Pride and Prejudice

This passage is an account of a conversation that goes on largely between Mrs Bennet and Mr Bingley, yet at the same time, it manages to reveal aspects of the other characters in the way that they react to this situation. In accomplishing this, the passage is a showcase for many [vague] of the narrative techniques that Austen has employed consistently throughout the course of the novel.

In this extract, like many other passages, characters that go off on tangents and have long monologues to bored audiences hardly have anything worth saying, and it is the short, sharp, personal introspections of other characters that truly provide accurate assessments of situations and people. As in this excerpt, the more Mrs Bennet talks, the more she reveals herself to be shallow and ignorant, as when she goes off into a long discourse about Lydia leaving her (which Mr Bingley does not particularly care about), finally trying to end with a pointed remark towards Mr Darcy "he has some friends, though, perhaps, not so many as he deserves", leaving the reader to cringe [irony] with the stupidity and ignorance that she seems so eager to flaunt.

In fact, this is repeated throughout the entire novel, such that characters like Mrs Bennet, Lydia, and Mr Collins allow themselves to indulge in long, rambling monologues that no one is particularly interested in listening to, revealing themselves to be flat and superficial characters. Significantly, the characters that are developed, and have moral fibre, whilst thinking a lot and having a lot of reflection, largely permit themselves to indulge in over verbosity in conversation, as Elizabeth shows in this extract, making observations on her mother's behaviour ("such unnecessary, such officious attention!") and her own state of mind, yet she never actually voices out her thoughts to those present. This reticence is also reflected in Mr Darcy, who is similarly disinclined towards exposing his views. This provides a stark and glaring contrast between the various characters, and it is Austen's way of reminding us gently throughout the novel that the one who expounds the most may not necessarily be the most knowledgeable.

Austen allows characters such as Elizabeth, that are normally calm and rational, to indulge in exaggeration and melodramatics, before revealing a comic let down, an anti-climax of sorts. In this extract, Elizabeth works herself up into a frenzy, passionately decrying how that "their (Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley) society can afford no pleasure, that will atone for such wretchedness as this!" She then goes on to resolutely wish that she will "never see either one or the other again!".