Chapters 1-4 The news that a wealthy young gentleman named Charles Bingley has rented the manor known as Netherfield Park causes a great stir in the neighboring village of Longbourn, especially in the Bennet household. The Bennets have five unmarried daughters, and their mother, a foolish and fussy gossip, recognizes that "it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." She …
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…of spirit, and suggests that these, not the laundry list of accomplishments he gives, are the qualities that Darcy really desires in a woman. His rejection of Miss Bingley's advances, then, serves to improve the reader's opinion of Darcy. Miss Bingley's desperately obvious flirtation make her a figure of amusement for the reader. She is a parody of the man-hungry, snobbish, upper-class woman. Pride and Prejudice is filled with such targets for the author's wit.