Pride and Prejudice

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1813

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Volume 3, Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Volume 3

Volume 3, Chapter 1 Summary

Pemberley is a handsome stone house surrounded by natural beauty with “no artificial appearance” (229), and Elizabeth is impressed. The housekeeper, Mrs. Reynolds, gives them a tour. The rooms are elegant, not “gaudy nor uselessly fine” (229) like Rosings’s rooms. Elizabeth considers that she could have been mistress there; she finds consolation in the thought that she wouldn’t be allowed to invite the Gardiners.

Mrs. Reynolds speaks highly of Darcy, saying she “has never had a cross word from him in my life” and that he is the best master, is generous with the poor, and was “the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world” (232). She also describes Darcy’s generosity toward his sister. Elizabeth ponders the significance of his servants’ praise. With “many people’s happiness […] in his guardianship,” it is “in his power to bestow” much “pleasure or pain” (234).

As they walk the grounds, they encounter Darcy. Elizabeth and Darcy blush and engage in awkward conversation. The Gardiners admire him; Elizabeth is “overpowered by shame and vexation” (235). She wonders at his ability to speak civilly to her and to ask after her family; she has never seen “such gentleness” in him. She wonders what he thinks of her, “whether, in defiance of every thing, she [is] still dear to him” (236).

Darcy asks “if she would do him the honour of introducing him to her friends” (238). When she tells him they’re family, she expects him not to talk with them anymore; however, he walks with them and strikes up a conversation with Mr. Gardiner. She’s pleased that Darcy “should know she had she relations for whom there [is] no need to blush” (238). When Darcy learns her uncle loves to fish, he invites him to fish at Pemberley. She asks herself why he has changed, thinking he couldn’t possibly still love her. Darcy says the Bingleys and his sister will join him the next day; his sister wants to meet Elizabeth, and he asks if he may introduce them. Elizabeth feels this is “a compliment of the highest kind” (240).

They reach the carriage and decline Darcy’s invitation to go inside the house. After driving off, the Gardiners ask Elizabeth why she’d told them he was “so disagreeable.” Elizabeth tells them “she [has] never seen him so pleasant as this morning” (241). Mrs. Gardiner says it’s hard to believe he treated Wickham so poorly. Elizabeth suggests the situation isn’t what it seemed and that Darcy’s “character [is] by no means so faulty, nor Wickham’s so amiable” (241).

Volume 3, Chapter 2 Summary

When Darcy brings his sister to the inn to meet Elizabeth, the Gardiners believe he must be in love with her. Elizabeth is “quite amazed at her own discomposure” (243). She worries that Darcy had “said too much in her favour [sic]” (243) and that she will not impress Miss Darcy.

Elizabeth is surprised to find that Miss Darcy is not proud but shy. She finds “good-humour [sic] in her face” (243) and gentleness in her behavior. Bingley arrives, and Elizabeth can’t be angry in the face of his “unaffected cordiality.” Elizabeth is worried about pleasing her guests, but all three are “prepossessed in her favour [sic]” (244): “Bingley [is] ready, Georgiana [is] eager, and Darcy determined, to be pleased” (244).

Elizabeth sees nothing in Bingley and Miss Darcy’s interactions to suggest they’re in love with each other. She senses him leading the conversation around to Jane and hears tenderness in his voice as he asks about her. On the rare occasion Elizabeth glances at Darcy, she finds him looking content; she also notices that his tone, like the day before, is gentle. She’s impressed with his desire to please “the very relations whom he had openly disdained” (245); she has never “seen him […] so free from self-consequence or unbending reserve, as now, when no importance could result from the success of his endeavours [sic]” (245).

Before leaving, Darcy invites the Gardiners and Elizabeth to dinner at Pemberley. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner like Darcy; they also think less of Wickham, having heard from townspeople that he’d left with many debts, which Darcy had settled.

Elizabeth lies in bed, deciphering her softening feelings for Darcy. She is “ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him” and feels “gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him” (247). Though she’d expected him to avoid her, he seems “eager to preserve the acquaintance” (248). She appreciates his kindness toward her aunt and uncle and acknowledges the “change in a man of so much pride” (248). She has “interest in his welfare” and tries to determine “how far she [wishes] that welfare to depend upon herself” (248).

Mrs. Gardiner and Elizabeth decide to visit Miss Darcy at Pemberley the next morning, while Mr. Gardiner and Darcy fish.

Volume 3, Chapter 3 Summary

Elizabeth wonders how she will be received by Miss Bingley, whose “dislike of her,” (249) she is convinced, “had originated in jealousy” (249). Miss Darcy receives Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner with “shyness and fear of doing wrong” (249). Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley greet them coolly. Though Bingley’s sisters sit silently, Elizabeth, Mrs. Gardiner, and Miss Darcy’s attendant, Mrs. Annesley, engage in conversation. Miss Darcy appears to want to participate and does so as quietly as possible. Elizabeth notices Miss Bingley is watching her and both “[wishes]” and “[fears]” (250) Darcy will enter the room soon. When Darcy and the other men return from fishing, Miss Darcy is more likely to talk.

Miss Bingley, who’s been watching Darcy make efforts to ensure Elizabeth and Miss Darcy get to know each other, asks Elizabeth if the officers have left Meryton, noting that their leaving “must be a great loss to your family” (251). Elizabeth is startled but answers casually, then notices Darcy blushing and watching her. Miss Darcy won’t look up. Elizabeth believes that if Miss Bingley had known Miss Darcy’s history with Wickham, she wouldn’t have asked this question, which was meant to hurt only Elizabeth.

While Darcy walks the party out to their carriage, Miss Bingley criticizes Elizabeth to Miss Darcy, who thinks Elizabeth anything is “lovely and amiable” because “[h]er brother’s recommendation [is] enough to insure her favour [sic]” (252). When Darcy returns, Miss Bingley remarks that she “never could see any beauty” (252) in Elizabeth. Even her eyes, “which have sometimes been called so fine” (253), have nothing “extraordinary in them” (253); she also has “a self-sufficiency […] which is intolerable” (253). When Miss Bingley reminds Darcy that he once believed Elizabeth to be pretty, Darcy, fed up, responds that his feelings have since changed: he now thinks she is “one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance” (253).

In the carriage ride home, Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner discuss everything but Darcy, the topic that “particularly interest[s] them both” (253).

Volume 3, Chapters 1-3 Analysis

When Elizabeth visits Pemberley, what she finds is the opposite of what she expects. Darcy’s house is a “handsome” stone house atop “a considerable eminence” (229). It sits among “high woody hills” by a beautiful stream “without any artificial appearance” (229). While the rooms are “lofty and handsome,” they are “neither gaudy nor uselessly fine” (230). These descriptions easily fit Darcy himself. Handsome and stately, he commands respect but is not ostentatious. Just as his home possesses “natural beauty” (229), he says what he means and appreciates Elizabeth’s straightforwardness, as well. The “real elegance” (230) of Darcy’s home contrasts the showy decorations of Rosings—an apt contrast, as Lady Catherine condones the servile flattery of Sir William and Mr. Collins. When Elizabeth thinks of how she “might have been mistress” (230) of Pemberley, she is symbolically expressing regret for losing Darcy himself.

Meeting people who know Darcy intimately is a sobering reminder of the dangers of secondhand knowledge. Elizabeth hears glowing reports from Mrs. Reynolds, who claims that Darcy is “the best master” (233) that she has “never had a cross word from him” (232), and that all of the servants would say the same. Elizabeth asks herself, “Can this be Mr. Darcy?” (232) and is “impatient for more” (232-33). Later, the Gardiners speak with townspeople, who confirm that Wickham is not much liked and that Darcy has settled his debts. Similarly, Elizabeth, having believed Wickham’s account of her, assumed Miss Darcy would be disagreeable and proud; however, when meeting her in person, she finds that she is merely painfully shy, unable to utter barely a word.

These chapters show Darcy and Elizabeth both demonstrating willingness to learn and eagerness to grow. Elizabeth finds Darcy’s manner upon meeting them at Pemberley “strikingly altered” (236); he speaks with tenderness and even asks about the very family he’d disdained in his proposal. She is delighted when Darcy invites her uncle to fish at Pemberley. When he and Miss Darcy visit her at Lambton, she notices a lack of “hauteur” and “disdain”; he seeks “the good opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a disgrace” and speaks with a manner “free from self-consequence or unbending reserve” (245). His change of manner demonstrates that he has taken her criticisms seriously and made an effort to remedy them. He demonstrates newfound humility and tolerance.

Elizabeth can appreciate these qualities because she herself possesses them. Elizabeth, as she demonstrated in her response to Darcy’s letter, is not above assessing new information, changing her mind, and acknowledging her own missteps. She feels “shame and vexation” upon meeting Darcy at Pemberley, worrying that her touring his house after their argument casts her in “a disgraceful light” (235). Hosting him at the inn at Lambton, she is surprised to find that for the first time, she is nervous around him; with the dynamic between them new and unknown, she is “anxious to please” (243) and “to make herself agreeable to all” (244). Elizabeth, having recognized the magnitude of her misunderstanding, has been humbled. That so many characters—Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine, Wickham—lack this self-objectivity makes it all the more remarkable and admirable.