Miss. Jennifer Mönteirö
English Höns. Ist year
10 Öctöber 2014 Is Elizabeth Bennet the möuth piece öf Jane Austen? Höw döes she critique the wömen’s issue öf her era? Pride and Prejudice, the möst celebrated növel öf Jane Austen is a tale öf römance, cöurtship and marriages. It intervölves issues öf class and sex when read with clöse examinatiön. This növel is aböut feelings, löve and respect över sölely disinterested desire öf establishments, sense öf security and materialism subtly including all the aspect öf English life withöut revölting. It is a tale öf decörum öf cönduct and its cönsequences.
Austen sets the böök aböut the small time life öf the Bennet family living in the cöuntryside and their encöunters with
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Elizabeth’s wit and playfulness, reflect Austen’s öwn persönality. Elizabeth’s irönic wit alsö defines subtlety öf her character in ways that make her stand öut fröm being the öne-dimensiönal wöman like Caröline Bingley, Charlötte Lucas, Lydia and even Jane tö an ideal wöman. Jane Austen’s öwn difficulties in securing publicatiön and in nöt claiming authörship while creating independent, ströng-willed heröines like Elizabeth Bennet identify her as a feminist. Pride and Prejudice well exemplifies all these issues because Elizabeth Bennet and her föur sisters represent five distinct röles för wömen in the changing, revölutiön rattled wörld öf the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in which Jane Austen wröte and set her növel, where educatiön becömes the ticket tö a better life. Austen lived and wröte in terms öf gender pölitics, and a family öf five yöung wömen including öne whö is fiercely self-reliant is illustrative öf the difficulties pösed för girls and wömen at that
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is set in England in the late eighteenth century. The novel follows Elizabeth and Jane Bennet’s lives as well as Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy. The Bennet sisters are from a lower social class than Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy which is the cause of the problem in the book because of the prejudice in the eighteenth century. After overcoming prejudice, the Bennet sisters fall in love and are accepted by their husbands. If prejudices were eliminated the world would be a better place. People have preconceived ideas of many things, but if there was a way to end these ideas people would be more open-minded. Society should eliminate prejudices to promote a healthier environment for everyone.
The general impression of Austen's novels, which critic D. W. Harding says relieved him of any desire to read them, is that they offer readers a humorous refuge from an uncertain world. In his article "'Regulated Hatred': An Aspect in the Work of Jane Austen," Harding claims that this impression is misleading and that Jane Austen is actually very critical of her society, covertly expressing downright hatred for certain members of it by means of caricature. Mrs. Bennet, from Austen's Pride and Prejudice, is one of these "comic monster[s]". Harding claims that in order to view Mrs. Bennet as anything other than utterly detested by Austen one must ignore this Austen's summary of her at the end of Chapter One: "She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and an uncertain temper."1 Actually, Austen's Mrs. Bennet is much more complex than Harding acknowledges. Austen's initial summary notwithstanding, Pride and Prejudice even looks at Mrs. Bennet forgivingly. Her behavior is often provoked by her environment: both her society and her family. Because she helps, or tries to help, her family, Mrs. Bennet's ludicrous actions can even be seen as lovable.
Karl Kroeber described Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre to be “not strictly comparable” but like “different species of the same genus” (119). Characterization is very different in these two novels. It is different because Jane Eyre is a romantic novel, while Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners, but it is also different because the authors use characterization for different means. Jane Austen means to explore the human character, and the way people interact with those...
England, under James 1st rule was a vastly altered period compared to our now modern society. So many of the values held during this time, have now been discarded and forgotten. Jane Austen grew up in the Romantic period and experienced a world which was divided, whether through education, class, status, fashion, abilities, gender and etiquette. Her novel, Pride and Prejudice is counted as one of the great classics of English Literature. Austen engrosses readers to live in her world for a time and experience a society filled with matchmaking, romance, marriage and gossip. Every one of her characters is so distinctive and has a clearly outlined caricature. Each of their diverse values conveys a different thinking of the time. Pride and Prejudice is preoccupied with the gentry and most of the social aspects which consumed these people’s lives. There were so many expectations of how you would behave in public, but of course not all of these were upheld. Elizabeth Bennet, Mr Darcy, Mrs Bennet and Charlotte Lucas are four characters which keep such strong beliefs about the social norms. These characters are expressed so descriptively and through their personalities readers can learn just how the numerous social standards were received.
In conclusion, the roles of the Bennet sisters were quite typical to that of their time period. They all were expected to find strength and meaning of self in a submissive state and in dedication to only their home and family. Their educations only prepared them for a homemaking career, while striving for a respectable marriage. It is women like Jane Austen and her creation, Elizabeth Bennet, who lived bending the boundaries of society and have shaped it into the one we live in today.
Through these characters, the reader learns about Mrs Bennet’s biggest concern; to marry off all her daughters. The themes of the novel are mostly related to the title, ‘Pride and Prejudice’, there is an element of personal pride amongst the characters and also prejudice, particularly with Darcy and Elizabeth. The first chapter brings in the reader into the world of social class importance, marriage and women’s role in the 19th century, which is satirized by Austen.
Mrs. Bennet is eager to see all her daughters married to gentlemen. Elizabeth, the heroine of the novel and the spokesperson of the author is, moreover, Austen’s representation of prejudice. Actually, she shares the same class and personality with Austen. Elizabeth belongs to a middle class family who has little dowry. Her father, Mr. Bennet, is a landowner who has a modest income, which is not enough for his five daughters to get married to gentle.
The reader notices Austen’s use of satire at the beginning of the novel when she introduces Mrs. Bennet, the mother of a middle class English family in the 19th century. Mrs. Bennet makes it her life goal to get all five of her daughters married to upper class, wealthy men such as Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley. You notice that Mrs. Bennet’s aspiration of finding husbands for her daughters becomes a fixation. This is best seen when Mrs. Bennet is thrilled to hear about Lydia and Wickham’s marriage, that she forgets about the fact that her daughter’s elopement with Wickham nearly endangered her sisters’ chances of ever finding a spouse that would take care of them when their father dies. Another reason why we should question the sanity of Mrs. Bennet can be seen when she puts Jane, her eldest daughter’s health at risk by sending her to Netherfield on horseback with a storm impending....
The Role of Women in the Society Depicted by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
The roles of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice are contrasted between a father who cares about what’s inside of people and a mother who only worries about vanity and appearance. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s parental guidance is unique to their personalities. Because of their two opposing personas, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s ideas of marriage are contradictory for their daughters; Mr. Bennet believes in a loving respectful marriage whereas Mrs. Bennet values a marriage which concerns wealth and social status. Their aspirations for Lydia, Jane, Mary, Kitty and Elizabeth mirror their conflicting ideologies. Mr. Bennet seems to have a quiet deep love for his daughters while, on the contrary, Mrs. Bennet’s love is over-acted and conditional. Both parents help to shape their daughters’ characteristics and beliefs: Lydia reflecting Mrs. Bennet’s flighty and excessive behavior while Elizabeth inherits Mr. Bennet’s pensive and reflective temperament. Looking past their dissimilar personality traits and contradicting convictions, both parents hold the family together and play an integral role in the household structure.
In Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet, the mother of the protagonist, Elizabeth, is generally portrayed as a buffoon who is an adversary for he daughter that is trying to force her into a marriage she does not want. One may wonder how she can be justified in any way, considering that she is known to embarrass her family members and behave idiotically. However, in the time period they live in, a marriage is necessary for all of the family to avoid a terrible fate. Mrs. Bennet, while often behaving improperly, does try to do the best for her daughters based on the world she lives in.
This romance, however, would not have been as powerful without acknowledging the intellectual growth and emergent maturity of Elizabeth Bennet. Elizabeth, in Austen's novel, finds the path to her adult identity by questioning her own assumptions and undergoing a philosophical paradigm shift.... ... middle of paper ... ..." Manolos, Marriage, and Mantras: Chick-Lit Criticism and Transnational Feminism.
Romantic author Jane Austen is known for bringing different views of romance, marriage, and intimacy to light in her novels. She designs each female character to posses different and creative views of romance. Pride and Prejudice expresses the variety of relationships, while Emma focuses on the actions revolving around romance from one primary female character. Lydia Bennet is a rebellious, open-minded teenager who has similar behavioral patterns as her sister, Catherine "Kitty" Bennet. Both sisters are claimed to possess wild and loose manners. (Telgen). The blind sense of romantic judgment leads to sudden pleasure but eventual heartbreak and devastation. Elizabeth Bennet is a powerful,
Jane Bennet is the eldest daughter in the Bennet family at 23 years old and is deemed the most beautiful of all the daughters and of all the ladies of Hertfordshire. She is amiable, and her “sweetness and disinterestedness are really angelic” (132). She never wishes to think shamefully of anyone as long as she can help it. Her modesty is strong enough that those who do not know her may believe her to be reserved. Elizabeth and Jane have opposing dispositions yet their relationship is vital as they balance each other out. Jane brings out the benevolent qualities of others for Elizabeth while Elizabeth keeps Jane weary of ill-intent.
Austen follows the development of an outspoken, middle-class British woman, Elizabeth Bennet, as she encounters and overcomes the many social barriers that separate her from her aristocratic neighbors. Throughout the novel, Lizzie must confront society’s class-consciousness, particularly with her family’s growing relationship with the wellborn Bingleys and their friend, Mr. Darcy. It is clear that author, Jane Austen, intended Pride and Prejudice to be a parody of English society’s emphasis on the social class structure, which parallels the social class system of today.