Finding One's Self/ the Theme of Self-Knowledge in Austen's 'Pride & Prejude'

My Thoughts on Finding One's Self/ Self-Knowledge in 'Pride & Prejudice'

In today's modern 21st century society, everybody faces the constant pressure to find one's self. To find who we are. Our individual identity.
From social media posts, to blogs, to youtube videos about manifesting our dreams, we are in a constant loop to prove why we are enough through our sense of who we are. This constant loop of searching who we are is called 'finding one's self'. In other words, it involves finding our passions, our dreams and self love. I believe people are pressured into thinking we have to have a sense of self-knowledge on who we are in order to feel loved and enough in society. Without self-knowledge, you become deemed as either a failure or even worse, a nobody. Whilst self-knowledge seems a very 21st century theme found and pushed within society, it actually features throughout history in both religion and literature.
'Pride & Prejudice' (once originally going to be published as 'First Impressions') by Jane Austen is probably, in my opinion, one of humanity's loudest novels about society and the way humans live their lives arround societal rules and demands. The well known characters Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy are often spoken about in lecture halls and English classrooms as the two lovers who eventually came together once they recognized and overcame their faults of character. The characters that came together once they gained a sense of one's self and dismissed societal demands in order to be together. For Eliza Bennet, this included herself overcoming her hasty judgements that stemmed from her sense of integrity, and thus overcoming her pride in order to view Mr Darcy as a man of kindness as opposed to an "arrogant" wealthy man. Moreover, Mr Darcy gains self-knowelde of his faults by recognizing how his prejudiced views impacted the results of asking for Miss Bennet's hand in marriage. By recognizing that societal rules on class and marriage affected his love for Elizabeth when she turned him away, Mr Darcy becomes aware of his excessive pride and prejudiced views and chooses to overcome them to gain Elizabeth's hand by the end of the novel. Thus, these two characters appear to gain a sense of one's self when forced to acknowledge their faults and overcome them to get the happy ending they want.
Austen has clearly created a plot that engages readers to think about how society can greatly impact our thoughts and actions, and thus how it can impact our sense of identity and who we are. By forming two lovers who came together after facing their individual faults of character formed by a society based on class, wealth and marriage, Austen gets us to recognize how much our life events are impacted by who we are. If Eliza Bennet had remained the woman who's excessive pride prevented her from marrying a rich man based on his arrogant nature, she would never have looked past Mr Darcy's faults to find the good in him and thus she would never have become the Misstress at Pemberley house. Instead, she most likely would have remained single as her sense of integrity wouldn't have let any man who wasn't faultless marry her. Mr Collins is evidence of this integrity as she finds his overpolite nature too much, and thus chooses to decline his offer of marriage despite it supplying her with a stable future of money, shelter and good reputation. Without much dowry, not many men would likley offer her a hand in marriage (especially men without any faults), and so when she recognizes her faults and overcomes them when she turns down Mr Darcy the first time, Eliza is able to shift her idenity into one that allows an open mind about others and therefore leave hasty judgements and excessive pride in the past.
In addition to this, if Mr Darcy hadn't overcome his prejudiced and upper class views on what a marriage should be in society, then he would most likley have ended up not asking for Miss Bennet's hand again, but instead married a woman based on her dowry and class (such as Anne de Bourgh or Caroline Bingley), leaving his soul dissatisfied in a loveless, but socially accepted, marriage.
So, it's clear to me that Austen has written a novel not only based on romance, society, courtships, wealth, marriage, reputation and many other themes that people discover on the daily when reading this literary canon piece of literature, but also on how we indiviually percieve ourselves and how society plays a role in this. By establishing two very flawed characters who discover who they are through the events that take place in this story, we question ourselves as to what society considers a "good" and "bad" sense of self both during the era this story is set, and the present day we are in right now. Society is always changing. One major part of society that has changed throughout history is marriage. It's no longer considered a requirement for women to build a life for their future. It's no longer a threat to one's reputation if marriage doesn't come straight away. My point is that our sense of self is deeply impacted by societal expectations. In 'Pride & Prejudice', marriage deeply affects Mr Darcy's identity and character in the way he offers his hand to Miss Bennet e.g. 'he spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed...his sense of her inferiority-of its being a degradation-of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit'. By explaining that he is aware of his reputation being damaged by marrying a woman with an unstable family and lack of money, he paints himself as (what Elizabth previously described him as) an 'arrogant' man full of prejudiced views grown in an ugly society. This fault of character can thus, in my opinion, be argued as not only a fault of his own self, but also a fault of society. Society has allowed him to become so conscious about how his actions and feelings will affect the judgments of others, that he feels the need to make Elizabeth feel bad about her background in order to ask her for her hand in matrimony.
Similarly, I believe Elizabeth Bennet's fault of having excessive pride and a hasty judgmental attitude towards others stems from the marriage between her parents; Mr and Mrs Bennet. Marrying based on first impressions (and what I call 'love at blind sight'), Eliza's parents appear to have married without thinking too much about the future. The couple appear to not get on very well throughout the structure of the novel such as when Mr Bennet tires of his wife's constant chatter about marriage and Mr Bingley, causing him to frequently retire to his library. Mrs Bennet appears to get mad at her husband when she is reminded about the fact that all his money will go to Mr Collins as opposed to his daughters once he passes away. She appears bitter and nags him a lot. Their unstable marriage leads me to consider the notion that Elizabeth perhaps doesn't want to live the same unhappy life as her parents, and therefore takes it upon herself to be very judgemental about a man's character. If she finds any flaws in a man straight away, she will immediately remove them from the possibility of being her husband. Not wanting to have a man with any flaws in order to have a marriage that differs from her parents', makes it difficult for Elizabeth, and so when Mr Darcy's offer of marriage gets her to recognize and overcome her hasty judgements, she turns into a kinder and more open woman. She changes her identity for herself rather than to suit society or what she once considered "right".
Furthermore, society affects who we are and our sense of self through it's expectations of how both genders should act, the roles they should play in life and what occupations/ actions should be taken up by each gender. This has been present throughout the whole of human history, despite the aim to go against it in today's progressive present day. Jane Austen presents this through the gender roles in 'Pride & Prejudice', preventing (in my opinion) some characters from ever finding their true self. For example, the female characters are faced with the pressure to find a husband before they get too old. Charlotte, Jane and Elizabeth are the main female characters within the novel who get discussed as to who/ when they will be getting married, thus they are prevented from exploring their inner selves through further education and careers. As opposed to today's society in which females are given the freedom of having equivalent education to boys and carving their own futures, the females in this era are controlled and forced into lives they may not have pursued if society had proposed different expectations for their gender at this time. For all we know, Jane may have become a writer, Elizabeth an actress with her bold confidence, and Charlotte a teacher. By presenting the female characters main soul purpose in life as marriage, Austen represents the patriatchy and unfairness in the time period she lived. Although Austen was never given credit for her work during her life time and her novels were posted anonymously, I am glad to say that they are now given the credit they deserve; they represent the idea that women are built for more than just marriage and domestic life styles as being a writer herself demonstrates the intelligence and skills women possess. To add to this, during this era (the late 18th century), there was a pressure for men to follow in the footsteps of their fathers. Mr Wickham struggles to find his true self by jumping from career to career e.g. first he is intended to be a clergyman, but then decides he wants to study law only to find that it's not for him. He then goes on to joining the militia. His father figure after his own father passed was Mr Darcy's own father, and although he was loved by him, Mr Wickham lacked a proper father when turning into a young man taking on a career. So, the pressure to follow in his father's footsteps was relieved from him from quite a young age, giving him more space and freedom to choose his own career path. However, I believe that because society at this time put so much pressure on sons to follow their father's lead, Mr Wickham struggled because he didn't have that pressure, thus leading him to live the life of a fraud. However, modern society has now mostly taken this pressure off men and given them the knowledge at a young age to find their true selves, passions and career as opposed to following their father's footsteps.
Being written in the past tense and narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, Austen captures the theme of finding one's self really well as she enables readers to get an insight to the thoughts and feelings of characters without letting us gain a false and misleading perception if it was to be written from character first person perspective. I believe that if this story was written from Eliza's perspective we might not get the full sense of who she was and who she ends up being as humans tend to shed more light on their good personality traits rather than informing others about their flaws. Thus, the theme of finding one's self and gaining self-knowledge in this 19th century novel is done extremely well as Austen writes in a way that allows us to see everything in a character; we can judge their whole identity and sense of self without being mislead.