Pride and Prejudice

Austen uses devices and techniques to develop the characters in the book "Pride and Prejudice", a good example of how she does this is seen by looking at Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy's character develops slowly throughout the play and we start knowing very little to finding out more information through the book.

When we first meet the character Mr Darcy in chapter three at a ball, we see he is a friend of Mr Bingley and he is introduced as a real romantic hero,

"Mr Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien"

This first impression soon changes. Elizabeth hears Mr Darcy telling Mr Bingley that it would be a punishment to dance with anyone in the room; this shows how prejudice comes against pride. He also snubs Lizzy when he says that she isn't handsome enough to tempt him.

"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me".

When he snubs Lizzy we take her side as she is someone we trust through the novel. Our opinion of him is then backed up when Mrs Bennet tells Mr Bennet how "he is a most disagreeable, horrid man". Then once we get this opinion of Mr Darcy, we realise that his best friend is Mr Bingley of whom everyone has a very high view of. This makes Mr Darcy look even worse than he actually is, as Mr Bingley acts like a foil towards Mr Darcy and puts Mr Darcy in a worse light. Another device Austen uses is that she has an omniscient narrator, this means that although the narrator knows a lot about Mr Darcy she only tells us little things so we don't know anything personal about him therefore we can't get close to the character.

Soon we warm more to Mr Darcy as we hear about his attraction to Lizzy. The first sign of this is from the narrator, as the narrator is omniscient we know she tells us less than she knows but she does hint that Mr Darcy does become attracted towards Lizzy. This makes us like him more because we trust Lizzy, it shows us that Mr Darcy does have feelings and he can care. When he comments on Lizzy's eye in front of Miss Bingley, knowing full well how Miss Bingley feels for him. This shows us that he does like Lizzy but still tells it like it is without thinking of how others feel.

We are made to compare Mr Darcy to Caroline Bingley as they both are very straight talking and with both of them; they tell it how it is. But in fact Mr Darcy isn't like Caroline as she is very snobby and only thinks of herself, whereas Mr Darcy doesn't care as much about his status. When Austen introduces Wickham to Lizzy, Wickham was described as being an almost perfect man. The narrator described him as,

"fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address."

We get an impression that Wickham is too nice ...