Till This Moment, I Never Knew Myself: Reading Austen’s Pride and Prejudice During Advent

If you are a woman scholar—or, dare I say, simply a lover of nineteenth-century literature regardless of gender—there are probably two characters you have fancied yourself to be at some point in your life: Jo March, Louisa May Alcott’s plucky, strong-willed heroine of Little Women, or Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen’s witty, socially magnetic observer of human folly in Pride and Prejudice. While there is no direct evidence that Louisa May Alcott ever read Jane Austen (and Austen died fifteen years before Alcott was born, in 1817 and 1832 respectively), it is likely that Alcott read Austen for the same reason that you, my dear reader, who are reading this essay, likely know of her: Austen was regarded as an influential woman writer by the time Alcott was writing, and the American author was probably charmed by her British predecessor’s characters—namely, perhaps, one Elizabeth Bennet.[1]

And yet—this essay is about Advent and Pride and Prejudice, and here is my confession: I have read and taught both Little Women and Austen’s novels in the weeks during and leading up to this season. And while I have never been a tomboyish soul and thus have never been mistaken for “a Jo March type” (I am decidedly an Amy one, the subject of a future essay no doubt), I have long resisted what others say with a joking, knowing smile every time I speak of Pride and Prejudice: ah you are so much like Lizzie. And now while this is always quipped as a compliment—and while as a nineteenth-century scholar and a fallen human, I understand why Elizabeth Bennet is such a fiercely beloved character, I admit I always take a little offense because I realize that while Lizzie does, indeed, represent the best of my character traits in some ways, she also reveals “my faults, my faults, my most grievous faults”—faults I believe many of us might suffer from and that become especially pronounced during the weeks leading up to Christmastide, yes, both my pride and prejudice—which we will discuss in a few moments, faults that are notwithstanding interlaced with the ability—like Lizzie (and Jo March, for that matter)—to spin a good yarn. And perhaps this is why reading Pride and Prejudice during Advent feels fitting: the novel stages a turn inward consonant with the season’s liturgical logic. It invites the very habits Advent requires—reflection, humility, and the revelatory, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes feeing work of seeing ourselves truthfully.

Moreover, as I have been studying and teaching Pride and Prejudice in these weeks, I have been struck by how easily we fetishize Elizabeth and even Darcy for that matter as if they were fixed, singular ideals—archetypes that our twenty-first-century imaginations have now distilled into memes and TikToks, ready-made for both admiration and imitation. Readers and fans easily announce preferences with confidence, declaring things on T-shirts like: Searching for Mr. Darcy in a Room Full of Wickhams or creating videos showing that Elizabeth Bennet is my entire personality, as though these characters were perfect from the start. Indeed, I suspect it is these references that those with knowing smiles have in mind when they insist with alacrity that I resemble Lizzie Bennet in feminist disposition. Yet these modern interpretations reduce the narrative that forms them when they become the story we listen to most; they are the glitter on the giftwrap—eye-catching, delightful—but ultimately meant to be discarded, not mistaken for the gift itself. In other words, these “readings” obscure the slow work that happens in romance novels of misreading and being misread, the humbling corrections of pride, the revelations that arrive only just in time. To abstract Elizabeth and Darcy from their overall development (and their relationships with each other, their families, their friends, and their communities) is to overlook the relational growth that is the novel’s true undercurrent. And when we miss that, we risk losing sight of our own formation—how much it, too, depends on time, revision, and the patience to allow truth to germinate in our hearts.

My thesis is this: reading Pride and Prejudice during the Advent season provides a particularly productive frame because it stages a turn inward consonant with the season’s liturgical logic. Now, those who are not romance genre enthusiasts might be tempted to roll their eyes at this claim—I can almost see it from here—but stay with me and withhold your First Impressions, if you will (Austen’s original title for Pride and Prejudice), because the novel enacts the very processes that form spiritual preparation. Indeed, literary scholar William H. Magee in his article, “Instrument of Growth: The Courtship and Marriage Plot in Jane Austen’s Novels,” surmises that Austen’s particular success as a writer lies in her very ability to perfect the courtship and marriage novel into one of virtues, articulating that: “In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the romance form dominated the novels of a society that believed in material and moral ideals and wanted that belief fulfilled by the triumph of the best people.”[2] In simplest terms, when we read an Austen novel, we are reading flawed characters, but we are rooting for those flawed characters to succeed because we want them to figure out how to grow as people. We perceive them as “the best” of people. Further, at the novels’ conclusions, it is not mere self-development for its own sake that we hope these characters attain (Elizabeth Bennet is no self-fashioned “girl-boss”), but rather we hope they forge a joining together through mutual understanding—a growth that is predicated on attending to others who themselves likewise also experience encounter.

As Pope Francis reminds us in his “Letter on the Role of Literature in Formation,” reading itself initiates this kind of inner work. He writes:

It is clear, then, that the reader is not simply the recipient of an edifying message, but a person challenged to press forward on a shifting terrain where the boundaries between salvation and perdition are not a priori obvious and distinct. Reading, as an act of “discernment,” directly involves the reader as both the “subject” who reads and as the “object” of what is being read. In reading a novel or a work of poetry, the reader actually experiences “being read” by the words that he or she is reading.

Austen invites this kind of reflection; as her characters learn to see more truthfully, the reader is asked to do the same, to practice discernment. Hence, it is unsurprising that the outward gaze toward these characters we have grown to love through story often turns back toward us as readers, yes, toward you, and toward me, prompting our own small victories over pride and/or prejudice. And prompting me, especially, to wring my hands when someone says, oh so kindly, ah, but you are Lizzie. Because I know, uncomfortably, that there is truth there. I am the good friend, the storyteller, the one who can make a room feel light. But in the still, anticipatory moments of Advent, I can see how often I have clung to my own first impressions. I have let the ease of a good story—well and humorously told—spare me occasionally from the harder work of thoughtful charity, of patience, of looking again more seriously at moments when perhaps I should have. And like Elizabeth, I have learned that my own vision, too, must be refined if I hope to experience the fullness of love—and to enjoy others—more truthfully.

As Pope Francis helps us see above, the romance plot, when read attentively, can become a kind of moral pedagogy. It teaches us to watch, to wait, and to acknowledge the provisional nature of our judgments—and astute readers long for the payoff of communion and togetherness at the end. We long for resolution that requires something of us more than throwaway sentiment; we long for something that builds up to—yes, I will say it—a feeling akin to Christmas. Rereading Austen this Advent, I was struck by how closely the genre, at its highest form, mirrors what the Church invites during these weeks: patient anticipation, humility before what we do not yet understand, and the gradual revelation of truth, especially truth that is worked for. Stanley Cavell once wrote that if we refuse to see the way philosophy, poetry, and therapy contend with one another, we “give up something . . . of the intellectual adventure.”[3] Austen keeps that adventure alive, teaching us through story what clarity—and communion—require.

And I was reminded of this intellectual adventure most acutely when Elizabeth meets Darcy for the first time at the Meryton Assembly that begins her novel. Readers will recall that Darcy, speaking to his amiable friend Bingley and not realizing that Elizabeth is within earshot, declines to dance with her because, although she is “tolerable,” she is “not handsome enough to tempt me,” adding that Lizzie’s lack of a partner suggests she has been “slighted by other men” (and not merely that there happen to be more women than men at the ball, which Austen notes). Elizabeth’s reaction to this moment is, perhaps, the one I find most like myself—disconcertingly revealing in its familiarity. Once Darcy “walked off . . . Elizabeth remained with no very cordial feelings toward him. She told the story however with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.”[4]

Here, “a first impression” is made in the story. What I appreciate about this moment is that Austen does not render Elizabeth as silly in the way she tells the story afterwards: that is, she is not like her sister Lydia who prattles without reflection on every small going-on and courts disaster for herself and her family. Rather, Elizabeth is described as “playful.” She is a storyteller who, upon being slighted, refuses to stew or retreat for that matter. Au contraire! She turns what could have been a humiliating moment into one of shared amusement betwixt her friends. Further, it bears mention, recalling the start of this essay and the way Elizabeth is often paired with another iconic nineteenth-century heroine, that this scene is reminiscent of Jo March returning home after her first party in Little Women. In that scene, Jo breathlessly recounts to her sisters her lively dance with Laurie and the mishaps with Meg’s singed glove. Part of what links Jo and Elizabeth as heroines in the general consciousness, I suspect, is their shared instinct to transform social awkwardness into spirited storytelling, a playfulness distinct from malicious gossip and grounded instead in a kind of resilient delight that draws others into community.[5] This marker allows women to be comedic, quick-witted, and fun, rather than the other options that tend to be either sober or silly in the face of difficult circumstances (or perhaps life in general). Elizabeth exhibits the same resilience as Jo does at her less-than-perfect social outing. She takes in the entire situation—the fact that she overheard Darcy, that she stood near her sister’s suitor, that her lack of a partner signals nothing about her worth—and she shares the anecdote not to wound Darcy but to entertain and experience revelry with her friends.

Ok, and back to that confession I shared earlier: this is where Lizzie and I are very much alike, and this is where I feel most seen when others cheerfully insist on my kinship with this particular Bennet sister. I am known for both my quick first impressions and for my delight in regaling friends with the ridiculous situations I find myself in—and for claiming, with great theatrical confidence, that my pride is never bruised. Those who know me well know otherwise. Which brings us, of course, to the fact that Elizabeth does not recognize in herself what the attentive reader immediately perceives: her pride has, in fact, been bruised by Darcy’s refusal to dance with her and his cool dismissal of her looks. For all her delight in the “ridiculousness” of the moment, the slight lodges within her. It becomes a lens through which she interprets everything that follows—a nascent prejudice that blinds her to other truths, most notably Wickham’s character and Darcy’s integrity.

The astute reader, often as quick as Elizabeth herself, recognizes this immediately. And thus, we wait, in anticipation and affection, for her to discover it. Yet within the romance genre lies a constant tension: what if a character’s flaws prove too much for us to love? And, what if the romantic counterpart cannot overcome the sting of the first impression ever—of being dismissed as “not handsome enough,” or of being made the butt of a joke retold with great spirit among one’s friends? How would Darcy feel knowing that his words—and Elizabeth’s circumstances—were treated as “ridiculous”? Probably not kindly. And it would take a particular kind of person to move on from such a slight, just as it takes a particular kind of person to move on from being deemed unworthy of a dance. The genius of the novel is that it invites us to imagine being in both of their shoes, just as the spiritual life invites us to inhabit, with humility, the perspectives of those we misunderstand.

Now, it bears mention that Austen herself worried her characters might not meet the threshold of likability. She and her family once read Pride and Prejudice aloud with a neighbor who did not know Austen was the author, and Austen fretted over this neighbor—Miss Benn’s—reaction. Writing to her sister, she exclaimed: “I must confess that I think [Elizabeth is] as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, & how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.” It is a revealing moment. Austen is not merely defending Elizabeth’s charm; she is defending Elizabeth’s process of becoming. As a writer of comedic romances, Austen knows that her heroine requires patience from the reader—a willingness to wait for understanding, to trust that misapprehension and mistakes will give way to truth. In this sense, Austen’s anxiety about likability mirrors the risk built into every genuine formation story: the risk that someone will encounter a character (or a person, or even themselves) too early, too quickly, and declare them unworthy before either deeper internal work, or deeper relational work (or both) has had time to unfold.

After all, the romance plot depends on a structure we instinctively recognize, i.e. promises set in motion, relationships set in step that we trust faithfully the author will bring to fulfillment. Let’s be honest: I am not ready for Christmas on day one; my heart and my house are both a wreck, I dare say. And if any of us tried to do it all in one day—Mass, the Jesse tree, the hymns, the lights, the cocoa, the O Antiphons, the presents—would it really feel like Christmas, or would it feel like a performance devoid of meaning? Over too fast for us to process? I need to prepare myself for the Lord to enter my heart; I need to prepare myself to be worthy of his love coming into this world. Likewise, a romance novel depends on that waiting—on the discomfort of misapprehension, on characters learning to see themselves—and one another—truthfully, and sometimes, overcoming what we do not like to see—their sins. Advent teaches us to trust this kind of waiting, for it is the only way to receive a love—human or divine—with hearts made ready.

This apprenticeship of desire toward rightly ordered love mirrors what the Church calls divine pedagogy. According to the Catechism, God reveals himself not all at once but “gradually,” preparing his people “by stages” to recognize and receive the Word made flesh (§53), i.e. preparing his people for Christmas. Revelation unfurls the way a romance with a rightly earned plot does: through deeds and words building upon each other, teaching its characters, and its readers, to perceive what they could not see at first. Here St. Athanasius offers an articulation of the Incarnation’s purpose that is helpful. In On the Incarnation, he writes that the Word took flesh so that “through his works he might teach them about the Father” and so humanity might be “enabled to know him.” God arrives deliberately so that we as humans might learn over time and with intentionality how to understand him and to dwell with him—specifically how to dwell and understand him as the Word.

Austen crafts her narrative according to the same logic: revelation by stages, formation through delay. Elizabeth and Darcy cannot be united early in the novel because neither is yet capable of receiving the other truthfully. Darcy’s famous first proposal makes this painfully clear—a proposal full of passion yet distorted by the sin of pride: “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?”[6] His affection is offered as a kind of favor, extended despite Elizabeth’s family. The shock of the moment derives from something every romance reader instinctively knows: even if we champion Elizabeth and do not admire every member of her family, she is a package deal. Darcy, in failing to discern her character and in refusing the communion that love requires, reveals he does not yet understand what love asks of him. To choose Elizabeth, he must also choose to care for the people she loves.

Elizabeth’s rejection is equally shaped by her own wounded pride and her unexamined trust in Wickham—a trust formed almost blindly, because she allowed one of Darcy’s lowest moments (their first meeting) to cloud her judgment of him long afterward. While both characters are sincere to who they are, both are wrong in their moral frameworks. Both are lacking discernment. What Austen leads her readers to see is that Darcy and Elizabeth need each other. They need community and relationship to see more clearly, to move beyond their pride and prejudice. Self-fulfillment comes not from certainty of self, but from the questioning of it.

Indeed, Darcy’s letter of explanation after his bumbling proposal—marked by Austen as a moment of penitential self-reflection (“She grew absolutely ashamed of herself”)[7]—initiates for Elizabeth an interior askesis. In the Christian traditions, askesis refers to the intentional cultivation of virtue through practices of self-reflection, restraint, and discernment—often through work, fasting, or meditation of some kind. It is not punishment but formation; it is the training of the soul toward clarity and goodness. Theologian Olivier Clément relays that “Ascesis . . . is an awakening from the sleep-walking of daily life. It enables the Word to clear the silt away in the depth of the soul, freeing the spring of living waters.”[8]

What Austen shows, remarkably, is that the act of reading itself becomes Elizabeth’s spiritual discipline. While reading Darcy’s letter, Elizabeth learns to read as an “act of discernment,” as Pope Francis encourages—not only the letter itself but the world it totally reframes. In this moment of interior labor, she begins the hard spiritual work of askesis: allowing the text to upend her certainties, to question her assumptions, and, ultimately, rectify her ideas. She rereads Wickham’s stories, Darcy’s reserve, and even her own relish in teasing that perhaps tended too far toward mockery, realizing how her first impression had steered her vision askew. Elizabeth must unlearn the pleasure of being certain—and don’t we all know how pleasurable it is to be certain, to be right? And how hard it is to unlearn that certainty?

Now, take a moment and hear her cry after confronting Darcy’s letter, a revelation that overturns the social world she thought she understood: “This must be false! This cannot be!” she exclaims, even resolving for a moment to “never look at it again.” We know that impulse well. How often have we turned away from truths that unsettle us? How often have we watched others recoil from what asks them to see differently? For the purposes of this essay, it matters that Elizabeth’s story intersects here with a deeply spiritual reality. Intellectual humility—the honest awareness of the limits of one’s own knowledge—is not merely a moral virtue but, as scientists increasingly note, a self-transcendent experience. Awe, wonder, gratitude: these emotions reliably generate higher intellectual humility, opening the heart to receive what it once resisted. Those who can admit they have read the world wrongly are precisely those who become capable of seeking—and finding—God. Spiritually attentive reading and humility are thus not separate acts, but twin movements of the soul awakening to grace.[9] Hence, it is likely no surprise that after deciding she ought to throw Darcy’s letter away, Elizabeth does not. Something in her resists the easy path of dismissal. Instead, she allows the truth to work on her, confessing with sudden clarity: “How despicably have I acted! I—who have prided myself on my discernment!” This is the axis of her conversion of her soul. In that moment of rereading—of reading herself and her world again because she is reading a text with discerning eyes—Elizabeth begins to see everything around her more charitably. The young woman who delights in long walks and lively conversations now undertakes a different kind of pilgrimage: an interior journey initiated by the spiritual discipline of reading with a desire to be changed. To borrow the liturgical language of Advent, she makes room for the truth to enter.

And so I end here: Elizabeth’s literary epiphany has followed me as I, too, reread the world and ready my heart this particular Advent season—because, this year, as in so many others, I suspect I have made my share of mistaken first impressions, and, while I could be wrong on this count, I suspect others have certainly made them of me as well. Advent invites us all into the interior work of the soul before Christ comes to light it: to look again at who we are and who those around us are, to let the heart—ours and others—be read and reread, and to allow room for a little light to enter. After reading Darcy’s letter, Elizabeth articulates the following—words I consider the most important in the novel: “Till this moment, I never knew myself.”[10] In this confessional mode, she marks the beginning of genuine self-knowledge born out of relationship with someone else, born out of communion, the kind that marks the start of repentance and interior transformation that is lasting.

Because here’s the thing: although no one will ever peg me as a Jo, I am, indeed, a Lizzie—and there is no longer any use balking at this identification. Reading Austen throughout these past weeks has made me, quite frankly, a better reader of the world and of the people in it. I find myself thinking: Ah, I should not be so quick to judge. I should give that Mr. Collins type a break; he means well in his earnest, bumbling way, sermonizing at me in the breakroom. And when someone makes an awkward remark, I try to remember they may simply be having a Mary Bennet sort of day—dutiful and serious—without assuming it reveals the whole story of their soul. And when I am tempted to assume the worst of others, I try—however imperfectly—to borrow a little of Jane Bennet’s Advent-like charity, her instinct to hope all things until given reason otherwise.

From reading Austen, I am more likely to recall that first impressions are beginnings, not verdicts. Advent, likewise, reminds us of this every time we light a candle and watch it grow—steadily—toward something fuller. Soon, I will go to Reconciliation, as I always do in Advent, and I believe I will be a little more prepared because I have been reading Austen and practicing this small spiritual discipline of reading—this willingness to be unsettled, corrected, and revised as a human being. Virginia Woolf wrote that Austen is “the most difficult” artist “to catch in the act of greatness,” and I think it is precisely because she offers her characters—and her readers—an opportunity for grace. Yet it is grace one has to seek: the grace born out of spiritual discipline, of reading well, of a specific askesis. Austen does not rush her imperfect characters toward perfection; nor do we assume they are finished with their journeys when we leave them. Rather, she reveals them to one another—and to us—by degrees. And we as readers become a little more attuned with the ability to see rightly.

Thus, I think we could all be served well by reading Jane Austen during Advent’s weeks as a practice of spiritual refinement: to ready ourselves for the small illuminations that make repentance possible and teach the soul how to receive joy.

A practice that would prepare us for Christmas, at last.

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