Plot Summary
Chapter 27 of Pride and Prejudice marks the beginning of Elizabeth's journey away from Longbourn. After months of uneventful winter, March arrives and brings Elizabeth's long-anticipated trip to visit Charlotte Collins at Hunsford. Though she had not initially been enthusiastic about the visit, absence has softened her feelings: she genuinely wants to see Charlotte again, and her disgust of Mr. Collins has weakened. She is to travel with Sir William Lucas and his younger daughter Maria, with the added pleasure of spending a night in London, where she will see Jane at the Gardiners' house in Gracechurch Street.
Character Development
Elizabeth's parting from her father is quietly affecting -- Mr. Bennet dislikes her going and asks her to write, "almost" promising to answer. Her farewell with Wickham is notable for its warmth and her continued naivety about his character. She parts from him "convinced that, whether married or single, he must always be her model of the amiable and pleasing," a judgment Austen's readers understand to be deeply mistaken. Elizabeth's wit shines in her conversation with Mrs. Gardiner about Wickham and Miss King, where she deftly questions the distinction between "the mercenary and the prudent motive" in marriage -- an irony given her harsh judgment of Charlotte for the same pragmatism.
Themes and Motifs
The chapter develops the novel's central exploration of marriage and money through Elizabeth's spirited defense of Wickham's pursuit of Miss King's ten thousand pounds. Her rhetorical question -- "Where does discretion end, and avarice begin?" -- strikes at the heart of Regency-era courtship, where financial considerations shaped every romantic attachment. Mrs. Gardiner's gentle warning that Elizabeth's speech "savours strongly of disappointment" hints that Elizabeth is not as indifferent to Wickham's defection as she claims. The chapter also introduces the prospect of a summer tour to the Lakes, which Elizabeth greets with rapturous enthusiasm, foreshadowing the pivotal Derbyshire journey that will transform her relationship with Darcy.
Literary Devices
Austen employs dramatic irony throughout the chapter: Elizabeth's idealized view of Wickham as "the amiable and pleasing" will be shattered by later revelations, and her excited declaration -- "What are young men to rocks and mountains?" -- unknowingly anticipates her encounter with Darcy at Pemberley. The free indirect discourse in the opening paragraphs captures Elizabeth's rationalizations about the trip, while Austen's satirical portraiture of Sir William Lucas and Maria as empty-headed traveling companions whose conversation has "about as much delight as the rattle of the chaise" provides comic relief and underscores Elizabeth's intellectual isolation outside her family circle.