Mrs. Gardiner Quotes

Seriously, I would have you be on your guard. Do not involve yourself, or endeavour to involve him in an affection which the want of fortune would make so very imprudent. I have nothing to say against him; he is a most interesting young man; and if he had the fortune he ought to have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is, you must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all expect you to use it.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 26. Mrs. Gardiner speaks to Elizabeth over her attraction to George Wickham and warns her against marrying him. She points out that his lack of money makes him an unsuitable match. The Bennets’ economic situation – Longbourn is entailed to male heirs and will pass out of family hands on the death of Mr. Bennet – puts pressure on them to marry someone who is wealthy.

Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing after all.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 27. Elizabeth is being sarcastic and ironic here and doesn’t mean what she says. She is referring to Mr. Collins, a man who is stupid but whom she finds irritable and not the least attractive. Fed up with men and abandoned by George Wickam, she makes this comment to her aunt as she is about to visit the Collinses. This is the full quote of what Elizabeth says to Mrs. Gardiner: "Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all." To this her aunt reponds: "Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment."

When she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a disgrace – when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly disdained…the difference, the change was so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly restrain her astonishment from being visible.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 44. Mr. Darcy has come to the inn to see Elizabeth and Jane and their aunt and uncle Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, bringing along his sister Georgiana. Elizabeth notices a great improvement in his behavior towards them and can hardly hide her astonishment. No longer is he the proud, stand-offish person that she found him in the past, but is civil and good mannered to her and Jane and the Gardiners, whom he previously looked down on as inferior.

The motive professed was his conviction of its being owing to himself that Wickham’s worthlessness had not been so well known as to make it impossible for any young woman of character to love or confide in him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his private actions open to the world. His character was to speak for itself. He called it, therefore, his duty to step forward, and endeavour to remedy an evil which had been brought on by himself. If he had another motive, I am sure it would never disgrace him.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 52. Mrs. Gardiner writes a long letter to Elizabeth detailing how Darcy effectively negotiated and paid for the marriage of Wickham and Lydia. He traveled to London and found them, persuaded Wickham to marry Lydia by paying him a substantial sum of money and arranging a commission in the army, and got Mr. Gardiner to take credit for everything. Mrs. Gardiner’s letter speaks about Darcy’s professed motive for saving Lydia, but also hints at another motive – his love for Elizabeth.

She cared for none of her friends; she wanted no help of his; she would not hear of leaving Wickham; she was sure they should be married some time or other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings, it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage, which, in his very first conversation with Wickham, he easily learnt had never been his design. He confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment on account of some debts of honour which were very pressing; and scrupled not to lay all the ill consequences of Lydia’s flight on her own folly alone.

– Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 52. Mrs. Gardiner’s letter to Elizabeth tells how Darcy tracked down Lydia and Wickham in London and tried to persuade her to "quit her present disgraceful situation, and return to her friends." But he found Lydia absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. So Darcy determined to negotiate a marriage between the two, discovering that this had never been Wickham’s plan and he had left Brighton because of gambling debts there.
Close