Elizabeth Bennet is Austen's most liberated and unambiguously appealing heroine, and Pride and Prejudice has remained over most of the past two centuries Austen's most popular novel. The story turns on the marriage prospects of the five daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet: Elizabeth forms a prejudice against the proud and distant Mr. Darcy; Darcy's charming friend Charles Bingley falls in love with her sister Jane, and the handsome officer George Wickham forms attachments successively to Elizabeth and to her sister Lydia.