The deeper meaning of pride and prejudiceWhile Pride and Prejudice is clearly concerned with the theme of love, from Lydia's physical passion for Wickham, through the slightly too patient feelings and Jane's little commitment to Bingley, to Elizabeth's final "perfect" meeting with Darcy, it would be to do the novel and its author a great injustice to assume that it is simply a love story and has no other purpose or design. The scope of the novel is in fact much broader than a serious concern with who will marry whom and who will have the manor worth the most money, or even the less superficial theme of women who try, fail, and manage to find their perfect mate. on a romantic level. While the investigation of love in its many forms is by no means an entirely trivial exercise in and of itself, Pride and Prejudice is not limited to that one topic, but while still presenting a story that details several love and characters variously clever and wrong, and various characters' idiotic views towards the subject, Jane Austen also offers the reader insight into issues ranging from moral issues of pride and lack of pride, to individual and class prejudice, to roles expected of women in eighteenth and nineteenth century society. Whether we like it or not, she [Jane Austen] was... a moralist," writes Gilbert Ryle. "... she wrote what and how she wrote partly out of a deep interest in some perfectly general, even theoretical, questions about human nature and human conduct" (Ryle 106). This concept of Austen as a moralist, but "not, however, to say that she was a moralizer" (Ryle 106), is not one of the most common views, especially regarding Pride and Prejudice The title itself, however, is a direct… middle of the paper… examination of social and moral issues, the deft touch of satire and sincerity used in portraying not only Elizabeth, but her time and place, the attitudes towards her and towards people like her, make it a broader work It could be overall a love story even taking these into account, if one were to see it as the love story of Jane Austen with the examination of human nature - but in no case can Pride and Prejudice be described simply as a love story; given its scope, it is simply not anything. Works Cited Austen, Jane. Pride and prejudice. London: Penguin, 1972. First published 1813. Ryle, Gilbert. "Jane Austen and the Moralists." Critical essays on Jane Austen. Ed. BC Southam. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. Wright, Andrew H. “Sentiment and Complexity in Pride and Prejudice.” Ed. Donald Gray. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1966. 410-420.