On Elizabeth's side, awareness of his high position makes her unwilling to imagine he could be interested in her, which in turn makes her misinterpret his behavior, and it makes Wickham's slanders against Darcy more believable, since a powerful man could more easily have caused the great harm that Wickham alleges.

Yet even as it thereby alienates Elizabeth and Darcy, the gulf between them does not rule out ultimate union. Prevailing norms were not so rigid as to keep people from disregarding social differences at times; nor are Elizabeth and Darcy so far apart socially, for they ultimately belong to the same class, even if they stand on opposite edges of it. In addition, because a degree of social pride was perfectly acceptable in this society, outward expressions of it like Darcy's do not necessarily indicate a bad character. What this means for the story is that it is possible for Darcy to behave in ways that severely offend and alienate Elizabeth, even while being a fundamentally decent man who will prove worthy of her in the end.

Jane Austen also accomplishes her dual imperatives of estranging and reconciling the protagonists through the mechanics of the plot, which assume a particular prominence in this novel. Several plot devices further the estrangement of the two. The first, and most important, is Darcy and Elizabeth's being such total strangers to each other. This plays an essential role in her misassessment of him, for when she perceives unpleasant behavior in him, and hears a bad report of him, she has no good means of receiving a truer picture of his character. It is highly unlikely that an intelligent person like Elizabeth would have judged so wrongly, had Darcy lived long in her neighborhood, or shared important acquaintances or relations with her; instead, the first contact she has with him is when she hears him utter insulting words about herself. The second device is the love affair between Darcy's best friend and Elizabeth's sister, which gives Elizabeth greater reason to dislike Darcy when she learns of his role in separating the two lovers. The third is the introduction of a character, Wickham, who has a coincidental relationship with, and grudge against, the hero; when he also proves attractive to the heroine, she is led to believe terrible slanders about the hero. Here again Elizabeth's lack of acquaintance or connection with Darcy plays a vital role, for it means she has no alternative source of knowledge for learning the real truth of Wickham's charges.

All this provides a good basis for antagonism between the principals; the difficulty is that such antagonism, along with the lack of personal connections between the two, gives them little reason to interact with one another, and it is such interaction that moves the plot along and provides much of the interest of the novel. It thus become essential for the author, even while keeping Elizabeth and Darcy estranged from each other, to arrange reasons for their continued meeting. One means for this is provided by the situation of Jane and Bingley, for the former's illness while visiting the latter's residence prompts Elizabeth, against her wishes, to spend many days in the same house with Darcy; the resulting several days of exchanges and disputes between the two are one of the highlights of the novel. Another means, one that leads to even more significant meetings between them, is the introduction of characters, Mr. Collins along with Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, who have coincidental links to both hero and heroine. Mr. Collins, through his ties to Darcy's aunt along with Elizabeth's visit to him after his marriage to her best friend, provides a basis for a meeting between Elizabeth and Darcy after his departure from Nether-field seemed to ensure they would never see each other again. Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, thanks to her former residence near Darcy's home, give Elizabeth occasion to encounter Darcy at a time when she, while no longer disliking him, still prefers to avoid him, and when he, having been badly burned in his proposal, is not likely to seek her out.

Coincidences like this, in fact, loom large in the whole development of the plot. Elizabeth's and Darcy's time together at the Collinses and Lady Catherine's occurs not only because of their mutual connection to one of those households, but also because Darcy's two to three week visit there happens to fall in the middle of Elizabeth's six week visit. Elizabeth's vehemence in rejecting Darcy, which in turn helps spur his crucial letter to her and his ultimate reformation, is exacerbated because it was that very day that she learned of his role in separating Bingley and Jane. Elizabeth's encounter with Darcy at Pemberley is especially dependent on chance: they only meet because he was scheduled to arrive the following day, which makes her think it safe to visit, but he in fact advances his plans and arrives during her visit. Finally, in addition to the coincidence of Wickham's running off with Elizabeth's sister, the essential development of Darcy's learning of the affair, without which Lydia would probably have been ruined and Elizabeth in consequence too tainted socially to marry him, happens only because he arrives at Elizabeth's room at the moment when she, having just finished reading about Wickham and Lydia, is in too agitated a state to maintain normal discretion about a terrible family secret.

These various coincidences serve the novel in many ways: by repeatedly connecting the various characters, by ensuring that important characters like Wickham can continue to play a major role, and by allowing all the main story lines to be neatly wrapped up. Yet the repeated use of coincidence conflicts with one of Jane Austen's most cherished literary values, fidelity to real life, a life in which coincidence normally plays a far smaller role than it does in this novel. This feature of the work does not destroy the general realism of its presentation of people and society, but it does give it some affinity to the earlier novels that Jane Austen had ridiculed for their reliance on unexpected encounters and improbable connections.

This affinity to earlier novels appears in various aspects oi Pride and Prejudice, which is the last completed, and the best, of Jane Austen's early novels, the ones that she started in the 1790's and that bear the strongest traces of the fiction she had absorbed in her youth. In contrast, her later novels—Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion— possess a slightly different manner, one that includes a lesser reliance on coincidence or highly dramatic events in the plot, and a greater restraint and realism in the characterization and language. The early novels present characters who are almost larger than life, and who at times resemble the “types” —i.e., deliberately exaggerated representatives of specific emotions or propensities —who dominate much of eighteenth-century literature.