and her misdirection by pride and vanity.  Elizabeth’s internal referendum and occasional outbursts to herself make the seemingly innocuous task of reading a letter a dramatic peak in narrative.  The letter maintains its hold on her throughout the remainder of her stay at Hunsford.  After the initial reading, she returns to the note obsessively, unfolding and refolding it with each perusal:  “Mr. Darcy’s letter, she was in a fair way of soon knowing by heart.  She studied every sentence:  and her feelings towards its writer were at times widely different” (235). 

Knowing Darcy’s letter “by heart” primes Elizabeth to seriously contemplate knowing his heart, an experience Austen imaginatively explores in the novel’s ensuing chapters.  The letter demands Elizabeth’s study of its every sentence, so that it presents a challenge to the immediately dismissive impulses she finds harder to curtail in face-to-face encounters.  After receiving Darcy’s message, Elizabeth can “think only of her letter” (232) and consequently of its author, whose message serves as his proxy.  Darcy’s message is now identified by the narrator as “her letter,” revealing the subtle insinuation through which it has come to belong to Elizabeth, both as an inhabited mental space and a piece of material property. 

But back to the earlier question:  when does Elizabeth write letters?  Besides allusions to letters to her sister and her friend Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth is not seen writing a letter until much later in the novel, a few chapters before it concludes. 

After a dramatic search for the unwed Lydia and Wickham led by Uncle Gardiner, the Bennets learn that their family might be preserved from total ruin by Wickham’s finally having been persuaded to marry Lydia.  When the newlyweds return to the Bennet residence, Lydia reveals that Mr. Darcy attended their slipshod wedding ceremony.  Elizabeth is astonished and writes to her Aunt Gardiner to request an explanation.  A few lines from Elizabeth’s letter to Mrs. Gardiner are reproduced; however, the message is not featured in its entirety: 

“You may readily comprehend,” she added, “what my curiosity must be to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and (comparatively speaking) a stranger to our family, should have been amongst you at such a time.  Pray write instantly, and let me understand it—unless it is, for very cogent reasons, to remain in the secrecy which Lydia seems to think necessary; and then I must endeavour to be satisfied with ignorance.”  (354) 

As soon as she concludes her letter, Elizabeth either internally or audibly utters a few additional lines:  “‘Not that I shall though,’ she added to herself, as she finished the letter; ‘and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in an honourable manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and stratagems to find it out’” (354). 

The rhetorical gestures of Elizabeth’s letter shed light on her feelings toward Darcy and on Austen’s approach to the epistolary as a suggestive, creative form; for Austen, letters are artful compositions, through which subjects like Elizabeth write around their more explicit meanings.  On a narrative level, Austen’s letters fit into a complex of literary strategies, interacting with her nimble narrator, lively dialogue, and enlightening stretches of interiority.  Elizabeth pretends to be impersonally curious about Darcy’s presence at the wedding, presenting a more neutral confusion than the one she really feels.  She characterizes Darcy as a “person unconnected with any of us,” a “stranger” whose involvement in Lydia and Wickham’s elopement is unaccountable.  She writes away from the hopeful suspicion that Darcy’s presence might be connected to her—that his attempt to remedy her family’s predicament might stem from personal esteem or affection.  Elizabeth does not write, “ I hardly know him” or “he’s practically a stranger to me.”  She instead suggests that she has as little to do with Darcy as any member of her family, a claim that both she and Mrs. Gardiner know to be untrue.  Elizabeth makes her investment more apparent by trying to write away from her curiosity’s true cause.  Her vague, negating language reflects a reluctance to credit herself with superior knowledge of Darcy; in the way of a hopeful lover, she at once trusts and doubts her closeness to the object of her affection.  Attempting to seem casual, Elizabeth downplays the personal stakes of her inquiries, while also secretly hoping her subtext will be clear enough to elicit the proper information from her aunt.  But this performance of impersonal curiosity is compromised by the urgent demand “Pray write instantly.” 

Elizabeth’s letter combines humility with a healthy tinge of embarrassment, through which Austen signals her heroine’s progress away from her former pride and defensiveness.  Readers see through her characterization of Darcy as a stranger, having witnessed the hours she has spent with him in her head while processing his letter.  His divulging his sister’s seduction has put Elizabeth in a category of privileged confidence.  Mrs. Gardiner, too, sees through Elizabeth’s understatements, having recently observed the charged interactions between her niece and Darcy at Pemberley.  Elizabeth’s message also conveys the hope that her aunt will not prove similarly cagey and will tell her what she wants to hear—that Darcy’s involvement in Lydia and Wickham’s marriage has emerged from concern and care for her. 

Elizabeth’s restrained letter is immediately followed by her outburst declaring her willingness to extract information through “tricks and stratagems” should her aunt’s reply prove unsatisfying.  Her playful threat of being “reduced” to these means is amusing, since her feigned breeziness is not so different from outright deception.  Pairing Elizabeth’s written expression with her omitted, voiced postscript, Austen humorously portrays the calculations of letter writing, suggesting that omission, compression, and misdirection are inherent to epistolary composition and, humorously, in contrast to the uncensored expressions Elizabeth holds back. 

Following Mrs. Gardiner’s reply and the swift cascade of events that results in her betrothal to Mr. Darcy, readers at last receive the first and only fully reproduced letter from Elizabeth: 

“I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done, for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of particulars; but to say the truth, I was too cross to write.  You supposed more than really existed.  But now suppose as much as you chuse; give a loose to your fancy, indulge your imagination in every possible flight which the subject will afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you cannot greatly err.  You must write again very soon, and praise him a great deal more than you did in your last.  I thank you, again and again, for not going to the Lakes.  How could I be so silly as to wish it!  Your idea of the ponies is delightful.  We will go round the Park every day.  I am the happiest creature in the world.  Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice.  I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.  Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me.  You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.  Your’s, &c.”  (424) 

After almost an entire novel without a complete letter from Elizabeth, readers can appreciate the richness of her message to Aunt Gardiner.  Her epistolary voice aligns with our sense of Elizabeth as a communicator of witty truths in speech and thought.  In length, tone, and style, the letter is neither excessive nor lacking dimension.  

The novel’s narrated events provide context for the implicit, intimate expressions of Elizabeth’s message.  Unlike the letter writers of predominantly epistolary texts (like Frances Burney’s Evelina or Samuel Richardson’s Pamela), who needed to be explicit and thorough in their communications, Elizabeth can be efficient and suggestive.  She begins on a note of frankness, admitting the disgruntled state in which she received Mrs. Gardiner’s message.  It is almost as if Mrs. Gardiner’s letter precipitates the change in circumstance that allows Elizabeth to furnish her with a favorable reply.  Elizabeth characterizes her aunt’s message as “long, kind, satisfactory” and “detail[ed],” descriptors that establish a set of standards for epistolary correspondence.  Although the flat, almost accusatory statement that “[y]ou supposed more than really existed” delivers a momentary shock to the reader, it is quickly followed by the relief of the warm invitation to “now suppose as much as you chuse.”  Elizabeth’s gleeful pleasure is evident in this epistolary undercutting through her contrasting tones.  Given the previous evidence of Mrs. Gardiner’s playful style, readers can likewise imagine her delight in Elizabeth’s news and her mode of presenting it, her unbridled expressions of gratitude and joy.

 In some contexts, the epistolary format encourages subjects to write around their true meaning in feats of calculated evasion, as in Elizabeth’s request for information from Mrs. Gardiner.  In this later message, however, evasion allows Elizabeth to creatively communicate the news of her engagement as she encourages her aunt to “give a loose to [her] fancy, indulge [her] imagination in every possible flight which the subject will afford,” an invitation that allows Mrs. Gardiner to participate in the writing of her love story.  Elizabeth’s message to her aunt gives similar imaginative license to the reader.  The nature of the marriage plot means the window into Elizabeth’s world will soon close, leaving readers to reread the novel or imaginatively render the characters’ shared future.  After all, there is a reason Pride and Prejudice has given rise to a flurry of contemporary fan fiction, in which Austen lovers envision romantic and even erotic futures for Elizabeth and Darcy.  Austen’s narrative restraint ensures these responses forever fall short.  It is as if the novel’s closing snapshot shows a tourist’s view through a window at Pemberley.  With assurances of a happy marriage and warm household, a figurative curtain falls, hiding the scene from view. 

But back to Elizabeth’s letter:  she sets an imaginative limit by stating she and Darcy are not yet husband and wife but permits her aunt to indulge in every fantasy short of their marriage.  Here, Elizabeth shows an understanding of the role of letters in fanning the flames of imagination and takes advantage of the epistolary format to share her happy news in a manner that caters to her reader.  Austen explores the interplay between the imagination and the epistolary mode.  Elizabeth, for instance, exerts her imaginative powers after Darcy’s pivotal letter, reassessing events of the past to open herself to visions of a potential shared future.  Darcy, too, undoubtedly devotes hours to imagining how Elizabeth might react to his letter.  Pride and Prejudice’s strength as a novel comes in its ability to encourage readers to dream within broad parameters, much like Elizabeth does in her letter to her aunt.  Austen captures readers’ imaginations with a tale that defies barriers of class and delivers an almost dreamlike ending, while also using the institution of marriage and its corresponding plot to set the bounds of wish-fulfillment. 

In her letter, Elizabeth thanks Mrs. Gardiner “again and again” for the change in travel plans that resulted in her chance meeting with Darcy in Derbyshire and wonders at her ever wanting to journey to the Lake District, the destination originally proposed.  While her reflexive chiding is again playful, her focus on the redirection of her travels with the Gardiners acknowledges the importance of the visit to Pemberley.  The diversion to Derbyshire strikes her as a stroke of luck, which has since become a crucial part of her story.  Elizabeth pokes fun at her own use of hindsight to question her past self about things she could never have known at the time.  The implicit knowledge that the novel could not fulfill its marriage plot without the journey to Derbyshire, however, draws attention to greater forces at play:  Elizabeth’s redirection from the Lakes to Pemberley is no mere matter of chance but a deliberate conspiracy between plot, author, and narrator.  The Gardiners, too, are implicated in the scheme of reunion, especially since running into Darcy is not as unlikely as Elizabeth would make it seem—her aunt and uncle bring her on a tour of his home, after all.  In keeping with Mrs. Gardiner’s special alignment with an omniscient narrator, her role in placing Elizabeth in Darcy’s path seems winkingly suspect.  At the same time, Elizabeth’s sense of serendipity reflects the extent to which every person understands her own love story through some fortunate convergence.  The role of chance in stories of love and marriage is, in fact, quite ordinary, even when it comes to as dashing a romantic interest as Mr. Darcy and as grand an estate as Pemberley. 

Elizabeth expresses her approval of Mrs. Gardiner’s plans for future family visits to Pemberley.  At last, she permits herself to envision daily drives around the estate park and a world where she can share Pemberley’s treasures with her loved ones.  Elizabeth’s sentences become short and simple, the language of a person eager to post her letter and return to her beloved.  She characterizes herself as the “happiest creature in the world,” acknowledging that others before her might have said so—but not “with such justice” as she.  Her statement is at once conscious of its exaggeration and committed to the truth of her experience.  Elizabeth’s declaration again highlights the universal yet individual truth that all people in the throes of love consider themselves luckier than all others. 

Elizabeth declares herself even happier than the newly betrothed Jane, who only smiles with joy, while Elizabeth laughs.  Elizabeth’s laughter indicates the cheerful self-consciousness of her epistolary approach and her awareness of the wonder, good fortune, and absurdity of love.  Elizabeth can join in on what narrator, readers, and Mrs. Gardiner have known long before her:  that she and Darcy have been destined for each other from the beginning, as far as being “destined” is a function of narrative design.  Elizabeth ends on the lighthearted command that all the Gardiners come to Pemberley for Christmas.  Readers picture happy gatherings of the future, when conversation and laughter will replace letters, and the close of the marriage plot will open onto life.  Here, Austen reveals letters for what they often are:  a means of conveying information when in-person communication is not possible—and not the encompassing frame of her novel’s imagined universe.