International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research

E-ISSN: 2582-2160   •   Impact Factor: 9.24

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The Unconscious in the Drawing Room: Psychoanalytic Structures in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

Author(s) Payal P Sinha
Country India
Abstract This paper offers a comprehensive psychoanalytic reading of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice through the combined frameworks of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. While the novel has traditionally been approached as a domestic comedy and a comedy of manners, this study argues that Austen’s narrative reveals deep psychological tensions involving desire, repression, misrecognition, and subject formation. Drawing on Freud’s theories of repression, ego formation, displacement, and the family romance, the analysis explores how characters such as Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Lydia Bennet negotiate unconscious drives beneath the constraints of Regency social codes. Complementing this, the essay employs Lacanian concepts—especially the mirror stage, desire as lack, and the operations of the symbolic order—to interpret the dynamics of miscommunication, self-deception, and the linguistic structures that shape desire within the novel. By blending past scholarship with fresh theoretical insight, the paper attempts to establish Pride and Prejudice as a novel that dramatizes the emotional journey from imaginary self-constructions to symbolic understanding, revealing Austen’s acute awareness of the unconscious mechanisms that govern love, pride, prejudice, and social identity. The essay ultimately seeks to position Austen’s novel as a text that resonates powerfully with psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity, desire, and social regulation, offering readers a deeper appreciation of the psychological complexity underlying its enduring charm.
Keywords repression, misrecognition, oedipal structure, family romance, mirror stage, miscommunication, desire.
Field Arts
Published In Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On 2025-12-14
DOI https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.63423
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