Between Rereading and Conversation

The Affective Architecture of Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

This article examines the “affective architecture” of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), articulating how the formation of the bond between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy is constructed through the circulation of affects, rereading, and mutual recognition. Drawing on affect theories, it discusses how first impressions, communal emotions, and shared judgments structure the novel’s emotional economy and shape Elizabeth’s perception. Darcy’s letter marks a turning point: upon being “mortified,” Elizabeth shifts from a passive reader of the community’s opinions to an autonomous interpreter of characters and situations. The article also explores, with Susan J. Wolfson and Rita Felski, the aesthetic centrality of rereading, demonstrating how Austen stages within the protagonists’ dynamic the very interpretive gesture she demands of her reader. Recognition, both between characters and between reader and text, emerges as a transformative practice capable of reconfiguring worldviews. Finally, the article argues that the novel articulates a subtle reformist imagination in which affects and conversation displace hierarchies, opening space for relationships that reconcile desire, responsibility, and the reconfiguration of social structures.