Social Evolution in Pride and Prejudice

Any story reflects the mood of its period. Pride and Prejudice was of an evolutionary epoch, as it was written just after the French Revolution. England underwent essentially a major social change during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Still the whole nation rose to the occasion of the French Revolution and was ready to do everything in her power to avoid a revolution. Earlier in the deposing of Charles I, England essentially introduced democracy. In spite of these two major cataclysmic changes, England saw all the possibilities of the French Revolution crossing the channel. In this context, there was a general tendency in the aristocracy to marry among the commoners. Pride and Prejudice was a silent modified version of it. The French aristocrats lost their heads - about 1600 of them - not only because they were aristocrats but because of the rude vulgar assertion of their superiority. Elizabeth accuses Darcy of arrogance, pride, conceit, selfish disdain and many other things. Darcy sees the truth in her abuses and endeavours his best to lose them for the explicit purpose of pleasing her.

    --   He lost his arrogance and saved his head.

The marriages of Darcy and Bingley are symptomatic of the mood of the period.

What the less civilised achieve physically,

 the more matured nation attains by a psychological

change, is the implicit theme of the story.