How does Jane Austen reveal character in Pride and Prejudice?

In addition to being about the failures of first impressions, Pride and Prejudice is a book about different attitudes toward love and marriage. To do that, she had to have a set of women different from each other. So the author purposely contrasts various women, and various women's opinions and motives, with each other.

So, we have Lizzy and Jane who want to marry for love, but one is a studier of human failures and the other a believer in human goodness. We have Lydia, who is thoughtlessly out to get a man. We have Charlotte Lucas who will take any man with money and a disposition that is not vicious, and we have Caroline who will not take a man without money but has no intellectual concerns whatever. And we have Mary, who is a philosopher and seems not to care about men. The contrasts are calculated and intentional.

But on a broader scale, there is nothing formulaic about any of Jane Austen's characterizations. Even her ridiculous clergy are different from one another, so it is hardly surprising that her important ladies should be constructed as individuals.