Yes, I accept that Elizabeth and Darcy are made for each other: 2 characters who change over the course of the novel

Forgive me but I will modify some comments from yesterday's post and, yes, I believe that Darcy and Elizabeth can be in love and happy together in a successful marriage, that her love for him is not based (solely) on her discovery that, yes, this guy has a lot of money (only Elizabeth Bennet, the most intelligent and socially perceptive character in literature, would be able to joke w/ Darcy that she fell in love with him because of his wealth). The whole point of the novel is that people can change, grow, evolve, and learn from their experiences, and in an expansive spirit let's accept that both Darcy and Elizabeth have learned and that they have grown to love each other and to discover in themselves the love for the other. Darcy even makes a very touching case for the crudeness and scorn with which he at first treated Eliz., refusing to dance with her and remarking that there's no one in the room w/ whom he'd like to dance: What chance did I have, growing up in the family I was raised in? Yes, he's right, and it goes for the both of them: he easy it would be for him to continue to live life as a social snob, and for her to lead life as a nincompoop, like her kid sisters. It's to their credit that they each have grown, over the course of the novel, away from the childish insecurities and cruelties - especially Darcy. Isn't change, evolution, growth of character something we look for in fiction, a defining chracteristic of the development of the arc of a story? A final note is that Elizbath's take-down of the reprehensible Lady Catherine de Bourg, who shows up uninvited and in her imperious manner commands Eliz to give up any thought of marrying Darc, is one of the great chapters in this novel, in literature in fact - she's so smart and knows exactly how to stand up for herself and how to stick the knife in that horrible lady.