Pride and Prejudice #7

The reader becomes acquainted with the apex of social status.  Lady Catherine "was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked features, which might once have been handsome." (Austen 139).  Austen does not randomly choose these words for no apparent reason.  Austen utilizes masculine diction in order to demonstrate the power Lady Catherine wields.  Words such as tall and large give the reader a physical and analytical image of Lady Catherine being socially above everyone else.  The reader must be fastidious in Lady Catherine's description because she is the second woman in the novel to be brought upon as handsome.  Previously, Elizabeth is professed by Darcy to be "tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt [himself]" (12).  The word handsome implies a connotation of not one’s physique, but one's social status.  In chapter three, Darcy is not tempted by Elizabeth because his robotic persona categorizes Elizabeth by her social status, one below his own.  Looking at Lady Catherine, her social status parallels her characteristic of being handsome.   Lady Catherine is nothing close from being obsequious; she reflects her social class by being insolent.  When she converses with Elizabeth about Elizabeth's misfortune, Lady Catherine discreetly displays her iniquity: "Your father's estate is entailed on Mr.Collins ... I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line.  It was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family" (140-41).  Lady Catherine affronts the Bennet family by speaking down upon their social class.  Lady Catherine would never dream of losing her property to another person, and risk degrading her own status.