The Archetypal Love Story

Admittedly, I found Romeo and Juliet to be quite boring when I first read it; this should come as no surprise to anyone, since I read it in a high school literature class. It’s a good read, but I didn’t find it to be a page-turner by any means. The unfortunate truth regarding my circumstance was that, simply put, I couldn’t kick the feeling that I had read that story before. What’s interesting to me years later is that, in a way, I had read it before. Romeo and Juliet is a love story that inspired so many after it, to the point where it is hard to name a romantic comedy, a Nicolas Sparks novel, or even an early-era Beatles song that didn’t owe at least some of its roots to Romeo and Juliet.

After having that experience, I was better prepared to dive into Pride and Prejudice. While maybe not as influential as the Shakespeare classic, Jane Austen’s masterpiece reads like something you’ve read before; it is really hard to shake the feeling, while reading, that you know the story already. While Romeo and Juliet introduced the timeless concept of star-crossed lovers who face an unsurmountable societal challenge to being together, Pride and Prejudice takes a different path by introducing more specific factors that, as a whole, make up what is known today as the archetypal love story. The clearest archetype is the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy- the man who appears to be arrogant and classist from the get-go, but ends up a sweet and caring hero who falls in love with the protagonist in the end. Jane Austen employs her knack for villainizing characters while setting up Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship from the outset of the novel; in fact, during Darcy’s first entrance in the novel he remarks to Mr. Bingley within Elizabeth’s earshot that Elizabeth is “not handsome enough to tempt me” (13) (me meaning Darcy, of course). This concept was the inspiration for Austen’s first working title of the book, First Impressions. Ironically, however, if Pride and Prejudice were to be published today that title would probably not be considered due to the prevalence of fictional love interests giving bad first impressions. It is almost as though the anti-judgmental theme Austen put forth in her novel is so ubiquitous in today’s romantic literature that it is not considered a uniquely thought-provoking concept anymore.

On top of Darcy’s character, another archetype that was established in Pride and Prejudice is the role that Mr. Collins plays in the novel. While these characters take on different forms, shapes, and sizes throughout literature, almost all love stories today have an undesirable alternative love interest that is intentionally written-in to contrast the desirability of the primary love interest.

Austen’s masterpiece novel influenced so much romantic literature that came after it, that it is hard not to compare the work to legendary classics such as Romeo and Juliet. Doing so not only helps to understand Pride and Prejudice a little more, but also helps to appreciate it as well.