Love in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The course of true love never did run smooth in “Pride and Prejudice”

The idiom “The course of true love never did run smooth” implies that the path to love is never simple and straight forward. The path to true love is filled with difficulties and obstacles from society, religion, or culture. In “Pride and Prejudice,” none exemplify this idiom more than the couples Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth and Mr. Bingley and Jane. The idea behind the proverb plays a central role in constructing the plot of the story as seen with the relationships, especially those of Bingley and Jane, and Darcy and Elizabeth.

Jane Austen tells a fairy tale of how an attractive young lady, who is virtually penniless, meets with a handsome and rich gentleman, who is practically a prince, who falls in love with her. This is seen in the case of Mr. Bingley and Miss Jane Bennett. However, the couple faces many impediments in the relationship. This is because Jane comes from a family of five daughters, and in Elizabethan England, the property passed to the male heirs. Without male heirs in the family, the property went to the closest male relative, leaving Mr. Bennett’s daughters at a social disadvantage. This is the plight of the daughters Elizabeth and Jane in their social engagements and relationships as they must seek established men to marry them if they have to have a position in society.

A couple that depicts the idiom “The course of true love never did run smooth” is Darcy and Elizabeth. Both Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship hit the rocks from the start when pride and prejudice is involved. Mr. Darcy is a wealthy and proud man who snubs Elizabeth after their introduction at a ball. It is this first encounter with Mr. Darcy that makes Elizabeth create a...

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...verall, the idiom “the course of true love never did run smooth” is evident in the relationships between Jane and Bingley and Elizabeth and Darcy. Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship is largely interrupted by Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice. However, for Jane and Bingley, the relationship is interrupted by interference by family and friends over social and economic class.

My thoughts about this quote “The course of true love never did run smooth” by William Shakespeare and how it is compared to the “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen is true because from the start of the novel none of the sisters knew who were they going to get married to, there was not a original order on how the sisters were going to get married. There were much of love triangles and mixed signals between the sisters and the men that were trying to pursuit them into getting married.