Lady's Class Act

Sadie Stein arrives at Lady Catherine de Bourgh's visit to Longbourn in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with her heart, she says, literally pounding. It's worlds colliding: a woman from another place, almost another life, standing in the Bennets' house. Stein calls the exchange with Elizabeth some of the harshest, most overtly insulting dialogue Austen writes, and wonders if it's the first recorded use of "Do you know who I am?"

The scene satisfies because Elizabeth holds her own and then some: she wins in every sense, and lets slip that she and Darcy may yet have a future. But Stein also hears the warning in it. Marrying Darcy will mean a rift with his family and people who won't accept her, and it may be Elizabeth's first real understanding of the world he comes from. Stein ends with some sympathy for Lady Catherine, trapped in the system too: she wants her daughter safely married, and Darcy can opt out of her plan while her daughter can't.