Nina Auerbach. "Waiting Together: Pride and Prejudice"

In Nina Auerbach’s essay, “Waiting Together: Pride and Prejudice”, she looks closely at the use of gender roles to portray the subordinate stance that women play in the early 19^th-century. While she has several arguments about how men dominate women in this world, I found her comment on “the period of protracted waiting is not a probationary interim before life begins: waiting for a male is life itself” (328), to be not entirely true. The main protagonist in this story, Elizabeth Bennet, is the primary example of defying this, as her “quickness” (4) sets her apart from her sisters beginning in the reader’s first account of her. She further goes on to reject Mr. Darcy’s pursuit of her as she even refuses his hand in dancing, “[looking] archly, and [turning] away” (19), an act seen as abominable in an age where there were a scarcity of men, especially wealthy ones such as Mr. Darcy. Due to her defiant nature and refusal to assimilate to society’s expectations, Elizabeth does not have a life composed of waiting on a male, rather, she has a life filled with fulfilling her own personal desires – tending to her family, engaging in reading, piano, and the like. She is not obsessed with the idea of marriage as her younger sisters, Kitty and Lydia, but she also does not completely ignore the importance of it either. However, I do not think she merits the phrase of her life’s sole purpose to wait on a man. I realize, however, that I may have taken this phrase too specifically, if applied as a whole, would you guys agree with Auerbach’s statement? What would you say Elizabeth’s purpose in life is, if it is not to wait on a male? How does that portray women in 19th century society?