Duty vs. Desire in Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh: A Theme Analysis
The Thematic Claim: Choice Is the Real Battlefield
The central tension in Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh is not simply a clash between obligation and feeling—it is a question of who gets to choose. The novel argues that duty becomes oppressive when it is imposed from outside, by family, by social expectation, by an era's rules, while desire becomes meaningful only when it is freely chosen and risked. Lucy's duty to marry Mr. Caldwell is never her own; it belongs to her father's ambitions. Audrey's desire to draw and to love is real but paralyzed by fear of rejection. The time-travel structure lets the novel test both: Lucy must learn that desire is worth risking, and Audrey must learn that fear is a form of duty to a self that no longer serves her.
Duty as a Cage: Lucy's 1812 Reality
From her first chapter, Lucy is defined by obligation. Her father announces that Mr. Caldwell has invited her to the annual ball and expects her to secure his proposal once and for all. Lucy's internal response is immediate dread—she views Caldwell as a fool twice her age, though he is the county's richest man. The novel is careful to show that Lucy's resistance is not merely personal preference; it is a structural trap. She has spent two months subtly discouraging Caldwell—being dull, stopping dances early, fumbling a piano passage—but her father's command overrides all of it. When she tells Martha she wishes her father wouldn't return from London, the housekeeper's sympathetic agreement confirms that Lucy's situation is visible to everyone around her.
The portrait of Lucy's mother deepens the theme. Lucy gazes at it in the library, remembering her mother's belief that Lucy would marry for love. That belief now seems foolish to Lucy, because her mother's own marriage—to a man who valued her dowry and status—proved that love could not outweigh duty. The portrait becomes a symbol of a promise that the world broke. Lucy's fingers search her throat for the ghost of a pearl necklace she has never been able to find, a detail that ties her mother's legacy to an inheritance of disappointment rather than hope.
Lucy's conversations with Audrey make the contrast explicit. When Audrey asks why Lucy would marry someone she doesn't like, Lucy explains that duty and expectation outweigh feeling: marry well, try not to be a burden, bear sons. Audrey's response—that in the future people marry for love and get to decide for themselves—lands on Lucy as both revelation and wound. She has been told her whole life that she has no choice, and the possibility that choice exists elsewhere only sharpens the pain of her own confinement.
Desire Blocked by Fear: Audrey's Modern Paralysis
Audrey's arc mirrors Lucy's but inverts the source of constraint. In 2023, Audrey is not forced into a marriage; she is paralyzed by fear of failure. The novel establishes this in the opening chapter: she has been unable to draw since her ex-boyfriend Charlie broke up with her before Halloween. Charlie, who was rejected from RISD and gave up art, encouraged Audrey to do the same. Her wait-list status at RISD and the May 1st portfolio deadline hang over her, but she cannot produce new work. Mr. Montgomery's gift of pens and his advice not to give up are the first push toward reclaiming her desire.
The crash in chapter 3—Audrey colliding with a car door opened by Jules, Charlie's new girlfriend—forces her to confront what she has been avoiding. Charlie's presence, and his casual dismissal of their shared past, crystallizes how much of her artistic ambition was entangled with his approval. Her mother's encouragement afterward is gentle but pointed: Audrey considers abandoning the RISD application entirely, and her mother refuses to let her.
The novel connects Audrey's artistic blockage to her romantic fear. Audrey realizes she is falling for Lucy and reflects that Lucy makes her want to create again, encouraging her even when it is hard. Charlie had insisted she leave her best portraits out of her application; Lucy, who cannot draw at all, understands Audrey's art better than Charlie ever did. The parallel is deliberate: duty in Lucy's world is external and crushing, while in Audrey's world it is internal—a voice that tells her not to risk, not to hope, not to try.
The Wedding Day: When Duty and Desire Collide
The novel's climax brings both characters to the point of choice. Lucy's wedding day is rendered as a kind of living death. She thinks, I am getting married today, and the words bring no joy, only dread. Martha's speech is the emotional hinge: she tells Lucy that being loved by her Samuel made her understand herself better, and that she has watched Lucy's light dim. Martha's warning that Lucy's mother would not want to see her like this connects the mother's failed marriage to Lucy's impending one. The lilac dress Lucy ordered—a small act of rebellion, a reminder of one small thing she chose for herself—becomes a symbol of how even her attempts at autonomy are absorbed into the machinery of duty.
Audrey's decision to return and stop the wedding is the counterpoint. Mr. Montgomery tells her that true love does not come without pain or risk, and that she should not let fear or time keep her from it. Audrey's response is to run to Radcliffe, confront Lucy's father, and declare that she is there to save Lucy from him and from the wedding. Her confrontation with Mr. Sinclair is the novel's clearest statement that duty, when wielded by the powerful, is simply control dressed in respectability.
The wedding scene itself resolves the tension. Lucy objects at the altar, telling Mr. Caldwell she is choosing herself. The phrase is precise: she is not choosing Audrey over Caldwell, or desire over duty, but choosing to be the author of her own life. Martha's intervention—shoving smelling salts under Caldwell's nose—is both comic and crucial; it shows that the people who love Lucy have been waiting for her to claim her agency. When Lucy finds Audrey tied up in the library and they declare their love, the kiss is not a rejection of duty but an embrace of a desire that Lucy has finally allowed herself to feel.
Symbols of the Struggle
The novel's symbols reinforce the theme. The quarter that sends Audrey to 1812 is the literal mechanism of choice—a coin flipped, a risk taken. Mr. Montgomery, who gives Audrey the quarter, is himself a figure who escaped his own duty (a coal mine) through a wish, and his role as a time-traveling helper suggests that the ability to choose one's path is the novel's highest value.
The sketchbook represents Audrey's desire to create, and its blank pages are the visible symptom of her fear. When Mr. Montgomery returns it to her in the present, filled with the drawings she made in 1812, it becomes proof that her desire was never lost—only buried.
The mother's portrait and the pearl necklace tie Lucy's story to her mother's. The mother believed in marrying for love and was disappointed; Lucy initially reads her mother's fate as proof that love cannot win. But the novel reframes this: the mother's failure was not that she believed in love, but that she never had the chance to choose it freely. Lucy's choice at the altar is a correction of her mother's story.
Complexity and Contradiction
The novel is careful not to present desire as an uncomplicated good. Audrey's love for Lucy is real, but it is also frightening; the risk of heartbreak is genuine. Lucy's choice to leave her world means abandoning everything she knows—her home, her class, her era. The epilogue shows the cost: Lucy struggles to adjust to 2023, works the register at the convenience store, studies for her GED, and finds prom music overwhelming. Audrey's decision to take a gap year before RISD is a compromise, not a triumph. The novel acknowledges that choosing desire does not eliminate duty; it simply allows one to choose which duties to honor.
There is also a contradiction in Lucy's father. He is monstrous in his treatment of Lucy, yet the novel shows that he is acting within the logic of his time and class. The marriage to Caldwell would genuinely improve the family's status and business prospects. The novel does not excuse him, but it does show that duty is a system, not just a personal failing. Similarly, Audrey's fear of rejection is not irrational—Charlie did hurt her, and love does carry risk. The novel's answer is not that risk is safe, but that it is worth taking.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the novel use the time-travel premise to sharpen the duty-versus-desire conflict?
The time-travel structure places Lucy's 1812 world, where duty is externally imposed and nearly inescapable, against Audrey's 2023 world, where choice is available but fear blocks it. Lucy's confinement makes Audrey's freedom visible; Audrey's paralysis makes Lucy's courage legible. The contrast shows that the tension between duty and desire is not historical—it is human. Lucy must learn to choose; Audrey must learn to risk.
2. What role does Mr. Montgomery play in the theme's resolution?
Mr. Montgomery is the novel's agent of possibility. He gives Audrey the quarter that sends her to 1812, and he later returns her sketchbook and offers to send her portfolio elsewhere. His own origin—a boy trapped in a coal mine who wished his way out—models the idea that escape from circumstance is possible, even if it requires a leap. His advice to Audrey, that love requires risk and that she should not let fear keep her from it, directly enables her decision to save Lucy.
3. How does the mother's portrait function as a symbol of duty and desire?
The portrait represents Lucy's mother's belief that her daughter would marry for love—a belief that Lucy initially dismisses as foolish because her mother's own marriage proved love could not outweigh duty. The portrait becomes a site of mourning and a challenge: Lucy must decide whether to repeat her mother's fate or break it. Her choice at the altar is a fulfillment of her mother's hope, not a rejection of her memory.
4. Why does Lucy's declaration that she is choosing herself matter more than simply choosing Audrey?
The phrase reframes the conflict. Lucy is not choosing a person over a duty; she is choosing to be the agent of her own life. Marrying Caldwell would have been a choice made by her father, for his benefit. Objecting at the altar is the first decision Lucy makes for herself. The kiss with Audrey follows from that self-possession—it is the expression of a desire Lucy has finally allowed herself to claim.
5. How does the epilogue complicate the novel's celebration of desire?
The epilogue shows that choosing desire has real costs. Lucy struggles to adapt to 2023, finds the modern world overwhelming, and must study for her GED. Audrey delays RISD to explore the world with Lucy. The prom scene, where Lucy admits she doesn't know the dance steps and Audrey says they will figure it out together, is the novel's final image of desire as ongoing work—not a destination, but a partnership in which both characters keep choosing each other.