Pride and Prejudice

Darcy continues digging his grave in a letter to Elizabeth explaining why Jane shouldn't be so heartbroken and why it would have been stupid for Bingley to marry her. It wasn't the apology letter I was expecting.
He also includes in the letter a thrashing of Wickham, who, he claims, received Darcy's father's money and holds a grudge only because he tried to marry Darcy's sister in hopes of scamming her out of her fortune. Nothing like men scorned, huh?

Despite all the criticism Elizabeth receives, she sure gets a lot of suitors.
Darcy visits and eventually can't contain his love for her. He bursts out with a marriage proposal, admitting his concern over her social standing, and Elizabeth rightly kicks him to the curb.
Not only is he a complete snob who previously rejected her and focuses so much on money and standing at the cost of love and romance, he also admitted to convincing Bingley not to marry Jane.

Elizabeth's wish to see Darcy marrying someone "sickly and cross," like Lady de Bourgh's daughter, belies her confident exterior.
Making matters worse, when Elizabeth comes to Collins' parish, he and Charlotte treat her well, but Lady de Bourgh lays into her, deciding that she and her sisters were poorly raised. They needed a governess. In addition, some musical or artistic talents - something to entertain the men they should have been reared to serve - would have put them in a better position.

Bingley is off to London, leaving Jane hurt, but not dejected. Despite Miss Bingley's best attempts to keep her away, Jane heads to London with the Gardiners.
Collins and Charlotte are getting ready to be married, and Elizabeth is only slightly hurt when Wickham (I knew it!) starts paying attention to a more wealthy girl.
In these short chapters of Book II, we see the value money has in marriage. It makes one wonder how anyone can end up happily married when feelings take a backseat to standing.

The end of the first volume leaves little in the way of marriage prospects for the Bennet girls. Collins is off to marry Charlotte Lucas, and Jane has heard nothing from Bingley. Crazy Mrs. Bennet is very stressed about what will happen when her husband dies.
The concern over marriage is all very silly, and it seems like the most foolish decision yet in the book is the one between Collins and his fiancé. I feel sorry for all of these characters and their obsessions, but I feel worst for Elizabeth, who seems above it all, yet keeps getting dragged down into the muck.

Collins' pathetic refusal to accept Elizabeth's rejection of his marriage proposal is squirmingly enjoyable.

"I not now to learn ... that it is unusual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even third time," he says on page 88, early in the series of repetitive rejections.

The Core Blog will be off next week, but it will return to Pride and Prejudice on Sept. 14. Stay tuned for more drama, as well as announcements about new readings coming in October.