Pride and Prejudice

1. Pride and Prejudice Propriety

2. Conformity to what is socially acceptable in conduct or speech • Fear of offending against conventional rules of behavior especially between the sexes • Customs and manners of polite society

3. Can we make the basic assumption that a person’s outward manners mirror his or her moral character?

4. The definition of true propriety that Pride and Prejudice offers is simply a healthy respect for the conventional rules of social behavior, modified by an understanding that those forms are important, not as ends in themselves, but as means of regulating social intercourse, and that therefore they need not always be followed slavishly.

5. Austen Divides Propriety into Two Classes • Rules that represent the social codification of basic moral principles • Rules that are primarily matters of fashion or convenience Example of #1: Breaking a first engagement because one has received a more appealing second Example of #2: Young ladies taking long country walks by themselves

6. Lack of Propriety • Mr. Collins has fallen in love with two of the commonest forms of politeness, the apology and the thank you, and has completely failed to understand that these forms have definite functions in social intercourse • Sir William Lucas has moved to where “he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world.’ • The purpose of civility has been forgotten

7. Writing Response • Can we make the basic assumption that a person’s outward manners mirror his or her moral character? • Respond to this question in a 1 ½ to 2-page creative answer. Can you be understated, funny, and appropriate all at the same time? [That was a rhetorical question!]