"How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."
– Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 36. This is the pivotal moment of self-knowledge and self-rebuke for Elizabeth when she realizes how much her judgment has been clouded by her own pride and prejudice. She has read the long letter from Mr. Darcy explaining himself. For her it sheds a new and clear light on the noble qualities of Darcy’s character and the deceit and predatory nature of the handsome George Wickham, all of which she had been blind to. In a moment of epiphany for her, she recognizes that her belief in her good judgment of others was mere vanity, and that she never really knew herself until now. Using a metaphor, she compares her unwillingness to see the true characters of Darcy and Wickham to the blindness that a lover has for the flaws of their beloved.
