You will find it helpful to read Chapters 35-37 to help
you answer this question. These chapters include the letter that Mr. Darcy gives to
Lizzie after hearing her reasons for refusing him, and also trace her famous
volte-face, or change of heart, that make her see things very
differently and also help her to discover how prejudiced she had
been.
In particular, Lizzie's self-revelation about her own
failings is based on what she discovers about Mr. Wickham and his true background, which
of course changes everything and helps her to see events in a new light. Consider how
she responds to this news after having thought about
it:
"How
despicably I have acted!" she cried. "I, who have prided myself on my discernment!--I,
who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of
my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless of blameable distrust... Had I been in
love, I could nto have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my
folly."
Seeing herself in a
different way also leads her to reconsider the charges that Mr. Darcy made about her
family. Dwelling over the letter and re-reading it again and again causes her to see
the justice in Mr. Darcy's remarks about her family:
They were hopeless of remedy. Her father,
contented with laughing at them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild
giddiness of his youngest daughters; and her mother, with manners so far from right
herself, was entiely insensible of the
evil.
Lizzie thus comes to
see in these three chapters her own pride and prejudice and how greatly it has blinded
her, but also the truth about her family is presented and viewed by
others.
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