Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 16

Jane Austen · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily employed until the gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs. Philips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she heard, and who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could.

Probably not; but Mr. Darcy can please where he chooses. He does not want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth his while. Among those who are at all his equals in consequence, he is a very different man from what he is to the less prosperous. His pride never deserts him; but with the rich he is liberal-minded, just, sincere, rational, honourable, and, perhaps, agreeable,--allowing something for fortune and figure.

Read both passages aloud. How does the first tell you what to think of Mr. Collins? The second has no narrator. What tells you what to think of Wickham there?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences: the narrator on Mr. Collins and his listener, and Mr. Wickham answering Elizabeth’s claim that Mr. Bingley “cannot know what Mr. Darcy is.” The first is one long sentence in two halves joined by a semicolon and “and”. The first half opens on a long phrase, “In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion”, carries a second phrase on its back (“with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and the improvements it was receiving”), and only then reaches its subject and verb, “he was happily employed”. A digression is a turn away from the main subject. The second half gives Mr. Collins his listener and then describes her in two relative clauses joined by “and”: “whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she heard” and “who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could.” Consequence here means importance; to retail news is to pass it on. Notice the narrator’s quiet comedy in “happily employed” and “humble abode”. The second passage is five sentences of argument. The first sets a concession against a claim across a semicolon and “but”: “Probably not; but Mr. Darcy can please where he chooses.” The second is short and uses an old sense of “want”, to lack: he does not lack abilities. The third adds a condition with “if”. The fourth opens on a long phrase (“Among those who are at all his equals in consequence”) and then compares two Darcys, one to his equals and one “to the less prosperous”. The last sets a short main clause, “His pride never deserts him”, against a second clause after a semicolon and “but”, which builds a list of six qualities and holds back the last behind commas: “and, perhaps, agreeable”. A dash then adds a dry afterthought, “allowing something for fortune and figure.” For mechanics, notice the semicolons in both passages, the commas that set off “perhaps”, the hyphen in “liberal-minded”, and the double hyphen the edition prints for a dash. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who hears the narrator’s smile in the first passage, in “happily employed”, “humble abode” and the word “retail”, which tell us to take both Mr. Collins and his listener lightly; one who finds that Mr. Wickham’s own manner does the guiding in the second, with the fair-sounding “Probably not”, the hedge “perhaps” and the dry afterthought about “fortune and figure”, so that he sounds measured and even witty; and one who notices that nothing else guides us there: the narrator is silent, and the reader, like Elizabeth, has only his word. No answer may treat the portrait as fact or as false: the chapter gives only Mr. Wickham’s word.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in a few sentences, from the coach ride to Meryton to the carriage stopping at Longbourn House.

Elizabeth does not dare to say Darcy’s name, but Wickham brings him up himself, “in a hesitating manner.” Who wants this talk more, he or she? Inference
Elizabeth asks why Wickham did not take Darcy to court. He blames a flaw in the wording of the will. If you were in her chair, what would you ask next? Moral reasoning
Elizabeth could have added that Wickham is a young man whose very face “may vouch” for him. She keeps that line to herself, but Austen lets us hear it. What does it tell us that her spoken line does not? Author's choice
Wickham says Darcy helps his tenants and the poor, and takes good care of his sister. He says all of it comes from pride. After that, can any good thing Darcy does count in his favour? Character

Make a Connection Think of someone, in a book or in your own life, who could make even the dullest topic worth hearing. Did that make you believe them more?

Vocabulary

digressions: In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily employed until the gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs. Philips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she heard, and who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could. Turns away from the main subject to speak of something else (from Latin digredi, to step aside: dis-, apart, and gradi, to step, the root of grade and progress). Mr. Collins’s main subject is Lady Catherine’s grandeur, and his digressions are all “in praise of his own humble abode”: each step aside leads back to himself. The narrator’s plural makes the habit sound regular.
bequest: There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to give me no hope from law. Something left to a person in a will (from bequeath, to leave by will; its old root means to say or declare, the same root as quoth). Mr. Wickham says the late Mr. Darcy “bequeathed” him the next presentation of a living, and that a flaw in the bequest’s wording left him “no hope from law.” The word puts a dead father’s wish in legal terms, and his whole grievance turns on whether that wish was binding.
implacability: I do remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper. The quality of being impossible to calm or appease (Latin in-, not, and placare, to soothe, the root of placate). It is the word Elizabeth uses for what she remembers Darcy boasting of: resentments that nothing will soothe. She brings it to Mr. Wickham’s story from her own memory, and the long, formal noun makes a remark at Netherfield sound like a fixed trait.
filial: Family pride, and filial pride, for he is very proud of what his father was, have done this. Having to do with a son or daughter, and the duty and feeling a son or daughter owes a father or mother (Latin filius, son, and filia, daughter). Mr. Wickham glosses it himself: Darcy is “very proud of what his father was.” He stresses the word, and it sits oddly in his story: the son he accuses of “disgracing the memory of his father” is, by his own account, proud of that father.
conversible: He can be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth his while. Easy and pleasant to talk with (from converse, to talk; the older form of conversable). Mr. Wickham grants Darcy this, but only “if he thinks it worth his while”: a real gift, kept for chosen company. A reader may set the word beside the man who grants it, whose own ease in talk the evening shows from the wet night on.

Critical thinking

Mrs. Philips thinks more of Mr. Collins with every grand thing he tells her about Rosings. Is Elizabeth any different with Wickham?
Wickham says he cannot judge Darcy fairly, and then tells Elizabeth everything against him. Does she have good reason to believe him?