Jealousy And Greed In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice

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Jealousy, envy, and greed - the three components of the seven deadly sins - are the natural parts of human nature. It is just the matter of fact that people are in control enough to keep these sins from rising up and take over their behavior. Jealousy, envy, and greed have been touched on by many popular writers throughout history with the demonstration of social hierarchy as people are trying to climb up the ladder in society’s social ranking. Pride and Prejudice is really popular novel that focuses on the morals from social hierarchy. Jane Austen 's Pride and Prejudice demonstrates how jealousy and greed exist within the society during the Regency era, especially among the social classes. Using the relationships between the different pair …show more content…

Wickham and Mr. Darcy. Although Mr. Darcy and Mr. Wickham are not related in blood, they can be considered as family member as they grow up together since they were young, but as they grow older, Mr. Wickham jealousy and greed for materialistic wealth ruin their family-like relationship. Darcy’s father was very fond of Mr. Wickham when he was still alive. Mr. Darcy wrote in the letter to Elizabeth: “My father supported him at school, as his own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give his a gentleman’s education. My father was not only fond of the this young man’s society, whose manners were always engaging; he had also the higher opinion of him, and hoping the church would be his profession, intended to provide him in it.” (Volume II, Chapter XII, pg. 181) Darcy also stated that his father left Mr. Wickham “a legacy of one thousand pounds.” Darcy’ father think highly of Wickham for his manner, in which according to Mr. Darcy observation was just pretence to cover Wickham ill behavior. Despite received a lot of attention and money from Darcy’s father, Wickham started to became greedy as he spend of his money on gambling. Not only that, he was fueled with lust as he used his money to chase after women for his sexual pleasure. After spending of his legacy money on gambling and girls instead of focusing on his education to become a clergyman. After Darcy refuse to provide Wickham with more money, his greediness and hunger for money blind his eyes and he decided to attack Mr. Darcy’s dearest sister, Georgiana, partly to hurt Dacy for not giving him more money, along with hoping to obtain Georgiana’s fortune. In the same letter Darcy send to Elizabeth, Darcy expose Wickham real personality. He wrote: “Mr. Wickham’s chief object was unquestionably my sister’s fortune, which is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing

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