Age
While at Rosings in March, says she’s “not one-and-twenty.”
Family and Situation
Elizabeth is the second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, making her the sister of Jane, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. Her mother at one point scolds her father for “always giving [Lizzy] the preference,” and we’re told repeatedly about how close Lizzy is to her father. Elizabeth’s relationship with her mother is less clear -- certainly Mrs. Bennet is the cause of a great amount of personal embarrassment, but Mrs. Bennet does take great umbrage when she thinks Lizzy has been slighted.
Elizabeth lives with her family at Longbourn House in Hertfordshire. Through her father’s estate, Elizabeth will get “one thousand pounds in the four percents, which will not be [hers] till after [her] mother’s decease,” making her prospects pretty meager.She and her sister Jane are also quite close to her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner.
Other Connections
We know that Lizzy’s best friend in Meryton is Charlotte Lucas, who would be several years older than her.
There is also some confusion about what name Elizabeth uses. To her family, she is almost always “Lizzy”, but to Caroline Bingley and even Charlotte Lucas, she’s frequently “Eliza”, suggesting that this might be a more grown-up nickname.
Appearance
Elizabeth is one of the Bennet girls about whose beauty “Mr. Bingley had heard much,” which tells us that she and her sisters are at least noteworthy locally for being attractive. This seems to be backed up by other characters as well: Mr. Collins says that she’s “equally next [to Jane] in birth and beauty” and Col. Fitzwilliam thinks of her as “Mrs. Collins’ pretty friend.” Mr. Bennet also refers to Elizabeth as “my little Lizzy” which may well be because she’s on the shorter side (we do know that Lydia is the tallest).
Most of the information we have about Elizabeth’s appearance comes from Darcy’s perspective. Early on, we’re told that “Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness.” As his crush develops, Darcy also begins to note Elizabeth’s “fine eyes”. By the summer, he does note a slight tan which he attributes to traveling before adding that he has long considered her “one of the handsomest women of [his] acquaintance.”
Of course, Darcy’s attraction only prompts the disdain of Caroline Bingley who says at Pemberley “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, which I do not like at all; and in her air altogether there is a self-sufficiency without fashion, which is intolerable.”
Character
It is, however, Elizabeth’s personality which attracts the greatest attention and drives the plot the furthest forward. It is her wit and vivacity which is most noteworthy. From the outset, Mr. Bennet tells us that she has more “quickness” and her sisters and the narrator tells us that “ there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody” which Darcy finds pretty alluring. Elizabeth herself declares that she “dearly loves a laugh”, though she goes on to clarify that she doesn’t enjoy laughing and other people’s expense. We also know that she enjoys playing with people in drawing room conversation, which Darcy notices, saying “I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.”
Generally, Elizabeth is fairly relaxed and carefree; she says of herself that “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me” while the narrator tells us that she her father ignores her advice about not sending Lydia to Brighton, she shakes off the slight pretty quickly as “It was not in her nature, however, to increase her vexations by dwelling on them.”
In her tastes, Elizabeth is fairly well-received by all. Lady Catherine assesses her to be “a very genteel, pretty kind of girl” and even seems to (reservedly) enjoy her company prior to her apparent threat to Darcy. Conversely, Caroline Bingley (who notices this threats early on) says that Elizabeth has “a most country-town indifference to decorum”, particularly citing her decision to walk to Meryton. Darcy, in turn, sees many of these actions as a reflection of Elizabeth’s unaffected nature.
Habits and Hobbies
Most important to the plot, perhaps, is Elizabeth’s propensity for long walks, which we know she takes both in Hertfordshire and Kent. This may, in part, be because she is “no horseman,” which is also her cited reason for walking to Netherfield Park.
Her performance on the pianoforte is a matter of some debate. Elizabeth frequently insists that she’s under-rehearsed and even the narrator says that her performance at Lucas Lodge “was pleasing, though by no means capital.” On the other hand, when compared to her sister Mary, Elizabeth “easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well” and we know from Georgiana that Darcy privately speaks well of her performance. In a puzzling line, Lady Catherine says that Elizabeth “has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne’s,” which may speak more to Lady Catherine’s ignorance than anything else as it seems to contradict what the narrator says elsewhere.
Though she certainly does read, we also know that she has other interests. The narrator tells us she only passes on playing loo at Netherfield because she suspects they are “playing high,” and is actually trimming a hat in her first scene.
