Elizabeth Bennet is a young and attractive daughter of a gentleman with relatively modest estate who (initially at least) holds Darcy in some disdain due to his manners. She is Darcy's romantic interest throughout the novels, and a central theme of the books is Darcy's attempts to reconcile his feelings for her with his qualms about her class and family. She is the central character of "Pride and Prejudice", and as with Darcy in the earlier novel, she is absent for long stretches of the overall narrative (and does not appear at all within the second book), but is a central background presence within all of the novels.