Lady Catherine de Bourgh Quotes

I am not to be intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable…You have widely mistaken my character, if you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these. How far your nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell; but you certainly have no right to concern yourself in mine.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 56. Elizabeth responds with an emphatic refusal to Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s demand that she promise never to enter an engagement with Mr. Darcy. She coolly tells the upper class bully that she won’t be intimated by her. Elizabeth is not going to be pushed around by a snob.

"You are then resolved to have him?"
"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 56. In the verbal battle between two strong women the sparks fly. On one side: an uncivil, bullying snob. On the other: a very civil, independent-minded, young woman of integrity who remains true to herself. The epic confrontation between Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Elizabeth Bennet over a rumored marriage engagement between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth is possibly the greatest verbal battle in literature. It certainly remains one of the most popular. When de Bourgh demands if Elizabeth is determined to have Darcy, she puts her aristocratic opponent neatly in her place, telling her that she is only determined to act in the interests of her own happiness, without reference to de Bourgh. She will follow her own heart.

You are determined to ruin him in the opinion of all his friends, and make him the contempt of the world.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 56. Obsessed with status, Lady Catherine warns Elizabeth that her marriage to Darcy would bring ruin and contempt upon him. Lady Catherine is a symbol of the class system and the social hierarchy in the England of Austen’s time. Austen is satirizing these here through Lady Catherine’s dismissal of Elizabeth as an inferior who would somehow pollute the upper-class gene pool if she were allowed marry Darcy.

I take no leave of you, Miss. Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 56. These are Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s rude parting words to Elizabeth, after her surprise appearance at Longbourn. She is unhappy at how Elizabeth stood up to her bullying and threats, especially Elizabeth refusing to promise never to be engaged to Mr. Darcy. So as punishment Lady Catherine refuses to make the usual polite farewells.

After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her ladyship last night, she immediately, with her usual condescension, expressed what she felt on the occasion; when it became apparent that, on the score of some family objections on the part of my cousin, she would never give her consent to what she termed so disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty to give the speediest intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and her noble admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 57. Mr. Bennet continues reading Mr. Collins’s letter about a rumored marriage between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. Mr. Collins warns that Lady Catherine would never approve of such a match and urges Elizabeth and her admirer not to rush into this unsanctioned marriage. In Lady Catherine’s eyes marriages between the upper and lower classes is strictly forbidden – by her! She is quite the interfering busybody, aided and abetted by Mr. Collins.

By Elizabeth’s persuasion, he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a little farther resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself: and she condescended to wait on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but the visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 61. After the marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth, Lady Catherine is so angry that she sends her nephew Darcy a letter full of abuse, especially towards Elizabeth. But in the above passage we learn that Elizabeth plays the role of peacemaker and persuades Darcy to seek a reconciliation with his aunt. Lady Catherine "condescends" to visit them at Pemberley in spite of the "pollution" that the great lady had forecast would descend on the place if the lowly Elizabeth married into her family. In her final word on Lady Catherine, Austen mercilessly satirizes upper class snobbery in her deliciously sarcastic and ironic style – as only she can do.
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