The Representations of Femininity in Pride and Prejudice

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Jane Austen, one of the most well-known 19th century novelists recognized today continues to captivate people with stories of love and romance through the transformation of her novels into film and television. All of her novels are about women dealing with romance, courtship, and marriage during a repressing period. Most of her characters and stories revolve around the lives of the upper class. It centers on the values, rituals, and manners of high society in England during the Regency Era. Her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice published in 1813 maintains the interest of its audiences as it did almost two centuries earlier as evidenced by its frequent incarnations.

In 1995, the British Broadcasting Corporation produced a six episode mini-series of Pride and Prejudice in partnership with Arts & Entertainment Network starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth as Elizabeth and Darcy. BBC also made four other adaptations of the novel prior to this one in 1952, 1958, 1967 and 1985. The network is famous for producing many period television dramas and films from popular classic books. The 1995 drama series adaptation has won seven awards including an Emmy out of eleven nominations for Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Series, and so forth. It has been well-received by audiences and has sustained high ratings of 9.2 out of 10 in the Internet Movie Database. Tom Benton, an IMDB reviewer writes, “The production design and costuming is perfect, capturing the time without error, and the locations are simply gorgeous. Carl Davis' score is terrific and fitting. Andrew Davies' script brings every last scene from the book and then pops in some new, being as absolutely faithful to the book as anyone could hope to be”. Many people claim that thi...

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...rity and social standing. A woman’s purpose was to support her husband and take care of her children and household. These traditional gender aspirations limited a woman a full potential because of society’s rigid rules and standards. The focus of this paper is to identify the representations of femininity through a semiotic analysis of Pride and Prejudice.

Works Cited

Kroll, Jack. “Jane Austen Does Lunch.” Newsweek 7 Nov. 2011: 66-68.

"Pride and Prejudice" Reviews & Ratings - IMDb." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 10 Nov. 2011. .

Thomas, Eran. “Hooray for Hypocrisy.” Newsweek 29 Oct. 2011: 61.

Grandi, Roberta. "The Passion Translated: Literary And Cinematic Rhetoric In "Pride And Prejudice" (2005)." Literature Film Quarterly 36.1 (2008): 45-51. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Nov. 2011.

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