Caroline Bingley Character Analysis

Caroline Bingley and Mr. Darcy

The social-climbing Caroline Bingley is extremely snobby. She believes that wealthy, upper class people like her should only mix with people of the same social status.

Vain and antagonistic, rude and scheming, the haughty Caroline is a foil for Elizabeth Bennet. She dislikes Elizabeth and is jealous of her because she sees her as a rival for Darcy’s affections.

When Darcy shows a romantic interest in Elizabeth and remarks on her “fine eyes,” Caroline makes insulting comments about Elizabeth in a bid to demean her in Darcy’s eyes.

Caroline plots to break up the relationship between her brother Charles and Jane Bennet. Pretending to be Jane’s friend, she sets about sowing the seeds of division between Jane and Charles. Disdainful of the Bennets’ middle-class status, Caroline tries to matchmake between her brother and Darcy’s sister Georgiana.

Five Caroline Bingley quotes that illustrate the character of the insincere, calculating and superficial snob:

“They were in fact very fine ladies; not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable where they chose it, but proud and conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others. They were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother’s fortune and their own had been acquired by trade.”

Chapter 4. The narrator paints us a picture of the Bingley sisters Caroline and Louisa. We learn that they are rich, proud, conceited and like to associate with other people of equally high rank. We are told, with Austen’s penchant for irony, that they are “in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others” – which of course they are not entitled to.

Charming mother-in-law

“You will have a charming mother-in-law, and of course she will always be at Pemberley with you.”

Chapter 6. Jealous because Mr. Darcy has expressed admiration for Elizabeth Bennet’s “fine eyes,” Caroline Bingley tries to come up with something insulting to say about Elizabeth and her family. She sarcastically suggests that Darcy can look forward to sharing lots of time at his grand Pemberley estate with his new mother-in-law – the tiresome and foolish Mrs. Bennet. Family is an important theme in the novel, and while Elizabeth is a lively and intelligent woman, not all members of her family are as attractive as her.

“To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”

Chapter 8. Elizabeth’s independence of spirit is what makes her a hero to many Jane Austen readers, and these include women the world over today. But Caroline Bingley, one of the novel’s villains who is jealous of Elizabeth, remains unimpressed. Here she berates Lizzy’s three-mile walk to see her ill sister as an exercise in conceit and lack of decorum.

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

Chapter 11. Miss Bingley is watching Darcy read, so she pretends to be absorbed in reading the second volume of his book in an effort to start up a conversation with him. But she soon gets bored, yawns and throws the book aside. Her comment about how much she loves books is therefore ironic, as it is only a device to get Darcy’s attention. The quote is a good example of the gentle satirical fun Austen likes to poke at the social elite.

“I must confess that I never could see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion has no brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose wants character – there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I could never see anything extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look.”

Chapter 45. Caroline Bingley mocks Elizabeth’s looks and tries to demean her to Darcy. Caroline is completely consumed with jealousy towards the woman she views as her love rival for Darcy. She comments negatively on Elizabeth’s looks, making disparaging remarks about her every facial feature. Caroline may as well be wearing a large sign around her neck declaring to the world that she is insanely jealous. But she only succeeds in making herself look foolish and mean-spirited and her ploy backfires with Darcy.