An Open Invitation, or How to Read the Ethics of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (original) (raw)

A QUEST FOR FEMININE IDENTITY IN JANE AUSTEN’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

PUNE RESEARCH, 2021

Literature has always acted as a mirror to the society. As the human society evolved slowly and gradually, literary writings, especially the novels played a pivotal role in reflecting and expressing the social scenarios and defining the human psyche. Women are the most integral part of the social discourse. Since centuries, they have strived hard in search of their true identity and worth. Turning through the pages of literary history, we can easily trace the footmarks of the transformation in the position of the females through societies and ages. Women writers and critics have given a glimpse of the social norms and structures prevalent during their times through their writings. Jane Austen is one such poignant writer from the Romantic Period of English Literature who broke apart from the traditionally accepted storyline through her youthful spirits and portrayal of strong female protagonists, who could think for themselves and take their own decisions. Born in a society that hugely discriminated between the rights given to men and women, Austen, since her childhood developed an internal anguish against the unjust social system. This even resulted in her being unmarried throughout her life and continued writing as a profession to be financially independent. Austen always advocated marriage in her novels, but she believed in marriage for love and not for gaining social status. Women during Austen’s times were expected to be submissive and timid. They were considered incapable of thinking wisely and hold own individuality. Her novels parodied the then conventional novel plot of love, marriage and courtship through youthful playfulness and subtle irony. Her female protagonists were the heroes of her novels; they were progressive as well as headstrong. They did not believe in social conformity in the male dominated society.

The Discourse of Gender and Marriage in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion

Jane Austen's reputation as a great English novelist, and as one who was able to raise the female voice at such a time when women could not be heard, or even get published, had been recognised by the likes of Leavis, Richards and Bloom – who consider her works as examples of the best that had been thought of and said in the world – thus worthy of inclusion in the great tradition. This paper examines Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion as products of a feminist state of mind. This way, it presents the pitiable depiction of the female in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries – a period characterised by the need for women to preserve themselves from want through the institution of marriage. The paper also explores how Austen employed the narrative form which allows her heroines to recreate and redefine themselves through the medium of dialogue and feminine thinking.

Pride and Prejudice, An Annotated Edition (review)

2012

It is one thing to take up a much-loved novel and sink into it again, finding all the old familiar faces and visiting again the old familiar places. It is another thing entirely to reread Pride and Prejudice in the company of Patricia Meyer Spacks. In Spacks's hands, the 1813 first edition is glossed, word by word, line by line, through notes that remove it from the shadow cast by one's own pride and prejudice, and set again in the light.

Reasonable Foundations for Happiness: The Pursuit of Self-Knowledge in Austen's "Pride & Prejudice"

Interpretation: Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 47/3 (2021), 2021

In her novel Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen examines our hopes for happiness within the realms of friendship and marriage. Her characters embody an inquiry into the dilemma of self-deception, which is caused by the unexamined opinions that form the basis of our judgments about ourselves and others. Through the struggle of her main characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, to overcome the obscuring effects of such deception and achieve knowledge of themselves and of each other, Austen portrays for readers the task of self-examination as essential to living a virtuous life and as the means to establish reasonable foundations for happiness in marriage. Because the action of the novel is a study of human nature and education in self-reflection, Pride and Prejudice dramatizes crucial aspects of the philosophic activity, from the longing for justice as a prompt to examine oneself and the role of anger and love in cultivating virtue, to the prospects for attaining self-knowledge and happiness through the mutual pursuit of companions equal in superiority.

A Feminist Look towards Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice'

Jane Austen (1775-1817), one of the prominent female authors who represents her feminist beliefs through her novels. Pride and Prejudice is one of her renowned novels, which portrays Austen’s opinions about women, marriage, identity, patriarchal society, depiction of women by the men etc. Xuiqing Wang, a Chinese critic claims in his article named ‘Analysis of the Feminism in Pride and Prejudice’, “Austen cared about women’s social position and claimed for women’s right to work and attempted to seek for the value of women in society and her effort to subvert the male-dominated value system can be seen in her novels” (2). Through the characters, plot, conversations among the characters and narrator’s selection of ironic words, Jane tries to reflect her own feminist beliefs in this novel.

Human Relations in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice

International Journal of Language and Literary Studies

This research study aims to highlight and discuss Human Relations in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, in which she has selected the basic unit of human relationship, the family. In the family there are several forms of relationships among them the most fundamental relationship is in terms of love and marriage which form the basic theme of the novel Pride and Prejudice along with the theme of human relations. By a close reading of the novel, the present study will analyse and discuss parents and children's relations, friends' relations, and other minor relations. To discuss parents and children's relations the focus will be on the relationship between Mr. Bennet, the father and Elizabeth, the daughter. From a vantage point of view, the daughter reviews the relationship between her father and mother as husband and wife in terms of their love and marriage. She finds it damaging to the family and rejects it. Steering clear of them she treads over he...