Every time I read P&P closely, I’m struck by how carefully constructed it is. The plot is deeply bound up in Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s characters, both supporting and reflecting their character arcs, and the overall story is precisely calibrated to give a sense of balance between them without forcing them to be too similar.

The centerpiece of this dynamic is the first proposal+Elizabeth’s rejection+Darcy’s letter. In this sequence, they both make major mistakes and are allowed to stake ultimately reasonable and moral positions.

Put another way, Elizabeth is clearly framed as right in rejecting Darcy’s awful proposal and denouncing his arrogance and selfishness. But she’s also wrong about his basic underlying character and it leads her into reductive and then outright false accusations.

This puts Darcy in a position to (also rightly!) defend himself, and he does it in a way which does show his faults—thus Elizabeth’s glorious rejection isn’t completely undercut—but also which gradually exposes how deeply mistaken she (along with many readers) was about him. On top of that, he ultimately takes the high ground of excusing her for the worst of her mistakes and wishing her well, so he comes out of the whole thing looking pretty good, too, without any need to sugar-coat his real flaws.

And yes, there are some people who resent the way this doubled structure complicates our sympathies; I occasionally see people arguing that, essentially, Elizabeth bringing up Wickham in her rejection isn’t fair because it gives Darcy a legitimate complaint when he’s the asshole. I think that drastically misses the point of the book and Elizabeth’s character arc (some people really want Darcy to be the only one who grows), but in any case, that definitely seems a minority view. For most people, it’s clear by the end of Darcy’s letter that Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s characters are balanced and bound together in a way that’s immensely satisfying to see wind out through the rest of the novel.