tion to ponder as one compares Aeschylus’s Pro-
metheus Bound with its later variants, Christopher
Marlowe’s doctor Faustus and Mary Shel-
ley’s Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus. While
Aeschylus presents a philanthropic Prometheus, dis-
obeying the gods’ orders for the benefit of the help-
less human race, Marlowe’s tragedy of Faustus plays
on both the heroic and the comic tradition, turning
the intellectual hero into a trickster, whose desire “to
gain a deity” (1.1.65) inevitably shrinks to horseplay
as, at the end of Mephistopheles’ indenture period,
he himself dissolves into the void of death. Mar-
lowe’s rebellion against God cannot succeed within
the prescripted confines of a Christian morality play.
In signing away his soul to Satan, Faustus reenacts
Lucifer’s revolt against God, filled with “Vain hopes,
vain aims, inordinate desires/ Blown up with high
conceits engendering pride” (John Milton, para-
dise Lost, 4.809), the queen of sins. Faustus’s victory
is rather one of principle: opposing God to satisfy
his desire for omnipotence and not backing down
in the face of certain defeat. Despite the Christian
lesson of the vanity of human pursuits, instructed
through the increasing trivialization of his heroic
endeavors, Faustus, through Marlowe’s rendering,
retains his heroic status simply by undertaking the
impossible. Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, however,
is a self-deluded Prometheus who is as unsuccessful
as Faustus without the latter’s attribution of heroic
rebel. The scientist’s philanthropic endeavors to
advance knowledge for humanity’s benefit—or more
accurately, his solipsistic fantasies of fathering a new
race—are belied by his foolish neglect of the loved
ones around him, thus his inability to prevent their
deaths, a direct result of his hubristic creation of a
humanoid without assuming the consequent paren-
tal obligations toward him.
As many of these literary examples indicate,
pride entails not only transgressions against divine
authority but also infractions against fellow human
beings. Jane Austen insightfully dramatizes the
woes that come when pride and prejudice rule in
pride and preJudice. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a wealthy
member of the landed gentry, acquires the reputa-
tion in Hertfordshire of being a proud aristocrat
when he arrogantly refuses to dance at the Nether-
field ball and slights Elizabeth Bennet as being only
“tolerable” (7). Her friend, Charlotte Lucas, defends
Darcy’s pride by claiming that “so very fine a young
man [as he], with family, fortune, every thing in
his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may
so express it, he has a right to be proud.” With her
vanity wounded, Elizabeth replies, “I could easily
forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine” (13).
After setting up this misunderstanding, Austen
takes 59 chapters to bridge the gap between Darcy’s
arrogance vis-à-vis Elizabeth and her prejudice
against him toward reconciliation and marriage.
According to Aristotle, pride is the proper
mean between humility and vanity, for the rightly
proud man “claims what is in accordance with his
merits, while the others go to excess or fall short”
(Nicomachean Ethics, book 4, 2.1123b12–14). The
difficulty in this assessment lies in the numerous
interpretations of merit: wealth, noble birth, and/
or personal virtue. While Charlotte believes that
Darcy has a right to be proud simply because of his
rank and money, the crux of the novel is that gentle
birth does not always entail personal nobility. At
one side of the amorous discord, though Darcy is
born into the upper class, his demeanor is construed
by the social circle of Hertfordshire as less than
noble. At the other side, Elizabeth is born to lower
gentry, but her superior “understanding” (Austen
43) in mental and moral capacities distinguishes
her as a true gentlewoman above both her family of
meaner understanding and haughty aristocrats like
Lady Catherine. The pride and prejudice of both
Darcy and Elizabeth abate when Darcy is irresistibly
wooed by her personal merits and when Elizabeth
comes to know Darcy as “perfectly amiable” (282),
always acting in principled honor. In this manner,
for both of them vanity becomes humbled and
pride affirmed. As discussed above, pride, as hubris,
can be a negative force disrupting social bonds
and affronting the gods, fellow beings, and oneself.
Pride is, nonetheless, also a positive force, affirming
one’s achievements and promoting self-worth and
self-contentment. According to Aristotle, pride, as
opposed to hubris, is grounded in virtue (NE, book
4, 3.1124b30). “[W ]here there is a real superiority
of mind,” Darcy claims, “pride will be always under
good regulation” (43), and that is Darcy and Eliza-pride 83