📘 “But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation, can you here impose upon others?”
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
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One of the most common words you will ever come across in English is the relative and interrogative pronoun and determiner ‘which’.
👉 You may have even taken for granted (as I did) how many different applications of which there can be in English! 😊
For this reason, in today’s Lesson we will be turning to possibly the most famous classic in English literature – Jane Austen’s marvellous Pride and Prejudice (1813) – to look at all the ways in which we can use ‘which’ correctly with ease and eloquence!
Note: You may like to know that Austen borrowed a line from Burney’s Cecilia – see Lesson #183 – for her title. The line from Cecilia is as follows:
📙 ‘Remember: if to pride and prejudice you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to pride and prejudice you will also owe their termination.’ – Frances Burney, Cecilia (1782)
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WHAT IS ‘WHICH’?
✍️ ‘Which’ is a relative pronoun. Relative pronouns are used in relative clauses; they connect the clauses by offering extra information about the noun in the sentence.
Perhaps you are already using them but are not sure of the differences between them and where it is best to use one of them over the other. Stay tuned, because in this Lesson we will be covering all of these points with plenty of illustrations from Pride and Prejudice.
1) How ‘which’ is a word to ask questions with, and when to use ‘which’ and when to use ‘what’
2) Different uses of ‘which’ with prepositions
3) ‘Which’ vs. ‘that’: ‘which’ as a relative pronoun
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📝 1) WHICH as A WORD TO ASK QUESTIONS WITH
‘Which’ can be used as a determiner and interrogative pronoun to ask for specific information:
📘 ‘… But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.’
‘Which do you mean?’ and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, ‘She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. ..’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
✏️ WHICH? or WHAT?
We use both which and what to ask questions. We use which when there is a (limited) range of answers. We use what when the range of answers is specific:
📘 “What is his name?” “Bingley.” (specific answer = ‘what’)
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
📘 “Pray, what is your age?” (specific answer = ‘what’)
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
📘 “What is that you are saying, Fitzwilliam? What is it you are talking of?’ (specific answer = ‘what’)
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Cf.
📘 “And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of modesty?” (two possible answers, more variety of answers = ‘which’)
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
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📝 2) WHICH’ WITH PREPOSITIONS
We often use which with prepositions. Some formal styles prefer to use a preposition before which rather than to leave the preposition ‘hanging’ at the end of the sentence:
..
✏️ WHICH OF
We use ‘which of’ before other determiners (the, those, your) and pronouns (yours, them):
📘 “And which of the two do you call my little recent piece of modesty?” (‘which of the two …’)
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and he begged to know to which of his fair cousins, the excellence of its cookery was owing.’ (‘which of [them] …’)
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
..
✏️ IN WHICH – when; through
📘 ‘When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were mentioned, in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense of shame was severe.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘But as no such delicacy restrained her mother, an hour seldom passed in which she did not talk of Bingley, express her impatience for his arrival, or even require Jane to confess that if he did not come back, she should think herself very ill used.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
..
✏️ ON WHICH – regarding; about; concering; on
📘 “But it is not merely this affair,” she continued, “on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Wickham. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation, can you here impose upon others?”
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
…
✏️ TO WHICH – [verb form] belonged / owing to
📘 ‘About ten or a dozen years ago, before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in that very part of Derbyshire, to which he belonged.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘Mr. Gardiner, highly amused by the kind of family prejudice, to which he attributed her excessive commendation of her master, soon led again to the subject; and she dwelt with energy on his many merits, as they proceeded together up the great staircase.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
..
✏️ WITH WHICH
📘 “What would she have said?— how would she have behaved?” were questions with which she amused herself.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘Elizabeth, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity and ease with which an affair was finally settled, that had given them so many previous months of suspense and vexation.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
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✏️ WHICHEVER
📘 ‘Her thoughts were all fixed on that one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Darcy then was.’
– Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
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📝 3) WHICH AS A RELATIVE PRONOUN
✏️ THE PURPOSE OF RELATIVE PRONOUNS
‘That’ and ‘which’ are relative pronouns in English that are used in relative clauses. This means that they connect the clauses by offering extra information about the noun in the sentence.
✏️ HOW THEY ARE DESCRIBED – ESSENTIAL VS. NON-ESSENTIAL
If there is one thing that you remember from this Lesson it should be this:
– ‘that’ is used in essential clauses, and
– ‘which’ is used in non-essential clauses.
✍️ This means that if you need to know whatever information follows ‘that’/’which’ in order to make sense of the sentence, you can consider it an essential clause.
✍️ But on the other hand, if the information following ‘that’/’which’ is not absolutely necessary to understanding the sentence, then it follows that it is a non-essential clause.
✒️ E.g. ‘The book, which she read last summer, was in French.’
✒️ ‘The book that she read last summer was in French.’
👉 Can you tell which is an essential clause and which isn’t?
Here are some examples from the pages of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice:
📘 “You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Bingley might like you the best of the party.”
– Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘Elizabeth asked questions in vain; Maria would tell her nothing more, and down they ran into the dining-room, which fronted the lane, in quest of this wonder …’
– Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
📘 ‘He had by that time reached it also, and holding out a letter, which she instinctively took, said with a look of haughty composure, “I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?”—’
– Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice (emphasis mine)
✏️ HOW TO KNOW WHEN TO USE EACH ONE
One of the simplest ways to know if you should use ‘that’ or ‘which’ in a sentence is to remove the clause that would begin with a ‘that’/’which’ and ask yourself:
Does the sentence still make sense without it?
If it does make sense, then you know that the clause should begin with ‘which‘ since it is a non-essential clause.
And if it doesn’t make sense (because it has removed essential information relating to the noun of the sentence), then you can be sure that the clause should begin with ‘that‘ since it is an essential clause.
✏️ COMMAS WITH ‘WHICH’ – ESSENTIAL OR NON-ESSENTIAL?
When using ‘which’, remember to place a comma before it (at the end of the previous clause) and also after it, or if it is at the end of a sentence, a full-stop/period. Remember, it should look like this:
✒️ E.g. ‘The book, which she read last summer, was in French.’
Commas act as mini-brackets, so whatever clause they are bracketing off, remember that it can theoretically be removed since is not essential to the meaning of the whole sentence.
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Has this Lesson been helpful? I certainly hope so – even if it seems like there is a lot to grasp here in one single Lesson, you can revert to it (return to it) as often as you like to reinforce and strengthen your understanding of what I have covered here.
If you ever want to delve (dig) deeper, you can always contact me even for a single lesson and we can smooth out any questions or difficulties you may have.
