Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice (1813) is Jane Austen's most celebrated novel: a sharply ironic comedy of manners that follows the courtship of Elizabeth Bennet, the quick-witted second of five sisters, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a wealthy and proud landowner. Beneath its love story the novel is a serious study of marriage, money, social class and self-knowledge in Regency England.

Setting

The action moves between the Bennet family home at Longbourn in rural Hertfordshire, the rented estate of Netherfield, Mr Collins's parsonage at Hunsford beside Lady Catherine's Rosings Park in Kent, the fashionable streets of London, and Darcy's great estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Place in this novel is also social position: each house measures the wealth, taste and values of those who live in it.

The central movement

The plot turns on a double error. Darcy's pride in his rank makes him insult Elizabeth at their first meeting; Elizabeth's prejudice, fed by wounded vanity and by Wickham's lies, makes her misjudge him. The novel is the story of how both characters learn to see clearly, to feel justly, and so to deserve each other. Around this central pair Austen sets a gallery of contrasting marriages and would-be marriages that test what a good union should be.

Why it matters for the exam

For Cambridge IGCSE you must be ready to discuss how Austen creates meaning, not just what happens. Examiners reward close attention to her irony, her narrative voice (free indirect discourse), her use of dialogue and letters, and the way structure, contrast and setting carry her themes. This guide gives you the plot, characters, themes, context, style, key passages, a quotation bank and full essay practice so that you can write a confident, well-supported, personal response.