There’s a quotation in Pride and Prejudice that always gets me—it’s the kind that keeps me up at night.
It’s right at the end, when Bingley’s finally gotten everything straightened out and made an honest woman of Jane:
“‘I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!’ cried Jane. ‘Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed above them all! If I could but see you as happy! If there were but such another man for you!'”
To which Lizzy replies:
“‘If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.'”
Readers, put me out of my misery: Is this true? Is goodness a precursor for happiness?
To be clear, I don’t think Jane is telling us that Lizzy and Darcy won’t be happy. Of course they’ll be happy; they love each other and they respect each other and they’re going to go off to Pemberley and be dazzlingly content in their wealth and unnecessary virtue. I get that she’s talking about Jane and Bingley’s ability to be content, and about their ability to not pick fights with life, and about the way that they will be eternally relieved to have actually ended up together (no thanks to you, Darcy).
But no, really. Do we—and by we I mean I—have to be good to be happy?
Let’s look at Lydia, who is pretty definitely Not Good in the context of the novel. Is Lydia happy? She certainly gets what she wants. The last we see of her, she’s all bouncy and obnoxious and rubbing her sisters’ noses in her traipsing off with Wickham—and of course we’re meant to believe that what Lydia has isn’t real (no matter what she thinks in the moment), and that it won’t last, and that she’ll end up disgraced and alone, a washed-up groupie either for the military or, slightly less likely, Phish.
It’s true that, in Jane’s novels, the virtuous and the sweet-tempered generally end up winners; the snobs, the weak-minded, and the mean-spirited, not so much. (I wouldn’t call Lizzy mean-spirited; more like mildly and wonderfully acidic. I don’t think Jane would mind.) Outside of Jane’s novels, I’m not sure: I think there are plenty of happy people who aren’t necessarily good—but are they as happy as they could be?
Shed some light, readers?
austenacious 
I think its a matter of different kinds of happiness:
Jane/Mr. Bingley – content/happy – fairly boring lives but they’d be happy with it (too boring for some)
Lizzie/Darcy – happy/amusement – maybe not quite as “good” as Jane – but still good – some amusement out of things Jane would get on to Lizzie about – much more exciting life than Jane/Mr. Bingley, but might also mean a few more rough patches too… I think Lizzie and Darcy would take that trade off though…
Lydia/Wickham – happy as long as what happened was to their pleasure – fleeting happiness – in the case of Wickham maybe not so fleeting as long as he didn’t get in trouble – still a vastly different kind of happiness, and the consequences will eventually end in unhappiness…
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If Elizabeth was serious about that in the first place, she’s definitely changed her mind by her own engagement:
I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.
I wouldn’t worry too much. 😉
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