How is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice seen as a comedy of manners? Pride and Prejudice belongs to the genre of a comedy of manners; this is a...

Pride and Prejudice is, if you really pay attention, quite
the scathing commentary on the etiquette and customs of the time. Think about it this
way: Elizabeth can't just walk up to Darcy and say, "What's the deal with us?" In the
England of the early 1800's, there were very strict expectations for how children were
supposed to act toward their parents, how both women and men were supposed to conduct
themselves and interact, and how people of certain social statuses were supposed to act
around one another. There were many, many layers of expectation and politeness that
contributed to what were really, at least in comparison to today, very artificial
communications.

Austen was ahead of her time enough to
catch on to this, and put her characters in situations where the tension between what a
character truly wants to do/say comes in direct conflict with what he or she MUST do/say
according to their gender and social position.

This creates
many comedic and tense situations for the characters who act according to their
station--for instance, Jane and Bingley's mutual aching to be with one another is never
expressed (and instead quite awkwardly misunderstood) for the majority of the novel
because (A) Jane's place as a women is to act passively and not initiate any aspect of
the relationship and (B) Bingley, with added pressure from Darcy and Ms. Bingley, sees
his place as a wealthy young man as that of a station far above Jane Bennet's.
Therefore, neither of these characters can "allow" themselves to act on what they really
feel.

Similar expectations act on Elizabeth and Darcy
throughout the novel as well, but Austen gives her heroine a small spark of
rebellion--enough that when she is pushed enough (as in Darcy's initial proposal) she is
able to miraculously overcome the ways in which she is "supposed" to act as a young
women from a lower class family. It's this addded resistance of social expectations that
makes her rejection of Wickham, rejection of Darcy, and grand telling-off of Lady
Catherine de Bourgh so spectacular, funny, and heroic.