Is Jane a reliable narrator or not in Pride and Prejudice?

This is an interesting question because in Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Jane is the heroine of the romantic subplot and Elizabeth's elder, more beautiful, more kindly dispositioned sister (universally portrayed in film versions incorrectly). Elizabeth, of course, is the flawed heroine who winds up seeing herself and Mr. Darcy through new eyes, through a new perspective (not to mention seeing wicked Mr. Wickham through new eyes as well). The narrator of the story is a third person narrator that resides outside the relationships and events of the story but that has full knowledge of them and relates them to the reader. Since there is no "Jane" who is a narrator, neither Jane Austen nor Jane Bennet, and since there is only an unnamed third person narrator, your question must be aiming at something different from "narrator." (With an author like Jane Austen, it is tempting to think of the third person narrator as "who" since we all hear Austen's voice in the narration, but, technically, third person narrators are generally spoken of as "that" and generally dealt with as though not having personalities.)

One thing Jane Austen is most noted for is the present, proximal, intrusive narratorial voice she develops in all her stories. What is meant by a present, proximal, intrusive narrator is that the third person narrator is not distanced from the action and characters: the narrator is not reporting from a distant, uninvolved perspective on what occurs in the characters' minds, feelings and relationships and in the action. In the narratorial mode Austen develops, the narrator is present with the characters as things occur; the narrator is in close proximity to characters as they think, feel and participate; the narrator interjects comments and evaluations pertaining to characters' thoughts, feelings, actions, relationships. Austen most often intrudes with comments and evaluations that are wrapped in that famous and delightfully engaging irony of hers (though she carefully never descends into hurtful sarcasm).

Now, if you're not actually asking about a "narrator"--because there is no narrator called "Jane"--you must be asking about this present, proximal, intrusive narrator created by the writer, Jane Austen, that intrudes into the narrative with comments and evaluations. Your question, then, may be rewritten as: "Does Jane Austen develop a reliable present, proximal, intrusive third person narrator or not?" The three options for answering this are:

1. Yes, and the narratorial comments, evaluations and irony can be trusted as drawing a correct representation of the characters and their social order and as giving correct ironic insight into their lives, minds, feelings, motives, interactions and cultural constraints.


2. No, and the narratorial comments, evaluations and irony give a distorted view, an idiosyncratic view of the lives, society and culture being represented: the view given is Jane Austen's view and no others would describe the lives, society or culture (if they had the talent or ability to) in the same way Austen does.


3. A little of each, sometimes the narratorial intrusions and irony are trustworthy but other times they are not because Austen lets her own idiosyncratic perceptions get the better of her depiction of the characters she is developing though it is our own perceptions that will arbitrarily select which are reliable and which aren't.

Fortunately, we are not left to our own devices for deciding whether Austen's narratorial mode results in a reliable narrator who is trustworthy or not because notable people of her day made comments as to the reliability of Austen's narratorial comments, evaluations and ironic insights. Perhaps the most notable was Sir Walter Scott who said of Jane Austen in his review of Emma that she has a talent for:

copying from nature as she [nature] really exists in the common walks of life, and presenting to the reader, instead of the splendid scenes of an imaginary world, a correct and striking representation of that which is daily taking place around him [the reader]. 

This confirmation (one among several from Austen's era) of the reliable trustworthiness of Austen's intrusive narrator can confirm our own assessment of Jane Austen's narrator as reliable and trustworthy: we can trust that the present, proximal, ironic commentary is not idiosyncratically biased or ... prejudiced ... but that the narratorial vision and perception is reliable and as clear as that which Elizabeth and Darcy each learned to attain, indeed perhaps it is right to say not "as clear as" but more clear than.