A person may be proud without being vain
There is a moment early on, at a ball, when a certain gentleman is asked to dance and declines — Elizabeth Bennet is standing near enough to hear herself pronounced merely tolerable. She does not forget it. She does not let him forget it either, though she never lets on how much it stung. That single slight becomes the seed of everything: her wit sharpens into judgment, her judgment hardens into prejudice, and she spends a great many chapters being right about him for all the wrong reasons.
Meanwhile Mr. Darcy, for his part, mistakes reserve for dignity and dignity for virtue, and cannot see how a man so obviously superior in fortune and understanding might still be wrong about nearly everything that matters. Pride and prejudice, as it turns out, are not opposite faults belonging to opposite people — they are close cousins, and both Elizabeth and Darcy are guilty of each.
Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity to what we would have others think of us.
I confess I find this the whole engine of the book. Neither of them is wicked. Neither of them is even, by the standards of their world, unreasonable. They are simply too satisfied with their own first impressions to examine them — until a letter, an unwelcome proposal, and a great deal of private mortification force them to look again, and look honestly.
It is, I think, the most useful kind of romance: one where the obstacle is not circumstance but character, and where falling in love requires falling first out of one's own good opinion of oneself.
If you have not spent time with Elizabeth and Darcy lately, or have not yet had the pleasure, you may find them here: Pride and Prejudice.
Jane
