First Impressions – The Initial Title Of Pride And Prejudice
At the beginning of a book, sometimes we wonder how the writer choose its title. In fact, there are many eventualities about how the title was inspired by the author. Specifically, Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' was initially named 'First Impressions'. The novel was first written in 1797 but it was later revised and published in 1813. However, both titles have the same meaning because 'Pride and Prejudice' can lead to wrong first impressions. For the two main protagonists of the story Elizabeth and her eventual husband Mr. Darcy, Austen's draft describes their main romantic conflict which makes us wonder how these two will end up together despite the first impressions of one another.
Throughout the novel, Austen shows how first impressions can be misleading and form wrong prejudices. It is well known that the title of each book comes from the plot. Pride and prejudice is the first novel about conquering obstacles and achieving romantic enchantment. For Elizabeth and Darcy, the chief obstacle is identical to the novel's title. Elizabeth or Lizzy Bennet, a lively woman with sparkling wit, is usually right about people and clever enough to quickly identify someone who is a stranger, family member, or relative. This ability to size people up sometimes leads her too far. She is also impassionated and perceptive but her pride in that ability creates a prejudice that prevents her from living happily with her future husband. In spite of her mistake of misjudging Mr. Darcy and her fault of being stubborn to that judgment she is forced to see her fault. She reacts from reasonable first impressions of him and also Mr. Wickham to definite wrong conclusions about their real characters. Her strong confidence in her perception is a combination of both pride and prejudice which leads to her worst mistakes.
At the same time, Mr. Darcy shows some common characteristics with Elizabeth. He is a known English aristocrat and one of the wealthiest members of the landed gentry. He belongs to the same legal class with Bennet's much poorer family. Mr. Darcy is also an elitist and extremely conscious of class differences. On the contrary, while Darcy's sense of social ascendancy offends people, it reveals his good traits. However, he has a strong sense of honor and a degree of fairness that helps him control his pride after Elizabeth's rejection on his marriage proposal. After that incident, Darcy started to realize how arrogant and assuming has been. Concerning the fact that he is a sensitive man, his humblings makes him care about what other people feel.
At the end, he becomes more complaisant on other people's mistakes because he is now aware of his own. As it was mentioned in the beginning, there are a lot of probabilities of how the book was finaly entitled 'Pride and Prejudice'. It is possible that in the years between the completion of the book as 'First Impressions' and its amendment as 'Pride and Prejudice', there were two other works at the same time, a novel of Margaret Holford and a comedy of Horatio Smith, with the same title. So as a result to avoid a discomposure, Austen reviewed the title and among with other changes in the plot she converted it in 'Pride and Prejudice'. Another possibility is that Jane Austen drew inspiration for the new title from the last chapter of Fanny's Barney book named 'Cecilia', witch was known that the writter admired.
Another point worth that should be taken into consideration about the title that Jane Austen choose, is the time that the novel was set. 'Pride and Prejudice' was both written and revised during the Regency era. That period was known to be traditional and strict and was demanding from the society and the people to be conservative and disciplined. That's why in contrast with our era nowdays, some first impressions can be inclined as inappropriate speech or as an insult. Additionally, the story reflects the pride and prejudices of the social group where also Austen belonged with respect to marriage and the role of women within both family and society. She lived in a period of social upheaval and she was aware of the cultural and social debates that were taking place. Therefore, changing the title from First Impressions to Pride and Prejudice shows her interest in theese debates. In this way, it is clear that in addition of being an enjoyable romance, Pride and Prejudice remains a topic of debate in itself till now.
In conclusion, the final title 'pride and prejudice' ends to be more apt and drives the story forward as the characters are forced to reconsider and reevaluate their own personalities. Mr. Darcy is the emblem of pride and Elisabeth on the other hand appears to be the emblem of prejudice. This is fundamental to the success of the story as it is through the combined process of both protagonists coming to face their weaknessess that the made the book so powerful. 'Pride and Prejudice' introduces a deeper emotional labor, more fitting to the novel's intricasy. Whereas 'First Impressions' only implies a story of corrected perceptions, though Pride and Prejudice describes a story, where the meaning is specifically connected to ‘love’ but not only about ‘love at first sight’ but also about dislike at first sight.
