In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen uses Lady Catherine as a stereotyped character to develop one of her major themes - that gentility should be based upon manners, morals, personality, and intellect, not upon social status and wealth. One of the other functions that Lady Catherine serves in the novel is that she is an ugly exaggeration of Darcy and Elizabeth's pride and prejudice. Also, she is shown as a foil to Elizabeth, and she serves as an ironic tool in the plot. Finally, Lady Catherine's estate is used to point out the geographical contrast between her estate of Rosings and Darcy's estate of Pemberley.

Lady Catherine is a dictatorial and bossy lady and tells everyone what to do. For example, she tells Charlotte how to fix her furniture. She is arrogant and supercilious since she likes to feel a sense of superiority over other people, loves to...