Pride & Prejudice
Prideful

The institution of marriage is one of the primary themes of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice. The emphasis placed upon marriage by the vast majority of the characters in the novel, however, is largely due to the fact that most of them see a successful marriage as a principle means of achieving happiness. However, the specific conditions of an individual marriage account for the degree of happiness its participants will be afforded, and Austen spends a good deal of the novel illustrating the fact that virtue is an integral component of a happy marriage. She presents this idea to the reader by showing acts of commission of virtuous qualities and acts of omission of virtuous qualities, and indicating their effects on a marriage largely through the perceptions of Elizabeth Bennett.

The marriage of Elizabeth's best friend, Charlotte Lucas, with Mr. Collins is one which largely omits virtuous intentions….

Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is set in rural England, in Longbourn, during the Napoleonic ars, 1797-1815. The novel centers around the Bennet family, which includes five daughters of marrying age, Jane, the oldest, then Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. It is a story of romance, manners and a comedy of misunderstandings, in 19th century England. The protagonist of the story is the second daughter, Elizabeth, regarded as the most intelligent and sensible of the Bennet girls. She is beautiful, honest, virtuous, clever, well read, and quick-witted. However, she has the tendency to jump to conclusions and pass hasty judgments upon those around her. Moreover, she often lets loose her sharp tongue without full understanding of the situation or circumstance. "Pride and Prejudice" is basically about how Elizabeth overcomes the obstacles in her life, such as a distant father, a mother obsessed with marrying off her daughters, ill-behaved….

Pride & Prejudice Influence on Later Work
Frantz, Sarah S.G. "Darcy's Vampiric Descendants: Austen's Perfect Romance Hero and J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood." Persuasions On-Line 30.1 (Winter 2009); n. pag. Web.

Frantz's area of academic focus is popular romance fiction of the sort that, as she notes, constituted "the largest share of the consumer market in 2008," and which ranges from the mass-market paperback fiction published by Harlequin in the U.S. And Mills and Boon in the U.K., to what is more commonly termed "chick lit," to supernaturally themed romantic fiction aimed at a primarily female readership. Frantz begins by noting that "readers and authors" of this particular genre "claim Jane Austen as the fountainhead of all romance novels." Frantz notes that the popular contemporary genre of romance is itself rather flexible, and that "a story requires just two components to be considered a romance: a central love story and an emotionally….

Bingley's wealth did not hurt the relationship either. He was "a young man of large fortune" (1) with an income of four or five thousand pounds per year. His wealth made him a suitable marriage partner because he could provide financial security for Jane. One of the first comments Mrs. Bennet makes after hearing about the impending marriage is, "hy, he has four or five thousand a year, and likely more." The fact that they got along well was less important than his economic status.

The Ideal Marriage

According to Hinnant, "One of the unstated conventions of the courtship novel is that the lovers must undergo traumatic experience, a violent shift from innocence to self-knowledge before their union can be consummated (1). In the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth, Austen explores the connection between two people who originally loathe each other but grow and change throughout the novel. Unlike the other characters….

Darcy. All of these problems are worked out by the conclusion of the novel, but not before Lydia has run off with Mr. ickham and eloped. This is considered a great disgrace and a shame for the Bennet's because it is found out that Mr. ickham is not a very wholesome character and in fact has quite a few skeletons in his closet. But Lydia does not seem to care because she is so willful that she does as she pleases and does not reflect upon how it will make her family appear in the rest of polite society.
Of course, Lydia's elopement is another distress for Mrs. Bennet. But now there is a kind of reversal, and Elizabeth, who never seemed to be favored by her mother now appears to be sensible and strong. But still Mrs. Bennet prefers Lydia above the others and is depressed at finding that….

Pride and Prejudice
Women in society today have come a long way from those in the 18th and 19th centuries. In terms of education, work, and marriage prospects, women today have many more choices than those in Jane Austen's novels, for example. Education for a young lady was generally seen as a way towards becoming a school teacher or becoming a high society married woman. There were few choices inbetween. For independently minded women like Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, then, there were relatively few options to transcend the general social expectations of young ladies such as herself. Nevertheless, the character rises above what is expected of her, while at the same time satisfying her own independence. It is a novel that is satisfying even to today's reader, because its themes are both era specific and universal.

In Austen's novel, Elizabeth Bennet is an independent, free-speaking woman who evolves, throughout the novel,….

Chapter 50 shows this in the gossip and the interest people partake in of the relationship of Mr. ickham and Lydia. "How ickham and Lydia were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture." (Austen, 596)
Good marriages, at least in the eyes of the characters, were comprised of people who were careful in selecting their partner, but were also aware of their responsiblities in their relationship. Jane and Mr. Bingley are very similar in their viewpoints and mannerisms and thought well of everyone and were kind, sociable, and respectful of themselves and each other. Going into the marriage they knew what was expected and what they could offer. Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, opposites in certain ways, (he is….

A discussion between friends casts a light on the issue of pride, which appears to be Darcy's main enemy in his relationship with the society outside his most intimate acquaintances. Miss Lucas, one of the friends of the Bennet girls finds an excuse for Darcy's overflow of pride through his social status, fortune and image. Elisabeth agrees with her, but she also admits that her pride is even bigger than his and stands in the way of any chance of friendship between them.

Elisabeth Bennet is a very intelligent young woman, but her very brightness stands in her way of recognizing something good in a person like Darcy Fitzwilliam. She is unable to see that soon Darcy begins to give up on his pride and discover in her qualities that he could have not observe the first time they met:" of this she was perfectly unaware; -- to her he was….

...For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i. e., of prostitution both public and private.
Marx 339-340)

The communist manifesto clearly demonstrates that ideals that regard women and men, through the eyes of economic marriage partnership is abhorrent to the natural state, a satire in the subtle irony of Pride and Prejudice, is clear. Marx would likely not have looked favorably at the message of Austin's works, but as an intelligent man he might have looked between the lines, as modern readers do and seen the subtle cultural assassination within it.

orks Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. James Kinsley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Gilman, Priscilla. "Disarming Reproof": Pride and Prejudice and the Power of Criticism." Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal (2000): 218.

Marx, Karl. Capital, the Communist Manifesto and Other….

Leading up to (and following) Elizabeth's epiphany, Pride and Prejudice is essentially about how Elizabeth and Darcy slowly overcome their misconceptions; misunderstandings; weaknesses, and mistakes, to at last find love and happiness together. Both "pride" (personal and social, that is) and "prejudice" (the pre-judging, or perhaps more accurately, the misjudging, of one person by the other) create, before that point, considerable roadblocks to the love the two eventually find together. For example, based on her misconceptions, Elizabeth firmly rejects Darcy's first proposal of marriage, and does not realize her error in judgment for quite some time.

Fortunately for Elizabeth, the strength of her own character, and her intelligence, wit, and personal charm allow her to retain Darcy's interest up until the time of her epiphany. Meanwhile, also, Elizabeth experiences many distractions, e.g., her mother; her sisters, their suitors, and all of their various actions and intrigues (including Lydia's mysterious disappearance); her….

Pride and Prejudice Additional Pages
Casal, Elvira. "Laughing at Mr. Darcy: Wit and Sexuality in Pride and Prejudice." Persuasions On-Line 22.1 (2001): n. pag. Web.

Casal discusses comedy, laughter and wit as Austen's basic thematic concerns within Pride and Prejudice. She begins her analysis with a discussion of the conversation between Miss Bingley and Elizabeth Bennett, which concludes with Elizabeth's expostulation "Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!" Casal notes that this passage indicates laughter as the sign that Elizabeth is not intimidated by Darcy's superior social status, as Miss Bingley is. In the same passage, Casal notes, Austen is careful to also have Elizabeth admit that "I dearly love a laugh," and thus asserts the importance of comedy. Yet Casal notes that laughter itself plays an ambiguous role within the actual novel: on the one hand she thinks that the novel itself is a "celebration of laughter" simply because "the….

Pride and Prejudice and Beloved -- two, more perfect marital unions
Both the early 19th century novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and the late 20th century novel Beloved by Toni Morrison end with a marriage of two characters whose souls are incommensurate with their societies. It is clear in the 19th century story that the spirited femininity of Elizabeth Bennett is a perfect match for the sardonic, propertied manhood of Mr. Darcy because the two characters are the only individuals who are willing to speak their minds in their society, even though this frequently causes them to have differences with one another and their close friends. For instance, Elizabeth tells her friend Charlotte not to marry a man she does not love, even though he has money, because he is morally inferior to her and socially uncouth -- and Mr. Darcy tells his friend Mr. Bentley not to marry….

" A woman, although not receiving an inheritance, knew that she would at least be under the roof of her husband.
Johnson, in her book, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel, characterizes Austen as a novelist who "defended and enlarged a progressive middle ground that had been eaten away by the polarizing polemics born of the 1790s." She also states that Austen was a product of her times. She agrees that Austen "opted definitely not to ratify the anarchism of the radical opposition" (166). Her adoption of conservative fictional models was strategic rather than partisan, a means of escaping the charge of wishing radically to change the social structure at a time of extreme political reaction.

Was Jane Austen a feminist? It thus depends on the readers' expectation. If they expect a book that is radical by today's standards, it will not be Pride and Prejudice. However, if readers expect a….

Collins provides for her, she'll be pleased. To put a finer point on her situation, one can argue that Charlotte won't be happy per se; she'll be content.
Our heroine, however, gets to have her cake and eat it too. Elizabeth winds up with Mr. Darcy who is both wealthy and the man she ends up falling in love with. This is a woman's narrative about weddings after all, and Austen elected to reward her readers with some Shakespearean symmetry: a lot of marriages, people are generally happy or content at the end of the book.

To make sense of how this unlikely couple ended up together, Austen includes a conversation between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, where Elizabeth says, "You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them." Yes, this is….

Pride and Prejudice reinforce or erode sexist stereotypes of women (Research essay)
Jane Austen lived in a society where sexist values were believed to be perfectly natural and it was surely difficult for her to refrain from supporting some of these attitudes in spite of her feminist character. The individuals in "Pride and Prejudice" are each provided with a specific role that either reinforces or erodes sexist stereotypes in an attempt to paint a more complex picture regarding conditions in the early nineteenth century's England. hile particular characters such as Mr. Collins put across discriminating behavior toward women, it is gradually revealed that Austen uses this strategy with the purpose of emphasizing the wrongness related to such attitudes. In contrast, the novel's protagonist, Elizabeth Bennett, has a series of attributes that women absolutely needed during the period in order to be able to receive appreciation from society in general and….

I. Introduction

Begin with a brief overview of Jane Austen's life and importance as a literary figure.
Highlight the main themes and issues that you plan to discuss in the essay.

II. Jane Austen's Early Life and Influences

Discuss Austen's upbringing in Steventon, Hampshire, and the influence of her family and social circle on her writing.
Explore the impact of her education and reading habits on her literary development.
Analyze the influence of her brothers' careers in the navy and clergy on her understanding of social class and gender roles.

III. Austen's Literary Career

Discuss the publication of Austen's early novels, including....

I. Introduction
A. Brief overview of Jane Austen's life and works
B. Significance of Jane Austen as a prominent female author in the literary world

II. Early Life and Background
A. Family background and upbringing
B. Education and influences on her writing style

III. Major Works by Jane Austen
A. Pride and Prejudice
1. Plot summary
2. Analysis of main characters and themes
B. Sense and Sensibility
1. Plot summary
2. Comparison with other works and common themes
C. Emma
1. Plot summary
2. Exploration of social class and gender roles in the novel

IV. Literary Style and Themes
A. Exploration of Austen's....

Unit Lesson Essay Topic Ideas

History

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Persuasive Essay Titles:

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