Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

Today’s Work • Style • Themes • Questions for further contemplation • Chapter analysis

Style • meticulous details of life • delicate analysis of characters • lively dialogues • humorous ironies • combine romantic comedy with social satire and psychological insight

Question for group discussion What are the themes of Pride and Prejudice? Discuss how they are reflected in the novel.

Important Themes • Marriage and women • Manners (a novel of manners) • Virtue (pride, prejudice, sense of responsibility) • Self-knowledge • Relationships (Individual and society) • …

Marriage and Women Q1 How many types of marriages does Austen deal with in Pride and Prejudice? How can we define them?

Types of marriages • Mrs. and Mr. Bennet • Charlotte and Mr. Collins • Lydia and Wickham • Jane and Bingley • Elizabeth and Darcy

Mrs. and Mr. Bennet A marriage of regret: • Intellectually unmatched • Mrs. Bennet: nobody to communicate; complain of poor nerves • Mr. Bennet: lives with his mistakes---when he was courting Mrs. Bennet, her beauty blinded him to her silliness;uses his feather-brained wife as a source of amusement; takes refuge in the library; neglects family affairs; even Elizabeth, his favorite, admits that his lack of respect for his marriage partner is a serious fault in a husband. (Chap 36, 42)

Charlotte and Mr. Collins A marriage of financial security and mutual benefits rather than of happiness. • Charlotte: a plain girl, eldest of a large family of modest means; can only hope for a marriage that will bring her financial security. • Collins: a way to please Lady Catherine so that he can raise his social status

Lydia and Wickham A marriage of mutual advantages: • Lydia: a necessity to restore respectability in society’s eyes • Wickham: a way to moderate wealth • both soon lose all pretense of affection and deteriorate into the shallow relationship expected of two such irresponsible characters (Chap 61)

Jane and Bingley A marriage based on mutual affections and similar temperaments

Elizabeth and Darcy • a marriage based on mutual love and understanding • having survived pride and prejudice

Q2. • What factors function in the marriage dealt with in the novel? • What is Austen’s view on marriage and women? Is her view justified in our own time? • What do you know about women’s position in society from the institution of marriage? • Is Austen a feminist as far as her view of marriage are concerned?

Factors that function in marriage • money • class • love • reputation • virtue

Money • 1st sentence and later in the novel: money is usually the first factor people consider when thinking about a marriage. (“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”) • Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s dialogue in the first chapter: The so-called universal truth. Bingley is first known to people as bachelors of good fortunes and as sources of the marriageable girls in the neighborhood; marriage with Bingley is believed to be a happy one even without having a look of him. • Money is the most important factor to consider esp. for young women without much property.

P & P: a novel full of figures • Mr. Bennet: 2,000/y • dowry of Mrs. Bennet: 4,000 • dowry of each Miss Benet: 1,000 after her mother’s decease • Bingley: total 100, 000 4000/y • Caroline: dowry 20,000 • Darcy: 10,000/y • Georigina: dowry 30,000 • Wickham: ask for 10,000 for marrying Lydia • Colonel Fitzwilliam: wants a wife with 50,000 dowry • Collins: declares to collect a reasonable amount of tax from his patrons to suffice himself without offending the patrons

“Jane Austen was in a sense a Marxist even before the birth of Marx.” • Austen has the eye to see through the capitalist institution of marriage in the 18th century England: • financial condition is the factor that determines people’s marriage and fate. • Comments from Marxis critic David Dax: how economy affects people’s social behavior (The economic basis determines the superstructure.)

Money in marriage • Jane and Elizabeth: the financial factor is also taken into account though their marriages are based on mutual love. (Elizabeth wonders how nice it is to be the hostess of such a grand estate as Pemberley.) • Charlotte’s choice of Collins • Wickham’s consent to marry Lydia.

Class • One must marry members of his/her own class. • Elizabeth: Austen’s favorite protagonist--- “I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her… I don’t know.” • Elizabeth also thinks that property and status are important in choosing a husband. e.g. to Lady Catherine: “He is a gentleman. I am a gentleman’s daughter." (well-matched in social status)

Women’s choice of marriage • Marriage is a matter of financial security rather than of love • esp. for women of little property: the only way to prevent themselves from suffering from poverty and disgrace (Charlotte’s choice and Collins’s proposal speech to Elizabeth) • social rule: passive waiting--- “a story of waiting” • a. Women could not chase their Mr. Right as men court them. All they could do was to wait because showing affections to men without being courted was counted shameful and unladylike. (Jane, Caroline, and even the bold Elizabeth) • b. Lydia cannot wait, but she almost ruins the family by running away with Wickham and her marriage is by no means a happy one.

Austen’s view on marriage It is wrong to marry for property and social status, but it is not wise to marry without considering property.

Austen: a feminist? • Historical background: • 1797: the right of women to vote was sill more than a hundred years away but there were stirrings of protest. • 1792: Mary Wollstonecraft published the first great feminist document A vindication of the Rights of Women. • Austen: a conservative person like her father

Austen: a feminist? II • Critical of the gender injustices present in her society: • sympathized with women’s fate; • considered their inferior status in society to be unjust. • e.g. the entailment---unfair: leaves the Bennet girls in a poor financial situation which both requires them to marry well and makes it more difficult to do so. • Portrait of Elizabeth: • women were at least as intelligent and capable as men. • Having some feminist ideas but not a feminist in the strict sense.

Thank You!

Pride and Prejudice