Happiness in marriage (or lack thereof) preoccupies Jane Austen’s novels—perhaps none more than Pride and Prejudice.  Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, Lydia Bennet and Mr. Wickham, Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley, and Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy:  Pride and Prejudice ostensibly contains Austen’s most sustained examination of conjugal felicity and misery.

Among Austen critics, it is a truth increasingly acknowledged that the thought of both Aristotle and Mary Wollstonecraft influenced Austen, particularly her view of marriage.  As Archbishop Richard Whately, one of Austen’s earliest commentators, notes, “We know not whether Miss Austen ever had access to the precepts of Aristotle; but there are few, if any, writers of fiction who have illustrated them more successfully” (360).  More recently, the prominence of Aristotelian theories of virtue and friendship in Austen’s novels has led Alistair McIntyre to dub her “the last great representative of the classical tradition of the virtues” (243).  Allan Bloom, reflecting on Austen’s view of marriage, observes that she “seems to celebrate classical friendship as the core of romantic love” (208).1  Drawing on Aristotle and the classical tradition, the Enlightenment feminist Mary Wollstonecraft defends the intellectual and moral equality of women and men in her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.  Although, as Julia Prewitt Brown observed over three decades ago, “Jane Austen’s stature has declined with the rise of feminist literary criticism” (303), a growing number of scholars have argued that Wollstonecraft, a contemporary of Austen, likewise influenced Austen’s novels.  Following Lloyd W. Brown and Margaret Kirkham, many critics have placed Austen squarely in the Enlightenment feminist tradition, demonstrating the pervasiveness of Wollstonecraft’s thoughts on femininity, rationality, virtue, education, and marriage in Austen’s novels.2  As with Aristotle, we do not know whether Austen ever had access to the precepts of Wollstonecraft; but there are few, if any, writers of fiction who have illustrated them more successfully.

In addition to the influence of the classical and Enlightenment feminist traditions, there has been a recent revival of scholarship on the influence of the Christian tradition on Austen’s novels.  Against those who maintain that Austen “draws the curtain between her Sunday thoughts, whatever they were, and her creative imagination” (297), as Gilbert Ryle famously quips, scholars such as Irene Collins, Sarah Emsley, and Laura Mooneyham White contend that Austen’s Anglican faith and practice deeply shape her novels.  With Archbishop Whately, who considers Austen “evidently a Christian writer” (359), these scholars have sparked a religious revival in Austen criticism, making explicit the religious background of Austen’s novels and analyzing Austen’s own prayers.  They reveal the ways in which Austen’s Christianity suffuses her novels while simultaneously “being not at all obtrusive” (Whately 359).3 

Even with this increased recognition of Austen’s engagement with the classical, Enlightenment feminist, and Christian traditions, commentators have failed to appreciate the ways in which Austen draws on, criticizes, and remakes both Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views of friendship and marriage from an essentially Christian perspective.  What is so remarkable about Austen’s view of marriage in Pride and Prejudice is not so much that she draws on classical, feminist, or Christian themes.  Rather, it is the way she takes these themes, which some might consider to be at odds, and creatively fashions them into a coherent and captivating view of marriage.  For Austen, I argue, the happiest marriage unites a friendship of virtue with a romantic form of charity. 

I begin with a brief overview of Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views on friendship and marriage and then show how Austen models the marriages of Pride and Prejudice after Aristotle’s three forms of friendship while also rejecting his claim that marriage is a mere friendship of utility and pleasure.  Austen, following Wollstonecraft, conceives of the ideal marriage as a friendship of virtue between moral and intellectual equals, founded on mutual respect and esteem.  Unlike Wollstonecraft, who regards the friendship of marriage as incompatible with romantic love, Austen unites a friendship of virtue with a romantic form of charity—an active, generous, selfless, and forgiving love—in the paradigmatic marriage of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy.  Reading Pride and Prejudice intertextually with Austen’s own prayers, I show how charity itself catalyzes Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s epistemic, moral, and spiritual transformations and motivates mutual gratitude.  Elizabeth and Darcy’s mutual gratitude flowers into reciprocal romantic charity, which binds them together and establishes their marriage relationship.  As grace perfects nature, so charity perfects the virtue friendship of marriage.

Aristotle and Wollstonecraft on friendship and marriage 

According to Aristotle, human happiness or eudaimonia cannot be achieved without friendship.  The happy life, a life of activity of the soul in accord with reason, requires friends to provide opportunities for exercising virtue and to grow in virtue.  In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines friendship as reciprocated good will (plus an awareness of the reciprocated good will).  He outlines three forms of friendship, which are distinguished by their objects of love:  pleasure, utility, and virtue.  In friendships of pleasure and utility, two people are friends because they find each other pleasant or useful.  Aristotle calls these friendships coincidental, “since the beloved is loved not insofar as he is who he is, but insofar as he provides some good or pleasure” (1156a18–19).  Both forms of friendship dissolve easily, as soon as the friends cease to be pleasant or useful to each other.  Aristotle regards friendships of pleasure and utility, although necessary and good, as incomplete and inferior to friendships of virtue.  In friendships of virtue or complete friendships, friends love each other for their virtue and wish good to each other for the other’s sake.  Unlike friendships of pleasure and utility, friendships of virtue are not coincidental, since the friends love each other for who they are, not because they provide each other with some good or pleasure.  Because friendships of virtue require “good people similar in virtue,” they are rare and enduring, since virtue itself is rare and enduring (1156b7–33).  Friendships of virtue also promote continued growth in virtue: “good people’s life together allows the cultivation of virtue” (1170a12).

Aristotle further distinguishes friendships between equals and unequals.  Unequal friendships are friendships between superiors and inferiors—for instance, parents and children.  Friendships of virtue ostensibly only hold between equals, since they require good people similar in virtue.  Friendships of pleasure and utility, however, can hold between both equals and unequals.  Of course, all friendships involve reciprocity, but equal and unequal friendships involve different sorts of reciprocity.  Equal friendships involve equal reciprocity, where the friends love each other equally.  Unequal friendships involve proportionate reciprocity, where the friends love each other in proportion to the other’s worth:  the superior loving the inferior less, and the inferior loving the superior more.  In this way, reciprocity, which “holds people together,” is maintained in both equal and unequal friendships (1132b33–35; also 1158b25–29, 1162a35–1162b4). 

Aristotle conceives of marriage as a friendship between unequals because he considers women intellectually and morally inferior to men.  Although men and women both possess deliberative reason, Aristotle infamously remarks in his Politics that a woman’s deliberative reason “lacks authority” (1260a14).  Although men and women possess the same moral virtues, these virtues are gendered in the sense that men and women manifest particular moral virtues in different ways, relative to their functions.  Aristotle elaborates:  “the moderation of a woman and a man is not the same, nor their courage or justice, as Socrates supposed, but there is a [man’s] ruling courage and a [woman’s] serving courage, and similarly with the other virtues” (1260a21–24).  Thus, since women are deficient in deliberative reason and manifest the moral virtues in a different and inferior way, marriage must be an unequal friendship.

Whether Aristotle conceives of marriage as an unequal friendship of pleasure, utility, and/or virtue is a matter of significant interpretive disagreement.  Here is what Aristotle himself says on the matter in his Nicomachean Ethics: 

The friendship of man and woman also seems to be natural. . . . Human beings, however, share a household not only for childbearing, but also for the benefits in their life.  For the difference between them implies that their functions are divided, with different ones for the man and the woman; hence each supplies the other’s needs by contributing a special function to the common good.  For this reason their friendship seems to include both utility and pleasure.  And it may also be friendship for virtue, if they are decent.  For each has a proper virtue, and this will be a source of enjoyment for them.  (1162a17–24) 

Aristotle characterizes marriage here as a friendship of pleasure and utility.  A husband and wife find each other pleasant for sex and useful for reproduction and sharing a household.  Dispute arises over whether marriage is a mere friendship of pleasure and utility, or whether it may also be a friendship of virtue.  Aristotle suggests that marriage can be a friendship of virtue, even though men and women manifest moral virtues differently, provided that the man and woman are “decent.”  That said, it is not clear whether Aristotle can countenance friendships of virtue between men and women.  While he does seem to allow for unequal friendships of virtue at times, this possibility must be held in tension with Aristotle’s initial characterization of friendships of virtue as the friendship of “good people similar in virtue” (cf. 1156b7–15 and 1162a35–1162b4).  Granted that women have a different and lesser function, the virtue of women seems to differ in kind, not simply degree, from that of men.  And if the virtues of men and women differ in kind, it seems that they cannot be similar in virtue, precluding marriage from being a friendship of virtue.  Regardless, on Aristotle’s account, the friendship of marriage must fall short of the paradigmatic friendship of virtue between male equals.  Women’s intellectual and moral inferiority precludes marriage from being a friendship of virtue between equals.

While Mary Wollstonecraft owes much to Aristotle’s moral philosophy, she flatly rejects the intellectual and moral inequality of men and women.  Like Aristotle, Wollstonecraft’s opponents in the late eighteenth century regard virtue as gendered in the sense that men and women possess different moral virtues; masculine virtues, such as strength of mind and courage, differ in kind from feminine virtues, such as modesty and chastity.  Although Wollstonecraft acknowledges that men and women differ in physical strength and possess different natural duties as husbands and fathers and as wives and mothers, she strenuously denies that moral virtue is gendered.  “[F]or I here throw down my gauntlet,” Wollstonecraft challenges, “and deny the existence of sexual virtues, not excepting modesty.  For man and woman, truth, if I understand the meaning of the word, must be the same” (119).  Men and women possess the same human nature, she contends, and so there are no masculine or feminine virtues—only human virtues.  The virtues of men and women are the same in kind, if not degree (103, 106).  So-called masculine and feminine virtues, like strength of mind and modesty, she stresses, “must be equally cultivated by both sexes” (204).  Both men and women ought to cultivate reason and restrain the passions, from which human virtue and happiness naturally flow.  For Wollstonecraft, then, men and women are intellectually and morally equal. 

Wollstonecraft further argues that marriage ought to be a friendship of virtue between equals.  Several of her contemporary opponents conceive of marriage, like Aristotle, as a friendship of pleasure and utility between unequals.  Rousseau, a favorite target of Wollstonecraft, for instance, explicitly makes this claim:  “[T]he education of women should always be relative to men.  To please us, to be useful to us . . . , to render our lives easy and agreeable:  these are the duties of women at all times, and what they should be taught in their infancy” (qtd. in Wollstonecraft 152, emphasis added).  Against Aristotle, Rousseau, and company, Wollstonecraft contends that the friendship of marriage ought to be founded on respect and esteem for each other as rational and virtuous human beings.  “Affection in the marriage state,” she maintains, “can only be founded on respect,” and the admiration in marriage “gives place to friendship, properly so called, because it is cemented by esteem” (22, 183).  Wollstonecraft notes that the mutual respect and esteem between spouses is for each other’s virtue and reason:  “esteem, the only lasting affection, can alone be obtained by virtue supported by reason.  It is respect for the understanding that keeps alive tenderness for the person” (170; also 71, 177).  When a marriage is founded on mutual respect and esteem for each other’s understanding and virtue, it cultivates further virtue and creates an enduring “friendship which only death ought to dissolve” (145).

Notably absent from Wollstonecraft’s view of marriage are gratitude and romantic love.  Several eighteenth-century conduct writers instruct women to feel gratitude toward men, which establishes the unequal friendship of marriage.  According to Dr. Gregory, another favorite target of Wollstonecraft, marriage is founded on asymmetric gratitude rather than mutual respect and esteem:  “What is commonly called love among [women] is rather gratitude, and a partiality to the man who prefers you to the rest of your sex; and such a man you often marry, with little of either personal esteem or affection” (46).  The woman’s gratitude for a man’s beneficence in preferring or loving her naturally establishes relationship, as Dr. Gregory describes in A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters: 

Some agreeable qualities recommend a gentleman to your common good liking and friendship.  In the course of his acquaintance, he contracts an attachment to you.  When you perceive it, it excites your gratitude; this gratitude rises into a preference, and this preference perhaps at last advances to some degree of attachment, especially if it meets with crosses and difficulties; for these, and a state of suspense, are very great incitements to attachment, and are the food of love in both sexes.  (47–48) 

Wollstonecraft, keen to eradicate any inequality in marriage, strikingly omits gratitude from the friendship of marriage.  Dr. Gregory’s asymmetric gratitude belongs to unequal friendships; rather than calling for mutual gratitude, Wollstonecraft prefers to omit gratitude altogether.  Above gratitude, she founds the virtue friendship of marriage on mutual respect and esteem.

Like gratitude, romantic love is also notably absent from Wollstonecraft’s view of marriage.  According to Wollstonecraft, the friendship of marriage is incompatible with romantic love.  She frequently juxtaposes the rational respect and enduring esteem of friendship with romantic love, which she characterizes as an “animal appetite,” an “arbitrary passion,” a fickle and fleeting emotion (144, 194).  Wollstonecraft explains the conflict: 

Friendship is a serious affection; the most sublime of all affections, because it is founded on principle, and cemented by time.  The very reverse may be said of love.  In a great degree, love and friendship cannot subsist in the same bosom; even when inspired by different objects they weaken or destroy each other, and for the same object can only be felt in succession.  The vain fears and fond jealousies, the winds which fan the flame of love, when judiciously or artfully tempered, are both incompatible with the tender confidence and sincere respect of friendship.  (145) 

Whereas romantic love is an erratic flame kindled in an instant, the respect of friendship is calm and cool, founded on principle and cemented by time.  The superior power of reason, instead of being overthrown by romantic love, ought to “restrain this tumultuous passion” (93; also 208).  Eventually the flame of love, by its very nature, must burn out, and either “friendship or indifference inevitably succeeds love” (96).  Romantic love will ideally subside into friendship, for Wollstonecraft:  “Were women more rationally educated, could they take a more comprehensive view of things, they would be contented to love but once in their lives; and after marriage calmly let passion subside into friendship—into that tender intimacy, which is the best refuge from care” (195).

The marriages of Pride and Prejudice 

Austen draws on, criticizes, and remakes both Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views of friendship and marriage in Pride and Prejudice through its many marriages.  The novel’s marriages exemplify Aristotle’s three forms of friendship and Wollstonecraft’s commentary on marriage, creating a catalog of marital misery and happiness.4  The unhappy marriages of pleasure and utility contrast with the novel’s happy marriages of virtue, especially the happiest marriage of virtue between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. 

Lydia Bennet and Mr. Wickham exemplify a marriage of pleasure.  Lydia in many ways embodies the ignorant and idle women controlled by sensibility that Wollstonecraft disdains.  Both Austen’s narration and Elizabeth describe Lydia as “‘[v]ain, ignorant, idle, and absolutely uncontrolled,’” obsessed with dress, and governed by “a passion for a scarlet coat,” all of which she inherits from her mother (PP 257; Wollstonecraft 193).  Pleasure is the business of her life.5  Wickham likewise embodies Wollstonecraft’s sensual redcoat “whose manners render vice more dangerous, by concealing its deformity under gay ornamental drapery” (81).  Wickham possesses manners without morals, gallantry without goodness.  Pleasure is the business of his life (Wollstonecraft 89, 193–95).  Consequently, pleasure predictably motivates Lydia and Wickham’s match.  Wollstonecraft would not be at all surprised:  “The inference is obvious; till women are led to exercise their understandings, they should not be satirized for their attachment to rakes; or even for being rakes at heart, when it appears to be the inevitable consequence of their education.  They who live to please—must find their enjoyments, their happiness, in pleasure!” (195).  Upon learning of their elopement, Elizabeth shares Wollstonecraft’s lack of surprise at Lydia’s attachment to a rake like Wickham; Elizabeth, Austen reveals, has “no difficulty in believing that neither [Lydia’s] virtue nor her understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey” (308).  For both Austen and Wollstonecraft, Lydia’s lack of virtue and understanding, owing to deficient education and parenting, make her easy prey for Wickham.  Lydia and Wickham are both rakes at heart, seeking happiness in pleasure by eloping and living together.

Because Lydia and Wickham’s marriage is founded on sensual passion rather than virtue, their marriage, like all friendships of pleasure, lacks permanence and happiness.  As Elizabeth reflects:  “How Wickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not imagine.  But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture” (344–45).  Their chance at happiness is “‘small,’” “misery was considered certain,” and “neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity, could be justly expected” (336, 342, 339).  By the end of the novel, Elizabeth’s prediction about the ephemeral happiness of Lydia and Wickham’s marriage of pleasure sadly but unsurprisingly becomes reality:  “They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought.  His affection for her soon sunk into indifference; her’s lasted a little longer” (429).  Austen’s words echo Wollstonecraft’s warning that romantic love in the form of sensual passion must fade and, without mutual respect and esteem, inevitably results in mutual indifference.  Their marriage is doubtless unhappy, which Austen portrays as the natural consequence of Lydia and Wickham’s foolishness and vice.  “Everybody,” Bloom moralizes, “gets the kind of marriage he or she deserves.  The punishment of bad or foolish persons follows immediately from the character of their choice of mates and situations” (203–04).6 

The marriage of Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins is an obvious example of a friendship of utility.  Charlotte is “a sensible, intelligent young woman,” but at twenty-seven, runs the risk of “dying an old maid” (19, 137).  She accepts Mr. Collins “solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment” (137).  The marriage is founded on economic utility: 

Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.  This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.  (138) 

Pragmatic and “‘not romantic,’” she marries Mr. Collins for “‘a comfortable home,’” not for Mr. Collins himself (140).  Similarly, Mr. Collins simply seeks a wife, not Charlotte herself.  Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage is, to use Aristotle’s term, coincidental:  they do not love each other for who they are but only because they provide each other with some good.  They marry because it is useful.7

Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage of utility appears unequal, as well.  Mr. Collins is a foolish, conceited, and servile man, parroting Fordyce and his Sermons to Young Women, which Wollstonecraft pillories.  Charlotte, on the other hand, is a sensible, intelligent, and prudent young woman.  Elizabeth’s initial condemnation of their match stems in part from what she perceives to be Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s intellectual and moral inequality.  When Jane suggests that Charlotte “‘may feel something like regard and esteem’” for Mr. Collins, Elizabeth replies:  

“To oblige you, I would try to believe almost any thing, but no one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that Charlotte had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding, than I now do of her heart.  My dear Jane, Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who marries him, cannot have a proper way of thinking.”  (153–54) 

Elizabeth’s incredulity that Charlotte may esteem Mr. Collins derives from her esteem of Charlotte’s understanding; she cannot fathom that Charlotte could respect and esteem Mr. Collins, her intellectual and moral inferior.  Despite the unequal match, Jane rightly moderates Elizabeth, noting that Elizabeth’s language is “‘too strong’” and that she does not “‘make allowance enough for difference of situation and temper’” (154, 153).  In contrast to Wollstonecraft, who denounces marriages of economic utility as “legal prostitution” (229), Elizabeth’s view of Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage softens over time.  Their marriage, while clearly far from ideal, is not dishonorable.  Moreover, it is possible that Charlotte may improve Mr. Collins.  Although an intellectually and morally superior husband seldom improves an intellectually and morally inferior wife (see, for example, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet), Austen is more sanguine that an intellectually and morally superior wife may improve an intellectually and morally inferior husband.8

Marriages of utility, however, have a low chance of permanent happiness.  Although Charlotte considers happiness in marriage as “‘entirely a matter of chance’” (25), Austen does not.  When Elizabeth visits the newly married Mr. and Mrs. Collins, they seem content, in large part because they spend very little time together.  Charlotte’s contentment rests on Mr. Collins’s absence, which she encourages “as much as possible,” and on her ability to forget him (177–78).  In this respect, Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s unequal marriage resembles Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s unequal marriage.  Both Charlotte and Mr. Bennet, the morally and intellectually superior spouses, spend as little time as possible with their inferior spouses.  This behavior is predictable, according to Aristotle, since friends of utility do not “live together very much” and “sometimes they do not even find each other pleasant” (1156a27–28).  To be sure, when Mr. Darcy remarks on Mr. Collins’s good fortune in marrying Charlotte, Elizabeth does admit that Charlotte and Mr. Collins seem happy: 

“Yes, indeed; his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made him happy if they had.  My friend has an excellent understanding—though I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Collins as the wisest thing she ever did.  She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a prudential light, it is certainly a very good match for her.”  (200) 

The happiness of Charlotte and Mr. Collins in marriage rests on the utility of their relationship, in each receiving some good from the other.  Utility, however, is an unstable foundation for marital felicity.  “What is useful,” Aristotle notes, “does not remain the same, but is different at different times” (1156a22–23), and so the happiness of Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage of utility is precarious.  Elizabeth’s visit to Hunsford ends with Mr. Collins effusively wishing her “‘equal felicity in marriage,’” yet Austen immediately rejoins with an exclamation of pity for Charlotte and the sobering remark that Charlotte’s “home and her house-keeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms” (239–40, emphasis added).  Their marriage of utility, while certainly not as unhappy as Lydia and Wickham’s marriage of pleasure, is unlikely to produce permanent happiness.

The unequal marriage of Charlotte and Mr. Collins is only outdone by the unequal marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, a model of marital misery.  Austen uses Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s marriage to display the danger of an unequal marriage in which one person cannot respect the reason or virtue of the other.  Indeed, the first chapter of the novel establishes Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s intellectual inequality:  “Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develope.  She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper” (5).  Mr. Bennet’s romantic love for his wife, as Wollstonecraft would put it, was “excited by evanescent beauties and graces” (194).  Austen elaborates: 

Her father captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her.  Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown.  (262) 

Recall that for Wollstonecraft the friendship of marriage is founded on “respect for the understanding” and esteem, which “can alone be obtained by virtue supported by reason” (170).  The Bennets’ marriage fails because Mr. Bennet cannot respect and esteem Mrs. Bennet as a rational and virtuous human being.  She is a woman of “weak understanding and illiberal mind,” presumably due to a poor education.  With his hopes of “domestic happiness” overthrown due to his own imprudence, Mr. Bennet could have sought comfort “in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice” (262), a euphemism for what Wollstonecraft identifies as the pleasures of prostitutes or, more generally, infidelity.  Instead, Mr. Bennet finds pleasure in the country and reading books in the solitude of his library.  “To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted,” Austen dryly observes, “than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement.  This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given” (262).  Rather than enjoying genuine happiness with his intellectual and moral equal, Mr. Bennet finds happiness in mocking Mrs. Bennet’s ignorance and folly.  Austen doubts that Mr. Bennet, the intellectually superior husband, can improve her:  twenty-three years of marriage have proven him “incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife” (263).  Consequently, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s inequality dooms them to marital misery.9

Unlike her parents’ marriage, Jane’s marriage to Mr. Bingley is a marriage of virtue between moral and intellectual equals.  Jane is a handsome young woman of good sense and angelic virtue, and Mr. Bingley is an intelligent, amiable young man of unaffected goodness.  Beyond being moral and intellectual equals, Jane and Bingley have similar dispositions or temperaments.  This foundation of virtue, intelligence, and similar dispositions, Elizabeth believes, bodes well for their marital happiness:  “in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all [Bingley’s] expectations of felicity, to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself” (385).  Similarly sanguine about their future marital happiness, Mr. Bennet jests with Jane about her and Bingley’s similar dispositions: 

“You are a good girl;” he replied, “and I have great pleasure in thinking you will be so happily settled.  I have not a doubt of your doing very well together.  Your tempers are by no means unlike.  You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income.”  (386) 

The final chapter of the novel ostensibly confirms these auspicious predictions, as Jane and Bingley remain happily married near Pemberley.  Jane and Bingley’s goodness seems to ensure their marital happiness.  Yet Mr. Bennet’s jest about Jane and Bingley’s similar dispositions also highlights their similar weaknesses.  Jane is so generous that she is blind to Miss Bingley’s and Wickham’s malicious designs, and Bingley is so complying and easy that he wants proper resolution and is too easily influenced by others.  Their similar weaknesses restrict their ability to help each other grow in virtue.  Although both Jane and Bingley grow in virtue in the novel, they do not owe their moral growth to each other.  Jane grows less blind because of her friendship with Elizabeth, who is more clear-eyed concerning the wickedness of others, and Mr. Bingley grows more resolute because of his friendship with Mr. Darcy, after Darcy confesses his former interference in Bingley’s affairs.  Their similar dispositions and weaknesses limit the cultivation of virtue in their marriage but do not prevent it from being a friendship of virtue between equals. 

The paradigmatic marriage of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy is likewise a friendship of virtue that brings together intellectual and moral equals.  Both Elizabeth and Darcy possess superior minds.  Elizabeth “‘has something more of quickness than her sisters,’” Jane included, and her face is “uncommonly intelligent” (5, 26).  Despite demurring at being praised as a “‘great reader’” (40–41), she has improved “‘her mind by extensive reading’” from her father’s library (43, 186).  Elizabeth’s wisdom in warning her father about Lydia’s behavior, he later acknowledges, “‘shews some greatness of mind’” (330).  Austen establishes Mr. Darcy’s greatness of mind in relation to Mr. Bingley:  “In understanding Darcy was the superior.  Bingley was by no means deficient, but Darcy was clever” (17).  Darcy’s library is similarly superior to Bingley’s, which suggests that Darcy has improved his own mind through extensive reading; he is “‘always buying books’” to add to his already extensive family library and even attempts to “‘talk of books in a ball-room’” while dancing with Elizabeth (41, 104).  Their pride and prejudice notwithstanding, both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are also virtuous.  Following Aristotle and Wollstonecraft, Austen depicts Elizabeth’s virtue as stemming from her cultivation of reason and restraint of the passions. Her virtue perhaps shines most clearly when contrasted with the vice of her youngest sister and foil, Lydia.  Lydia’s ignorance and unchecked passions put into sharp relief Elizabeth’s intelligence and educated passions.  After Lydia’s marriage to Wickham, Elizabeth displays true Christian forgiveness, unlike Mr. Collins, in urging her father to receive the disgraced newlyweds at Longbourn (cf. 346, 403).  Darcy’s virtue begins to come into focus after his explanatory letter, when Elizabeth recognizes that he has never shown himself to be “unprincipled or unjust,” nor does he have “irreligious or immoral habits” (230).  Darcy’s virtue is established perhaps most strongly by the testimony of his intelligent housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds.  Using the “‘very wild’” Mr. Wickham as a foil, Mrs. Reynolds praises Mr. Darcy as sweet-tempered, generous-hearted, affable to the poor, a good brother, the best landlord, and the best master (273–77).  Thus, Austen portrays both Elizabeth and Darcy as rational and virtuous, setting the foundation of a friendship of virtue between moral and intellectual equals.10

In contrast to Jane and Bingley, Elizabeth and Darcy possess different but complementary dispositions that allow them to help each other grow in virtue, as Elizabeth herself recognizes: 

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her.  His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes.  It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.  (344)

This reciprocal cultivation of virtue in Elizabeth and Darcy, in fact, begins well before their marriage.  Elizabeth’s undeception and humiliating acknowledgment of her prejudice—the most pivotal moment in her epistemic, moral, and spiritual development in the novel—directly results from Darcy’s explanatory letter.  Moreover, Darcy’s recognition of his pride and proper humbling directly results from Elizabeth’s rejection of his first marriage proposal.  No such reciprocal cultivation of virtue occurs in Jane and Bingley’s relationship in the novel, as earlier noted, because their similar dispositions and weaknesses limit their ability to help each other grow in virtue; their similar dispositions inhibit them from providing what the other lacks.  As Kathleen Poorman Dougherty rightly observes, “We need the perspective of the friend to help us see aright, which might occur by seeing similarities, but also by making contrasts” (60).  Thus, Elizabeth and Darcy’s complementarity promotes the reciprocal cultivation of virtue.

Austen’s emphasis on Elizabeth and Darcy’s complementarity has led some commentators to suggest that Austen departs from Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views of friendship and marriage.  Elizabeth’s reflection on different but complementary dispositions, Bloom contends, 

echoes Rousseau’s views about the complementarity required to found a solid relationship between a man and a woman.  Classical friendship is taught by Aristotle to be essentially a relationship between persons who are alike.  The friend is a kind of true mirror in which one can see oneself.  By contrast, the friendship of a couple is founded on the imperfections or incompletenesses of each of the partners requiring complements or correctives from the other.  (205) 

In a similar vein, Nancy Kendrick maintains that, for Wollstonecraft, complementarity in a marriage implies incompleteness, gendered virtues, and a friendship of utility (40–41).  Elizabeth and Darcy’s different but complementary dispositions, on this reading, would set Austen against Aristotle and Wollstonecraft.

Interpreting Elizabeth and Darcy’s complementarity in this way, however, would be misguided.  Contrary to Rousseau and with Wollstonecraft, Austen does not regard virtue as gendered, with Elizabeth possessing feminine virtues and Darcy masculine virtues.  There is nothing essentially feminine about Elizabeth’s strengths and weaknesses, nor is there anything essentially masculine about Darcy’s strengths and weaknesses.  They are simply human strengths and weaknesses.  Moreover, complementarity implies difference and imperfection, but it needn’t imply incompleteness or a mere friendship of utility.  Elizabeth and Darcy are both whole persons who perfect—rather than complete—each other as moral beings.  Friendships of virtue, according to Aristotle, are entirely compatible with utility and pleasure (1156b13–19), and two people can be moral equals or similar in virtue while having different dispositions.  Elizabeth and Darcy’s friendship is not coincidental:  they love each other for who they are, not because they provide each other with some good or pleasure.  Rather than representing a departure from Aristotle and Wollstonecraft, Austen’s emphasis on the importance of different but complementary dispositions for the cultivation of virtue represents a refinement of Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views of friendship and marriage.  Friendships of virtue can hold between any two virtuous persons, whether their dispositions be similar or different; yet different but complementary dispositions promote greater cultivation of virtue.11  Complementarity allows for greater growth in virtue and, as a result, greater happiness.  “‘I am happier even than Jane,’” Elizabeth confides to her aunt near the novel’s end:  “‘she only smiles, I laugh’” (424).  Elizabeth and Darcy’s complementarity is integral to their ideal friendship of virtue that “could teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was” (344).12

Following Wollstonecraft, Austen stresses that Elizabeth and Darcy’s friendship is founded on mutual respect and esteem for each other’s virtue and reason.  During her visit to Pemberley, Elizabeth becomes aware of her respect for Darcy because of his virtue:  “The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings” (293).  After Darcy’s second proposal, Mr. Bennet, fearing for his favorite daughter’s marital happiness, implores her to consider whether she can truly esteem and respect Darcy: 

“I know your disposition, Lizzy.  I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior.  Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage.  You could scarcely escape discredit and misery.  My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life.  You know not what you are about.”  (418, emphasis added). 

Elizabeth, in reply, enumerates “with energy all his good qualities” or virtues (418).  Darcy, in turn, relays that he admires Elizabeth for “‘the liveliness of [her] mind’” and the fact that she, unlike other women, treats him as an equal (421).13 

Departing from Wollstonecraft, who regards the friendship of marriage as incompatible with romantic love, Austen unites a friendship of virtue with romantic love in the marriage of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.  Austen is careful to distinguish among the many forms of romantic love.  In an early conversation with Elizabeth about Jane and Mr. Bingley, Mrs. Gardiner distinguishes two forms of romantic love: 

“that expression of ‘violently in love’ is so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea.  It is as often applied to feelings which arise from an half hour’s acquaintance, as to a real, strong attachment.”  (160) 

Like Wollstonecraft, who denounces “the flame of love” kindled in an instant, Austen warns about the dangers of the form of romantic love that arises quickly from knowing someone for a short period of time.  This form of love is presumably erotic, a kind of sexual desire or physical attraction.  Marrying someone based on this sort of romantic love can be disastrous, as Lydia and Mr. Wickham demonstrate.  Against Wollstonecraft, however, Austen insists that there is a different form of romantic love that arises gradually from knowing someone over a long period of time, what Mrs. Gardiner refers to as “‘a real, strong attachment’”—“not the work of a day” but something that stands “the test of many months suspense,” the sort of romantic love that develops between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy (418).  Elizabeth and Darcy are physically attracted to each other, yet their romantic love runs deeper and lasts longer than erotic love; Elizabeth and Darcy love each other for their reason and virtue.  “The most lasting and meaningful love,” comments Anne Crippen Ruderman, “is simply not possible without virtue and intelligence” (187).  Wollstonecraft might call this the “serious affection” of friendship:  mutual respect and esteem for the reason and virtue of another.  Although Austen often uses “love” and “affection” interchangeably, Austen’s and Wollstonecraft’s differences cannot be reduced to a mere verbal disagreement over the application of the term “love.”  For Austen, the romantic love between Elizabeth and Darcy extends beyond mutual respect and esteem for reason and virtue.  Their love is charity itself.

Above respect and esteem: Mutual gratitude and charity itself 

Thus far, I have focused on the ways in which Austen appropriates Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views of friendship and marriage in the marriages of Pride and Prejudice.  Austen’s genius, however, consists in how she creatively extends the classical and Enlightenment feminist traditions in a distinctively Christian way through the marriage of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy.  Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage is, of course, a friendship of virtue founded on mutual respect and esteem for each other as intellectual and moral equals.  Yet mutual respect and esteem, according to Austen, are not the only or most important foundation for the virtue friendship of marriage.  In the paradigmatic marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy, Austen celebrates a romantic form of charity—an active, generous, selfless, and forgiving love—as the greatest foundation for the virtue friendship of marriage.  Elizabeth and Darcy’s reciprocal romantic charity is the culmination of their personal transformations:  an epistemic, moral, and spiritual move from mutual resentment and self-deception to self-examination and Christian humility, to repentance and mutual gratitude, and finally to reciprocal romantic charity.  Charity catalyzes Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s personal transformations and motivates mutual gratitude.  Their mutual gratitude for charity itself produces returns of romantic charity, and their reciprocal romantic charity binds them together and establishes their marriage relationship.

The preeminence and operation of charity in Austen’s view of marriage emerge gradually in Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship, beginning with Darcy’s disastrous first proposal.  During the first proposal, Elizabeth and Darcy could not be further from charity itself.  Rather than motivating mutual gratitude that flowers into reciprocal romantic charity, the first proposal motivates mutual resentment.  For Austen, gratitude and resentment are opposites.  Whereas gratitude arises from receiving a benefit or gift, resentment arises from receiving an injury or offense.  Resentment, in the words of Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, is a “deep sense of injury; anger long continued; sometimes simply anger.”  In Rambler 4 Johnson diagnoses pride as the underlying cause of resentment and explains pride’s incompatibility with gratitude:  “For pride, which produces quickness of resentment, will obstruct gratitude, by unwillingness to admit that inferiority which obligation implies; and it is very unlikely that he who cannot think he receives a favor will acknowledge or repay it” (3: 24). 

Darcy’s first proposal quickly provokes Elizabeth’s resentment and obstructs any gratitude for his love.  His proposal betrays his prideful “sense of her inferiority” and assurance of his being accepted.  “‘[W]ith so evident a design of offending and insulting’” her, Darcy’s proposal quickly rouses Elizabeth “to resentment” until she loses “all compassion in anger” (211–13).  Elizabeth’s resentment at being personally insulted is only compounded by her conviction of Darcy’s injury to others, namely, Jane and Mr. Wickham.  Her resentment, moreover, obstructs her from feeling gratitude toward Darcy for his love.  “‘It is natural that obligation should be felt,’” Elizabeth explains, “‘and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you.  But I cannot—I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly’” (212).  Elizabeth’s reply also suggests another reason why she cannot feel gratitude.  For a benefit or gift to be received with gratitude, the benefit must be given willingly.  An involuntary gift is no gift at all.14  Darcy, however, bestows his love “‘most unwillingly.’”  He loves Elizabeth “‘against [his] will, against [his] reason, and even against [his] character’” (213).  Darcy’s involuntary love is no gift, and so cannot deserve Elizabeth’s gratitude.

Elizabeth’s rejection of his proposal, in turn, injures Darcy’s pride and provokes his resentment.  Long before his first proposal, Darcy describes his own temper as resentful:  “‘I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. . . . My good opinion once lost is lost for ever” (63).  Elizabeth interprets Darcy’s resentful temper to mean that he “hardly ever forgave” (105).  In line with Johnson’s diagnosis, Darcy’s quickness of resentment seems to stem from his pride.  In his pride, Darcy proposes to Elizabeth with “no doubt of a favourable answer” (212; also 410).  Had Elizabeth accepted his first proposal, his pride would have obstructed any gratitude, since admitting his inferiority or indebtedness to Elizabeth would have been inconceivable.  To Darcy’s astonishment, Elizabeth rejects his proposal, injuring his pride and provoking his resentment; he reacts with “no less resentment than surprise,” becoming “pale with anger” (212). 

Elizabeth and Darcy’s mutual resentment presupposes their self-deception, which Austen understands to be an epistemic and moral problem.  Prior to the first proposal, both Elizabeth and Darcy are self-deceived by their vices.  Elizabeth’s vanity gives birth to her prejudice.  “‘Pleased by the preference of [Wickham], and offended by the neglect of [Darcy], on the very beginning of [their] acquaintance,’” Elizabeth’s vanity causes her to court “‘prepossession and ignorance’” and drive “‘reason away.’”  Her vanity renders her “‘blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd’” (230).  Darcy’s pride blinds him to his selfishness and causes him “‘to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with [his] own’” (409–10).  Thus, Elizabeth’s vanity and Darcy’s pride obstruct moral knowledge of themselves and others.

For Austen, however, self-deception is not simply an epistemic and moral problem but a spiritual problem.15  When read intertextually with Austen’s own prayers, Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s pride and vanity may be interpreted as secret or unconscious sins that require God’s mercy for deliverance.  Archbishop Thomas Sherlock, one of Austen’s favorite preachers, characterizes “secret sins” in his sermon on Psalm 19:12 as sins “we cannot . . . remember” (3: 58), such as sins committed in ignorance, sins committed out of habit, and sins simply forgotten due to the weakness and imperfection of the memory (49–58).  In her prayers Austen acknowledges the prevalence of secret sins.  For instance, in her first prayer, Austen petitions God as tutor to reveal secret sin:  “Teach us to understand the sinfulness of our own Hearts, and bring to our knowledge every fault of Temper and every evil Habit in which we may have indulged to the dis-comfort of our fellow-creatures, and the danger of our own Souls” (Later Manuscripts 573, emphasis added).   In her second prayer, Austen asks God to pardon sins “of which we have now no remembrance” (574).  Secret sin may arise from simple forgetfulness, but it also arises from self-deception.  In one’s sin, one may deceive oneself into ignorance of one’s own sin.  According to Austen, pride and vanity, Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s particular vices, possess a propensity for self-deception and ignorance of sin.  Austen closes the confession in her first prayer by beseeching God to “save us from deceiving ourselves by Pride and Vanity” (573).  Unconscious of their pride and vanity, Darcy and Elizabeth have deceived themselves into ignorance of their own sin, a spiritual problem from which only God can save them. 

Elizabeth and Darcy overcome their self-deception by pride and vanity through self-examination and self-knowledge, a process catalyzed by charity and modeled in Austen’s prayers.  Elizabeth’s undeception begins with Darcy’s explanatory letter.  Although Darcy’s letter begins in bitterness, it ends in benediction:  “‘I will only add, God bless you’” (225).  “‘The adieu,’” Elizabeth later reflects, “‘is charity itself’” (409).  In wishing God’s blessing and beneficence on Elizabeth—a woman who has refused his proposal and unjustly accused him of inhumanely disinheriting Wickham—Darcy expresses, perhaps inadvertently, the Christian virtue of charity:  an active, generous, selfless, and forgiving love.  Charity itself, embodied in the adieu of Darcy’s letter, catalyzes Elizabeth’s process of self-examination that produces self-knowledge. 

Self-examination, while certainly an epistemic and moral process, is also a spiritual process.  As several commentators have noted, the themes of self-examination and self-knowledge pervade Austen’s three prayers.16  For Austen, self-examination is the principal method for producing knowledge of secret sin.  Sherlock agrees:  “The only Method of coming to the distinct Knowledge of our Sins, and to a due Sense of them, is Self-examination; and therefore it is, that you are so frequently exhorted to enter into yourselves, to converse with your own Hearts, and to search out the Evil which is in them” (43).  Austen models the process of self-examination in the confessions of her prayers.  Austen’s first prayer lists several questions “to ask our Hearts” (573), and in her third prayer, she petitions:  “Incline us Oh God! to think humbly of ourselves, to be severe only in the examination of our own conduct, to consider our fellow-creatures with kindness, & to judge of all they say & do with that Charity which we would desire from men ourselves” (575).  As Elizabeth reads and rereads Darcy’s letter, she engages in a similar self-examination, eventually judging all Darcy says and does with charity and being severe only in the examination of her own conduct.  Her self-examination produces painful knowledge of her own vanity and self-deception, causing her to feel “absolutely ashamed of herself” and culminating in her realization, “‘Till this moment, I never knew myself’” (230).  Austen says comparatively little about Darcy’s own self-examination occasioned by Elizabeth’s rejection of his proposal; however, he later confesses that his behavior toward Elizabeth “‘had merited the severest reproof.’”  He “‘cannot think of it without abhorrence,’” he finds his own conduct “‘inexpressibly painful,’” and Elizabeth’s words of reproof have “‘tortured’” him (407–08).  Such expressions of contrition suggest that Darcy has engaged in a process of self-examination that produces knowledge of his pride and self-deception.17 

Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s undeception through self-examination results in Christian humility that leads to repentance.  Knowledge of their own secret sins causes both Elizabeth and Darcy “to think humbly of [them]selves,” as Austen prays.  In other words, self-knowledge allows Elizabeth and Darcy to view themselves and their sin rightly.  Upon discovering her own vanity, Elizabeth exclaims, “‘How humiliating is this discovery!—Yet, how just a humiliation!’” (230).  Likewise, Darcy credits Elizabeth with revealing his own pride, declaring, “‘By you, I was properly humbled’” (410).  Their humility is just, proper, and reasonable.  In their humble acknowledgement of their secret sins, both Elizabeth and Darcy resolve to repent through confession and amendment of life.  Elizabeth confesses to Jane, Darcy confesses to Bingley, and both Elizabeth and Darcy confess to each other on the walk that results in Darcy’s second proposal.  Upon visiting Pemberley, Elizabeth resolves to judge Darcy and Wickham without prejudice, carefully weighing the testimony of Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper.  Darcy similarly resolves to overcome his pride by his civil treatment of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner.  “Such a change in a man of so much pride” (293) astonishes Elizabeth, and Darcy later discloses that his aim at Pemberley was to let her “‘see that [her] reproofs had been attended to’” (410).

In their humility and repentance, Elizabeth and Darcy seek forgiveness from each other, acts that motivate mutual gratitude for charity itself.  Elizabeth’s gratitude for Darcy’s love arises gradually during her visit to Pemberley, culminating in understanding: 

But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of goodwill which could not be overlooked.  It was gratitude.—Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.  He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister.  Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude—for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be exactly defined.  She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on the renewal of his addresses.  (293, emphasis added) 

In a striking departure from Wollstonecraft’s complete omission of gratitude, here Austen stresses that Elizabeth’s gratitude toward Darcy surpasses even her respect and esteem.  Darcy’s repentance, displayed in his civility and extraordinary politeness toward her and the Gardiners at Pemberley, flows from his “love, ardent love” for Elizabeth, which excites her gratitude.  While several critics have noted Elizabeth’s gratitude for Darcy’s love, they neglect to note that Elizabeth is not grateful toward Darcy simply for his romantic love and “not merely for having once loved her.”18  In particular, Elizabeth is grateful for Darcy’s charity, that is, “for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.”  Rather than being treated as “his greatest enemy,” Elizabeth later recalls Darcy’s gracious and generous treatment of her:  “‘My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary politeness, and I confess that I did not expect to receive more than my due’” (410).  In humility, Elizabeth recognizes all the ways she has sinned against Darcy.  From her point of view, Darcy’s extraordinary politeness toward her is wholly undeserved; she receives more than her due from him, and this unmerited favor excites her gratitude.19  In this way, Darcy’s forgiving, gracious, and generous love—his charity—for Elizabeth displayed at Pemberley motivates her gratitude toward him.

Darcy similarly expresses gratitude toward Elizabeth for her reproofs and her charity.  Near the novel’s end, Darcy reveals to Elizabeth that his object at Pemberley “‘was to shew you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to’” (410).  Recall that Elizabeth understands Darcy’s resentful temper to imply that he “hardly ever forgave” (105).  For Darcy to show that he is “not so mean as to resent the past” is for him to forgive Elizabeth for the past.  In turn, Darcy hopes to obtain Elizabeth’s forgiveness for all the ways that he has sinned against her, by letting her see that he has repented and amended his life.  After obtaining Elizabeth’s forgiveness, Darcy recounts his past pride and proclaims his gratitude: 

“Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth!  What do I not owe you!  You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous.  By you, I was properly humbled.  I came to you without a doubt of my reception.  You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.” (410). 

Having been “properly humbled,” Darcy’s pride no longer obstructs gratitude toward Elizabeth.  In humility, Darcy employs the language of obligation, indebtedness, and inferiority to express his gratitude for Elizabeth’s reproofs and forgiving love. 

Elizabeth and Darcy’s mutual gratitude flowers into reciprocal romantic charity, binding them together and establishing their marriage relationship.  For Austen, gratitude for a benefit obliges a reciprocal response to the benefactor; gratitude produces a desire to return benefits.  Austen makes this explicit when Elizabeth reflects on her gratitude for Darcy’s restoration of Lydia:  “It was painful, exceedingly painful, to know that they were under obligations to a person who could never receive a return.  They owed the restoration of Lydia, her character, every thing to him” (361, emphasis added).  Elizabeth’s gratitude here obliges a reciprocal response to Darcy, yet the impossibility of returning such an immense benefit renders her debt of gratitude “exceedingly painful.”  Austen’s conception of gratitude parallels Johnson’s, who defines gratitude as “Desire to return benefits,” supported by the following quotation from Robert South’s sermon on ingratitude:  “Gratitude is properly a virtue, disposing the mind to an inward sense and an outward acknowledgment of a benefit received, together with a readiness to return the same, or the like.”  Although Elizabeth cannot return the same or the like for Darcy’s restoration of Lydia, she can return the same or the like for Darcy’s charity.  Her gratitude for Darcy’s charity produces a return of romantic charity toward him.  Similarly, his gratitude for Elizabeth’s charity produces a return of romantic charity toward her.  Darcy displays his reciprocal romantic charity for Elizabeth most clearly in the restoration of Lydia—an act of active, generous, forgiving, and selfless love for Elizabeth.  Darcy’s love is a form of charity in that it consists in giving, not getting.  Austen establishes the selflessness of Darcy’s love in showing that he makes every possible effort to conceal his actions from Elizabeth, and his charity is romantic in that he loves a particular woman:  Elizabeth.  As Darcy later confesses to Elizabeth:  “‘I thought only of you’” (406).  Their mutual gratitude for charity obliges reciprocal responses, namely, returns of romantic charity.  Reciprocal romantic charity binds Elizabeth and Darcy together and establishes their marriage relationship.

The marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy epitomizes Austen’s appropriation and creative extension of the classical and Enlightenment feminist traditions.  Austen’s examination of conjugal felicity and misery in Pride and Prejudice draws on both Aristotle’s and Wollstonecraft’s views of friendship and marriage.  She models the novel’s many marriages on Aristotle’s three forms of friendship, and with Wollstonecraft she portrays the ideal marriage as a friendship of virtue between moral and intellectual equals, founded on mutual respect and esteem.  Yet “above respect and esteem,” Austen founds the virtue friendship of marriage on mutual gratitude for charity that flowers into reciprocal romantic charity.  Charity itself catalyzes Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s moral, epistemic, and spiritual transformations.  Austen extends the notion of marriage as a friendship of virtue between moral and intellectual equals by emphasizing Elizabeth and Darcy’s spiritual equality.  Through reading their transformations intertextually with Austen’s prayers, it becomes apparent that both Elizabeth and Darcy are self-deceived by secret sins, undergo self-examination, acquire self-knowledge that leads to Christian humility, demonstrate repentance, seek forgiveness, and express gratitude for charity.  Their personal transformations are distinctively Christian, mirroring the movements of Austen’s prayers.  In stressing Elizabeth and Darcy’s mutual gratitude for charity, Austen simultaneously rejects both Dr. Gregory’s asymmetric female gratitude and Wollstonecraft’s omission of gratitude altogether.  Austen’s emphasis on the operation and preeminence of charity itself—beginning with the adieu and ending with reciprocal romantic charity—critiques Wollstonecraft’s claims about the incompatibility of friendships of virtue and romantic love.  In the paradigmatic marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy, Austen unites a friendship of virtue with romantic charity and displays how charity perfects the virtue friendship of marriage.  As Austen, through Elizabeth, concludes, such a union can “teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really [is]” (344).  And now abideth respect, esteem, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

NOTES

1Others who read Austen as Aristotelian include Ryle, Ruderman, Ely, Gallop, Emsley, Garbitelli and Kries, Dougherty, and Badhwar and Dadlez.

 2The similarities between Wollstonecraft’s thoughts and Austen’s novels have been explored by Ascarelli, Reiff, Cronin, and Hansen, among many others. 

3Stovel, Giffin, Dabundo, and Zaman likewise examine the influence of Austen’s Anglicanism and prayers on her novels. 

4Several critics have argued that Austen appropriates Aristotle’s theory of friendship in her novels, including Pride and Prejudice.  See Bloom, Garbitelli and Kries, Dougherty, and Badhwar and Dadlez. 

5Compare Wollstonecraft’s emphasis on reason restraining the passions and her remark that “Pleasure is the business of woman’s life, according to the present modification of society” (124, emphasis added), with Elizabeth’s warning to her father concerning Lydia:  “‘Our importance, our respectability in the world must be affected by the wild volatility, the assurance and disdain of all restraint which mark Lydia’s character.  Excuse me—for I must speak plainly.  If you, my dear father, will not take the trouble of checking her exuberant spirits, and of teaching her that her present pursuits are not to be the business of her life, she will soon be beyond the reach of amendment’” (256, emphasis added). 

6Both Garbitelli and Kries (29) and Dougherty (55–56) interpret Lydia and Wickham’s marriage as an Aristotelian friendship of pleasure, though neither notes Wollstonecraft’s influence on Austen’s portrayal of their match. 

7Ruderman (76), Garbitelli and Kries (29), and Dougherty (56) also interpret Charlotte and Mr. Collins’s marriage as an Aristotelian friendship of utility. 

8In Mary Bennet’s disappointed hope of marrying and improving Mr. Collins (PP 139), Austen intimates that a superior wife may improve an inferior husband.  Austen makes this view explicit in Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Persuasion.  See Badhwar and Dadlez (48–49) and Hansen (680). 

9The inequality of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s marriage stands in stark contrast to the equality of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner’s marriage.  Austen says comparatively little about the Gardiners’ marriage, but by all appearances the Gardiners possess the moral and intellectual equality and the enduring happiness of a friendship of virtue. 

10Several critics have observed Elizabeth and Darcy’s equality, including Bloom (200), Ruderman (107), Emsley (22, 102), Garbitelli and Kries (31), and Hansen (663).  Bloom, Garbitelli and Kries (29–30), and Dougherty (60–61) all interpret Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage as an Aristotelian friendship of virtue. 

11For Austen, this idea applies to female–female and male–male friendships of virtue as well.  Jane's and Elizabeth’s complementary dispositions promote greater cultivation of virtue, as do Bingley's and Darcy’s complementary dispositions.  That said, it is worth noting that Austen appears to reject Aristotle’s thesis of the unity of the moral virtues, according to which a person cannot have one virtue without having all the others.  For Austen, the virtues are fragmentary in the sense that a person can have one virtue without having all the others. 

12While both Garbitelli and Kries (31) and Dougherty (61) note Elizabeth and Darcy’s complementarity, neither argues that complementarity allows for greater growth in virtue and greater happiness. 

13Bloom (200) and Emsley (22, 102) further observe that Elizabeth and Darcy, despite their equality, regard or esteem the other “as a superior,” as Mr. Bennet says.  Mr. Bennet’s advice may be an allusion to Philippians 2:3, where the apostle Paul encourages his audience, in Christian humility, to “let each esteem other better than themselves.” 

14The notion that a benefit or gift must be given voluntarily derives from the classical tradition, namely, Aristotle and Seneca.  For an excellent overview of the history and anthropology of gift, see Barclay (ch. 1).  For an accessible introduction to the contemporary philosophical literature on gift and gratitude, see Manela. 

15Mira Zaman similarly contends that Austen regards self-deception as a spiritual problem and reads Emma intertextually with Austen’s prayers. 

16Stovel (188–89), Dabundo (247–49), Emsley (8–10), and White (72–73) all underscore the themes of self-examination and self-knowledge in Austen’s prayers. 

17Austen uses similar but more explicitly theological language in Sense and Sensibility to describe Marianne’s “torture of penitence” (306).  For both Elizabeth and Darcy, contrition redirects the anger of resentment away from each other and toward themselves. Emsley (8–10) and Zaman likewise read the self-examination of Austen heroines intertextually with Austen’s prayers. 

18Ruderman (112–14), Sayres (ch. 4), Giffin (116), and Stanford all highlight the importance of mutual gratitude in Austen’s view of marriage, but they do not specify charity as the benefit that excites gratitude.  Ruderman discusses the importance of male and female gratitude but does not specify the benefits that excite Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s gratitude.  Giffin similarly does not specify the benefits that excite their mutual gratitude, although he does briefly note Austen’s departure from both Dr. Gregory and Wollstonecraft.  Sayres identifies benevolence toward others as the benefits.  Stanford identifies love and the gift of self as the benefit, yet he does not discuss love as charity. 

19For Austen, gratitude seems to require humility.  In her prayers, it is no accident that thanksgiving always follows confession.  Gratitude to God arises out of Christian humility and a sense of one’s unworthiness, as seen most clearly in the thanksgiving of her third prayer:  “We thank thee with all our hearts for every gracious dispensation, for all the Blessings that have attended our Lives, for every hour of safety, health & peace, of domestic comfort & innocent enjoyment.  We feel that we have been blessed far beyond any thing that we have deserved; and though we cannot but pray for a continuance of all these Mercies, we acknowledge our unworthiness of them & implore Thee to pardon the presumption of our desires” (LM 575).