Message

Several messages can be extracted from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. As mentioned in our paragraph on love and marriage in our Themes section, this is not simply a novel of how love conquers all. Austen’s ideas of social class are too conservative for that, despite the fact that she also criticises certain aspects of the class society she lived in.

First of all, Austen's message concerning the relationship between marriage and social class seems to be that some level of social class should always be upheld. You are not free to love just about anyone; you need to follow certain social norms. A clear example of this is when Austen has Elizabeth fall in love with a man who is both wealthy, of good social status, and a good person. This is the perfect marriage and does not break any social norms.

A second message of the novel is that we should not be too quick in judging others based on first impressions, because we might not be right about their character. Both Darcy and Elizabeth dislike each other at first but go through great development and end up knowing each other and themselves a lot better. This message was apparently important to Austen; she originally called her novel First Impressions but changed it to Pr...