Pride and Prejudice Versus Marriage and Tolerance

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Recommended: Analysis of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

In Jane Austen's novel, Pride and Prejudice, Austen reveals a sparkling comedy of love and marriage, wit, form, and feeling that achieve some type of balance between pride and prejudice. Mr. and Mrs. Bennett illustrate how comic characterization can be used to reveal different marital situations. Pride and Prejudice shows many aspects of marriage and demonstrates how one can make the most of their life regardless of the circumstances. Elizabeth and Darcy have discovered themselves through their differences and the loss of their pride and their prejudices. The traits pride and prejudice can be seen as desirable merits: self-respect and intelligence. Pride and Prejudice shows that human nature can be influenced by the society in which one subscribes.

Marriage, one of the basis of the novel, was somewhat a tragic experience for Mr. and Mrs. Bennett. Mr. Bennett was captured by a pretty face, and was in a marriage that tied him to a foolish woman for the rest of his life. The result was disastrous to Mr. Bennett's character: he was, "forced into an unnatural isolation from his family, into virtual retirement in his study and the cultivation of a bitter amusement at his wife's folly and vulgarity," (Daiches 753-754). Though he was not happy in his marriage to Mrs. Bennett, he was content enough to remain with her and their five children: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, and Lydia.

Mrs. Bennett, in this world where eligible marriages for young ladies are chief objectives, had succeeded in her aim, using her good looks while she had them. Mrs. Bennett's main concern was marrying off the elder Bennett girls to men with monetary means.&...

... middle of paper ...

... Oxford University, Pr., 1951.

Conrad, Peter. "Pride and Prejudice." (1997): Online. Internet. 30 March

Available: www. Penguin.couk/penguin/books/0140238212.html.

Daiches, David, ed. A Critical History of Englilsh Literature. 2 vols. New York:

Ronald Press, 1960.

---. The Penguin Companion to English Literature. Great Britain: McGraw-Hill,

1971.

Magill, Frank. Masterplots. New Jersey: Salem Press, 1976.

Tucker, Martin. Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American

Authors. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966.

Wright, Andrew. Jane Austen's Novels. New York: oxford University Pr., 1954.

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