Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy’s journey to each other requires self-awareness first. Pride and Prejudice is a story about humility: the flash of clarity that strips away delusion and helps us to see ourselves as we truly are. Both Elizabeth and Darcy experience a flash of clarity, and through their story we see that humility is what leads us to each other. It strips down the walls we build and helps us meet as equals.  Elizabeth and Darcy are extremely well matched in this regard. They challenge each other in all the right ways, and the beauty of their relationship is that they are each instrumental in humbling the other. They make each other better people. 

Strangely, one of the reasons I like this story is because it is so long. It is realistic about the time it takes to undergo drastic internal change. In the world of the play, we cover the span of about one year. In this time, we see Elizabeth’s heart make a complete u-turn, and her eventual opening up to love feels like coming home after a long journey. It is a soft, gentle falling into love, so different from the frantic romances we see on television nowadays. 

I think there are areas in all of our lives where we long to experience a deep change similar to Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s. We long to grow, but we get disheartened by how long the process of humility takes. Seeing Elizabeth and Darcy take on the painful process of being realistic about seeing and wrestling with their own flaws encourages me to continue doing the same. I hope that after experiencing this story you will feel the same way.