ABSTRACT
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen places a dialogic process of gender formation between a bastion of gentry masculinity, and an embodiment of Romantic feminine agency, at the centre of her narrative. Her creation of Fitzwilliam Darcy, a male protagonist of unprecedented psychological depth, and her interrogation of the complexity of his love for Elizabeth Bennet, left an indelible stamp on the courtship romance genre in 1813 and has ensured the novel’s popularity ever since. Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s first interrogation of the male self as a subject in its own right, as she reveals her male protagonist through innovative techniques that endow Darcy with his own narrative perspective. Austen exploits this psychological depth to dramatise Darcy’s inner conflict between external and internalised masculine identities, a torment that is ultimately resolved by his fundamental need to be desirable to Elizabeth. Projecting the courtship romance into Romantic ideology, Austen constructs Darcy’s self-fulfilment not through emotions excited by the natural sublime, or through social detachment or inclusion, but through the powerful and transformative effects of romantic love.
