Pride and Prejudice Characters: Lady Catherine & Caroline part 1

Today is the second installment in a week’s worth of Pride and Prejudice character studies leading up to next Monday’s 200th anniversary of the Austen novel.

If there is a truth universally known in the world of Austen it is that the rich play by a different set of rules than the poor or middle class. Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Miss Caroline Bingley are two of her richest women and they play to win.

Lady Catherine was born to her title. Her father was an Earl, so  “She is referred to as “Lady” followed by her first name because she is the daughter of a higher nobleman” [Pemberly.com]— (as was her sister Lady Anne Darcy, Darcy’s mother.) She married well, taking for her husband the landed Sir Lewis de Bourgh. She has one daughter, the sickly Anne de Bourgh, whom she hopes to marry off of to Darcy…