The Poem Love by Emily Dickinson

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Recommended: Pride and prejudice literary criticism

In her famous poem Love, Emily Dickinson writes, “She rose to his requirement, dropped the playthings of her life to take the honorable work of woman and of wife.” The heroine of the novel Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, chooses to stand up against society’s standards of a woman’s responsibilities and pursue happiness. The novel describes the hardships and romances of the five Bennet daughters: Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. Both Jane and Elizabeth, the eldest daughters, combat to find true love amidst a society in which a woman simply marries for convenience. In her distinguished novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen develops dynamic, strong-willed characters through conflict, characterization, and clever narrative perspective.
During the late 1700’s to early 1800’s love is almost nonexistent. Love is simply a bonus, not a necessity. A woman’s husband determines her social standing during this time period because women are restricted from legally owning property. For this reason Mr. Bennet must leave his estate to his nephew Mr. Collins, rather than to one of his daughters. Mrs. Bennet desires that one of her daughters marry Mr. Bingley because throughout this time British culture centers on the accumulation of wealth within the family. In Chapter 1, Mrs. Bennet says, "Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls,” (1). Not concerned with Mr. Bingley’s personality or mannerisms, Mrs. Bennet considers only that one of her daughters might marry into his immense wealth. The first line of the novel states, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” (...

... middle of paper ...

... the readers’ wishes: Jane marries Mr. Bingley, Elizabeth marries Mr. Darcy, and they all live happily ever after.

Works Cited

Chea, Stephenson. "Theme of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Love That Overcomes
All Things." Yahoo Voices. Yahoo Shine and Lifestyles Network, 5 Apr. 2010.
Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
Dickinson, Emily, and Helen McNeil. "Love." Emily Dickinson. London: Phoenix Poetry,
2002. Print.
Halliday, E. M. "Narrative Perspective in Pride and Prejudice." Nineteenth-Century
Fiction 15.1 (1960): 65-71. Print.
"Jane Austen's Art of Characterization." NEOEnglish. English Teaching Online, 19 Dec.
2010. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
Lerman, Rachel. "The Sense and Sensibility of Jane Austen." Jane Austen Society of
North America. 2000. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
Sheehan, Lucy. "Historical Context for Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen." Columbia
College. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.

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