Pride and Prejudice

1. Pride and Prejudice

3. Brief Life Story • Jane Austen(1775-1817) was born in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father, Rev. George Austen, was a rector. She was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight. • The first 25 years of her life Jane spent in Hampshire. On her father's unexpected retirement, the family sold off everything, including Jane's piano, and moved to Bath. Jane, aged twenty-five, and Cassandra, her elder sister, aged twenty-eight, were considered by contemporary standards confirmed old maid, and followed their parents. • Jane was mostly tutored at home, but she received a broader education than many women of her time. She never married, but her social life was active and she had suitors and romantic dreams. • Jane Austen started to write for family amusement as a child. Her earliest-known writings date from about 1787.Very shy about her writing, she wrote on small pieces of paper that she slipped under the desk plotter if anyone came into the room. Jane Austen's father supported his daughter's writing aspirations and tried to help her get a publisher. • After her father’s death in 1805, she lived with her sister and hypochondriac mother in Southampton and moved in 1809 to a large cottage in the village of Chawton andremained there the rest of her life.

4. Jane Austen’s House at Chawton

5. Jane Austen’s Major Works(in order of publication) • Sense and Sensibility (1811) • Pride and Prejudice (1813) • Mansfield Park (1814) • Emma (1816) • Northanger Abbey (1818) • Persuasion (1818)

6. The main Concerns of her Novels • Her novels paint a realistic picture of the small circle of landed gentry in provincial England leading their apparently tranquil lives. • All of her six novels deal with marriage mart--- the business of getting married. The most urgent preoccupation of her bright, young heroines is courtship and finally marriage. • The England she depicts is one in which social mobility is limited and class consciousness is strong. Under such a social milieu, social advancement for women was usually through a successful marriage, which explains the pervasiveness of matrimony as a goal and topic of conversation in Austen’s writings.

7. Pride and Prejudice First published in 1813, Pride and Prejudice has consistently been Jane Austen's most popular novel. It portrays life in the genteel rural society of the day, and tells of the initial misunderstandings and later mutual enlightenment between Elizabeth Bennet (whose liveliness and quick wit have often attracted readers) and the haughty Darcy. The title Pride and Prejudice refers (among other things) to the ways in which Elizabeth and Darcy first view each other. The original version of the novel was written in 1796-1797 under the title First Impressions, and was probably in the form of an exchange of letters.

8. Main Plot The story centers around the Bennet family---Mr. & Mrs. Bennet and their five grown-up daughters. Mrs. Bennet’s chief interest in life is to have her five daughters married to rich men, since under the law of the time, if Mr. Bennt dies one day, the family estate will pass on to his nearest male relation, a clergyman called Mr. Collins. At the beginning of the novel ,Mr. Bingley, a rich bachelor, moves to live near the house of the Bennets, and bring there his friend Mr. Darcy. Bingley falls in love with Jane ,the eldest daughter ,but was separated by Bingley’s sisters as well as the disapproval of Darcy. Darcy belittles Elizabeth and hurts her dignity by refusing to dance with her. Later, however, he falls in love with Elizabeth for her wisdom, yet when he proposes marriage to her, he finds that she is prejudiced against him. Her dislike for him is increased by false information about him as well as by her misunderstanding .After many amusing incidents everything is cleared up, thus Darcy overcomes his pride and Elizabeth her prejudice and they are happily united. At the same time, Darcy brings back Bingley to Jane and they are also engaged. Thus the novel comes to its happy ending.

9. Chapter One What happens in Chapter One? • Mr. Bingley comes to Netherfield Park, an estate in the neighborhood where the Bennets live. • The excitement in the Bennet family • Mrs. Bennet urges her husband to call on Mr. Bingley immediately

10. Chapter Two What happens in this chapter? Mr. Bennet torments his family by pretending to have no interest in calling on Mr. Bingley, but he actually visits Mr.Bingley without the knowing of his family. When he reveals to his family that he has made their new neighbor’s acquaintance, they are overjoyed and excited.

11. Comment on the opening sentence of the novel:It is a truth universally acknowledged ,that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. • It briskly introduces the arrival of Mr. Bingley at Netherfield Park, the event that sets the novel in motion; • This sentence also offers a miniature sketch of the entire plot, which concerns itself with the pursuit of “single men in possession of a good fortune” by various female characters. The preoccupation with socially advantageous marriage in the 19th century England society manifests itself here, because in claiming that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, the narrator reveals that the reverse is also true: a single woman, whose socially prescribed options are quite limited, is in ( perhaps desperate ) want of a husband. • Rhetorically speaking, the sentence is an irony. There is an ironic difference between the formal manner of the statement and the ultimate meaning of the sentence.

12. Characterization of Mr.& Mrs. Bennets • Mr. Bennet: quick-minded, sarcastic, humorous, reserved, capricious. • Mrs. Bennet: a woman of mean understanding, little information and uncertain temper, self-pitying, snobbish, vulgar in taste.