Maximum readers pay attention “pride and prejudice” and straight away bring to mind Jane Austen’s most renowned novel, that salty-sweet confection of romance and irony with a fairy-tale finishing.
Few folks, alternatively, know the historical past of the word “pride and prejudice,” which I discover in my new guide, “Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of the Phrase ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”
Like maximum Austen enthusiasts and students, I had learn and liked her novels for years with out finding out a lot in regards to the historical past of the name, which Austen selected after scrapping the unique one, “First Impressions.”
By means of the twentieth century, “pride and prejudice” turned into only related to Austen’s 1813 novel.
The word, which has non secular origins, gave the impression in loads of works earlier than Austen was once born. From Britain it traveled to The us, and from non secular tomes it expanded to secular works. It even turned into a trademark of abolitionist writing.
Preventing phrases for non secular factions
Whilst 2025 marks Austen’s 250th birthday, the word “pride and prejudice” first gave the impression greater than 400 years in the past, in non secular writings by way of English Protestants. Because the daughter, sister, cousin and granddaughter of Church of England ministers, Austen was once no doubt acutely aware of the custom.
If ministers sought after to reproach their parishioners or their combatants, they attributed grievance in their sermons to “pride and prejudice” – as coming from folks too boastful and narrow-minded to entertain their phrases in just right religion.
Whilst the utilization started within the Church of England, different denominations, even radical ones, quickly followed it: “Pride and prejudice” seems within the writings of Nonconformists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Dissenters and different representatives of “Schism, Faction and Sedition,” as one nameless creator referred to as them.
One early takeaway is that, amid fervent non secular conflicts, quite a lot of denominations in a similar fashion used “pride and prejudice” as a grievance.
The unnamed minister himself complained that, owing to “the Pride and Prejudice of mens Spirits, the prevailing Interests of some Factions and Parties, the greatest part of the Nation are miserably wanting in their Duty.”
On the similar time, the word might be invoked to reinforce non secular toleration and in pleas for inclusiveness.
“When all Pride and Prejudice, all Interests and Designs, being submitted to the Honour of God, and the Discharge of our Duty,” an nameless clergyman wrote in 1734, “the Holy Scriptures shall again triumph over the vain Traditions of Men; and Religion no longer take its Denomination from little Sects and Factions.”
From politics to prose
Within the 18th century, advances in publishing resulted in an explosion of secular writing. For the primary time, common folks may purchase books about historical past, politics and philosophy. Those in style texts unfold the word “pride and prejudice” to much more far away shores.
One fan was once American founding father Thomas Paine.
In his 47-page pamphlet “Common Sense,” Paine argued that kings may now not be relied on to offer protection to democracy: “laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is, that it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government[,] that the crown is not as repressive in England as in Turkey.”
Others integrated Daniel Defoe, creator of “Robinson Crusoe.” In his 1708 essay “Review of the State of the British Nation,” Defoe ironically exhorted the general public to vote Tory relatively than electing males of sense, to “dispell the Poisons” that “Sloth, Envy, Pride and Prejudice may have contracted, and bring the Blood of the Party into a true circulation.”
After the philosophers, the historians and the political commentators got here the novelists. And some of the novelists, feminine writers have been particularly essential. My annotated record in “Jane Austen, Abolitionist” contains greater than a dozen feminine writers the use of the word between 1758 and 1812, the yr Austen completed revising “Pride and Prejudice.”
Amongst them was once Frances Burney. Students have frequently attributed Austen’s well-known name to Burney, who used the word “pride and prejudice” in her novel “Cecilia.”
However Burney was once now not by myself. Feminine novelists who used the expression earlier than Austen integrated Charlotte Lennox, sisters Harriet and Sophia Lee, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mrs. Colpoys, Anne Seymour Damer and mom and daughter Susannah and Elizabeth Gunning, who collectively authored their novel “The Heir Apparent.”
An abolitionist rallying cry
Because the critique embodied within the word advanced past non secular and partisan war, it turned into increasingly more used within the context of ethics and social reform.
My maximum placing discovery on this analysis is the long-standing affiliation of the word “pride and prejudice” with abolitionism, the motion to eliminate enslavement and the slave business.
The leaders of transnational antislavery organizations used it at their conventions and within the books and periodicals they revealed. In 1843, 30 years after the newsletter of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” British Quaker Thomas Clarkson wrote to the Basic Antislavery Conference, which was once assembly in London.
He exhorted the devoted to repudiate slavery “at once and forever” if there have been any amongst them “whose eyes may be so far blinded, or their consciences so far seared by interest or ignorance, pride or prejudice, as still to sanction or uphold this unjust and sinful system.”
He even used the word two times. Acknowledging that some violent abolitionists had aroused response, he warned his target audience that “this state of feeling arises as much from pride and prejudice on the one hand, as from indiscretion or impropriety on the other.”
On the funeral for abolitionist John Brown, the minister prayed over his frame, “Oh, God, cause the oppressed to go free; break any yoke, and prostrate the pride and prejudice that dare to lift themselves up.”
The prayer uttered at John Brown’s burial.
Library of Congress
Use of the word didn’t finish with Emancipation or the top of the U.S. Civil Battle.
Actually, it was once certainly one of Frederick Douglass’ favourite words. On Oct. 22, 1883, in his “Address at Lincoln Hall,” Douglass excoriated the Ultimate Courtroom’s resolution rendering the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional.
As was once conventional of Douglass, the speech ranged past racial inequities: “Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like ours should guard. The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere. There is the prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle dandy against the hard-handed workingman.”
Austen’s unbiased girls
Early on in “Pride and Prejudice,” the boastful Caroline Bingley snipes that Elizabeth Bennet presentations “an abominable sort of conceited independence.” Later, the snobbish Woman Catherine accuses Bennet of being “headstrong.” However close to the finishing, Mr. Darcy tells Bennet that he loves her for “the liveliness” of her “mind.”
On this recognize, Bennet displays a top quality that each one of Austen’s heroines possess. Whilst they are attempting to stick to requirements of courtesy and recognize, none are responsible of claiming most effective what the main guy desires to listen to.
Jane Austen.
Inventory Montage/Getty Photographs
For the reason that Austen selected her name to honor the word and its historical past, it’s ironic that her personal repute ended up drowning out the abolitionist associations of “pride and prejudice” after the Civil Battle.
If there may be any paintings of fiction that effectively makes self-sufficiency, unbiased considering and open-mindedness glance just right – and makes sycophants, pressure and hysterical devotion to rank and standing glance unhealthy – it’s “Pride and Prejudice.”
But the lasting acclaim for Austen’s novel demonstrates that the ethics contained within the word proceed to resonate these days, despite the fact that its context has been misplaced.
