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Use of Satire in Pride and Prejudice

Satire is used in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen to show thedeficiencies in morals and ethics of the characters that Austendisapproves of. Satire is used to "attack" characters and to bring about

change. The different characters types she satirizes are "suck-ups,"hierarchical, and/or ignorant.

Austen disapproves of Mr. Collins and that is why she attacks andsatirizes him. Mr. Collins is a "suck-up." His living with Lady Catherinehas caused him to demoralize himself. He thinks and talks highly ofpeople higher than himself, such as, Lady Catherine DeBourgh. Anexample of this is when they were invited to dine with Lady CatherineDeBourgh and Mr. Collins then tells Elizabeth,

"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about / your apparel.Lady Catherine is far form requiring that elegance of dress in us whichbecomes herself and / daughter. I would advise you merely to put onwhatever / of your clothes is superior to the rest / ...she likes to havethe distinction of rank preserved" (137 Austen).

This shows how high he thinks Lady Catherine is and this sort of showsthat he thinks he's sort of better than her by implying that she doesn'thave an elegant dress. Another example of him "sucking-up" is whenMr. Collins introduces himself to Mr. Darcy at the ball. After introducinghimself and making a "speech," Mr. Darcy "replied with an air of /distant civility / ...and Mr. Darcy's contempt / seemed abundantlyincreasing with the length of his / second speech" (85 Austen). WhenMr. Collins returned to Elizabeth, he told her "Mr. Darcy seemed much /pleased with the attention" (85 Austen). Mr. Collins is so thickheadedthat he didn't notice Mr. Darcy's contempt towards him. When Mr.Bennet commented on Mr. Collins letter, Mr. Bennet said that Mr.Collins letter contained a "mixture of servility / and self importance"(56 Austen). This is why Mr. Collins is also a fop. A fop is someone whosees himself/herself as much more sophisticated and well liked thanthey really are. He continually brags about his "so-called" friendshipwith Lady Catherine DeBourgh. An example that shows that he thinkshe is greater than most people is when Elizabeth rejects his proposaland Mr. Collins replies by saying that she can't possibly refuse himbecause,

."..It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy to your /acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would / be any other

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than highly undesirable. My situation in life, / my connections with thefamily of DeBourgh, and my / relationship to your own, arecircumstance highly in my / favor" (94 Austen).

Living with people higher than him on the social ladder has started to

make him think that he's higher than most people. Mr. Collins showsmore of his arrogance when he learns of Lydia running off to elope withMr. Wickham because he sends a letter to the Bennets saying that theyhave a "faulty degree of indulgence" (246 Austen). Even though he isright about the Bennets, this letter still shows his arrogance. Austensatirizes Mr. Collins because people shouldn't demoralize themselvesfor the sake of people higher than them on the social ladder of society.People shouldn't think that they are better than most people becausethinking that doesn't make you better, it makes you worse. People likethis needs to be changed.

The highest person on the social ladder mentioned in the book is LadyCatherine DeBourgh. Jane Austen also disapproves of her. LadyCatherine is demanding and thinks that she can order whomever shewants around. An example of this is when she visits Elizabeth afterhearing the rumor that Mr. Darcy was to propose to her. LadyCatherine thinks she and people like her are better than everyonebecause she says to Elizabeth "I know [the rumor] it must be ascandalous falsehood" (294 Austen). She accuses Elizabeth of trying toget Mr. Darcy from the beginning. "Your arts and allurements may, in /a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he / owes tohimself and all his family" (295 Austen). When Elizabeth replied with a"smart-aleck" comment, Lady Catherine DeBourgh says, "Miss Bennet,do you know who I am?" (295 Austen). What she means by this is thatElizabeth shouldn't talk back to her because she is one of the highestpeople on the social ladder. When Lady Catherine DeBourgh was"interrogating" Elizabeth, she demands Elizabeth to promise no tomarry Mr. Darcy if he proposes. Lady Catherine thinks she can orderwhomever she wants just because she is high and mighty. Orderingservants around is a lot different from ordering other people aroundbecause servants work for you and other people don't. These arereasons why she needs to be changed.

Another foolish woman that is also satired is Mrs. Bennet. She isinfatuated with getting her daughters married. That is her only goal inlife. She doesn't care about her daughters' happiness as long as theyget married to someone who has a substantial about of money andproperty. This goal of hers almost cost one of her daughters her life,

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Jane Bennet. When Jane was going to go visit the Bingleys, her momwouldn't let her take the carriage because she said, "You had better goon horseback, / because it seems likely to rain and you must stay all /night" (28 Austen). Her plan worked too well because instead of justgetting a cold, Jane had a fever, and when Mrs. Bennet learned of this,

she was so happy. She said, "As long as she stays there, it is all verywell" (29 Austen). Also, when Mrs. Bennet learned that Lydia hadgotten married to Mr. Wickham, she was so joyful. She was blinded bythe fact that one of her daughters got married that she didn't see thepain Lydia caused for the rest of her family and she was also blinded tothe fact of how much it cost to get Mr. Wickham to marry Lydia. Mrs.Bennet was right in the part where she wants her daughters to marrysomeone with money and land. These are valuable assets to asuccessful marriage, but happiness of the people in the marriage isalso important. This is why Austen satirizes her.

Austen uses satire against characters with deficient characteristics.One of these characteristics is ignorance. Austen attacks characters,such as, Lady Catherine and Mrs. Bennet, which all have deficientcharacteristics. The first sentence of this novel, "It is a truth universallyacknowledged that a single man / in possession of a good fortune mustbe in want of a wife" (1 Austen) establishes Austen's reason forsatirizing the characters in this novel.