Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 4

Jane Austen · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

“I know you do: and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With _your_ good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough; one meets with it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design,--to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad,--belongs to you alone. And so, you like this man’s sisters, too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his.”

Read the speech aloud. Elizabeth says the put-on kind of candour is “common enough; one meets with it everywhere.” What would it sound like?

For the educator One passage, six sentences: Elizabeth’s answer to Jane’s claim that she always speaks what she thinks, and the turn to the sisters that follows it. It opens on a short line that takes up Jane’s own claim (“I know you do”) and leans on the edition’s italics, “_that_” and “_your_”, which carry the stress of speech. The second sentence is an exclamation with no main verb, all wonder. Then comes an antithesis across two sentences: the counterfeit is “common enough”, met “everywhere”; the real thing “belongs to you alone.” The fourth sentence is periodic: its subject is a long run of infinitives, from “to be candid without ostentation or design” to “say nothing of the bad”, and the verb arrives only at the end, so the praise is complete before the sentence says whose it is. The pair “ostentation or design” names the two ways candour is faked, for show or for gain. The last two sentences drop from praise to a test case, the sisters, and a flat verdict, “Their manners are not equal to his.” For mechanics, notice the colon after “I know you do”, the semicolon that balances “common enough” against “one meets with it everywhere”, and the edition’s doubled hyphens setting off the infinitive phrases. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who hears the fake kind as praise said loudly so the speaker will be thought kind (“ostentation”); for one who hears praise aimed at someone useful (“design”); and for one who asks how anyone, Elizabeth included, could tell Jane’s candour from either from the outside.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in a few sentences, from Jane’s praise of Bingley to his sisters calling her “a sweet girl”.

Jane says she always speaks what she thinks, and Elizabeth has never heard her speak ill of anyone. So does Jane never think ill of people, or does she notice what is wrong and stop before she judges? Character
Bingley is liked wherever he goes, yet he relies firmly on the good opinion of Darcy, who keeps giving offence. Why might that one man’s opinion count for so much with him? Character
Darcy admits that Jane is pretty, “but she smiled too much.” Is that the same fault Elizabeth teases her for? Inference
Bingley already thought Jane an angel, and then his sisters’ praise made him feel “authorized” to like her. What did their praise add? Author's choice

Make a Connection Think of someone you know, or someone in a book, who thinks well of almost everyone. When would you want that person’s opinion of a stranger, and when would you want someone else’s?

Vocabulary

candour: Affectation of candour is common enough; one meets with it everywhere. In Austen’s day, a generous readiness to think well of others and judge them kindly, as well as plain honesty (from a Latin word for shining whiteness, which also gives candid and candidate). Elizabeth sets “Affectation of candour”, the put-on kind, against Jane’s, which is “candid without ostentation or design”. The newer sense, saying plainly what you think, is in Jane too: “I always speak what I think.” The word holds both of the chapter’s questions about her: how kind she is, and how clearly she sees.
ostentation: But to be candid without ostentation or design,--to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad,--belongs to you alone. A showy display, made to be noticed (the adjective is ostentatious). Elizabeth says Jane’s kindness comes “without ostentation or design”: it is not put on for an audience, and it is not aimed at getting something. The pair names the two ways candour can be faked, for show or for gain. A reader can test “design” against the narrator’s remark that the Bingley sisters could be agreeable “where they chose it”.
pliancy: Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced: their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgment, too, unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them. The quality of bending easily, in body or in mind (from the same family as pliant and pliable). Elizabeth has “less pliancy of temper than her sister”: Jane bends towards other people’s best account of themselves, while Elizabeth holds her shape. The narrator gives it as a difference, not as a fault. A few paragraphs later Bingley’s “ductility” names the same quality in the other pair.
unassailed: Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced: their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgment, too, unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them. Not attacked or shaken (un- plus assail, to attack, from the same family as assault). The narrator says Elizabeth’s judgment was “unassailed by any attention to herself”: no flattery from the sisters pressed on it. The word treats attention as a kind of attack on judgment, something a fair judge must hold out against. It is one of the narrator’s reasons for her doubt; why she keeps the doubt to herself is left to the reader.
ductility: Bingley was endeared to Darcy by the easiness, openness, and ductility of his temper, though no disposition could offer a greater contrast to his own, and though with his own he never appeared dissatisfied. Of metal, the power to be drawn out or bent without breaking; of a person, a temper that is easily led or shaped (ductile is the adjective, from a Latin word for leading, as in conduct). Bingley is “endeared to Darcy” by the “ductility of his temper”. Set beside Jane’s “pliancy”, the word marks the generous reader in each pair as the one who bends. The narrator leaves it open whether that is praise: it sits in a list with “easiness” and “openness”.

Critical thinking

Elizabeth teases Jane freely, but when Jane defends Bingley’s sisters, she listens in silence and is not convinced. Why doesn’t she argue?
The sisters remember their respectable family better than the fact that their money was “acquired by trade.” Why does the narrator remember it for them?
Elizabeth says Jane is “honestly blind” to other people's faults. Is Jane's way of seeing people a weakness, or a strength her sister lacks?