PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

Introduction

Pride and Prejudice is a novel about marriage. The author's purpose is to make it possible for her two most interesting characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, to be united. In order to accomplish the author's purpose, they must overcome both external obstacles and the personal flaws suggested in the title of the book. In form, it has been noted, Pride and Prejudice is highly dramatic. Each character is introduced with a short summary much like those found in play scripts. It has often been pointed out that Jane Austen's novels deal only with the world of which she had firsthand knowledge.

Essentially, this book involves the process of forming hypotheses, more or less shapely and more or less accurate, which give meaning and thus value for an individual mind to the facts of observation, indeed, which give to facts themselves their very status. Here are some of the words of perception and hypothesis to be found in Pride and Prejudice, many of which could be cited with reference "passim": suppose, surmise, conjecture, believe, credit, impute, account for, fancy, hope, doubt, see, observe, read, determine, judge, reason, know, and their nominal and adjectival variants; sensible, attentive/inattentive, ignorant, partial, prepossessed, blind, deceived, persuaded, decided, convinced, struck (forcibly), surprised, amazed, shocked; apparent, possible, probable, likely, unaccountable, plain, evident, certain, known/unknown; impression, observation, opinion, explanation, attention/inattention, penetration, conviction, reflection, presumption, sensibility/insensibility, prejudice.

Jane Austen Writings

It is this relationship between meaning and value which is the basis of any kind of valid individual or social culture in Austen's fictional worlds. That is why reflection is such an important activity, such an important index of moral improvability, such a dominant element in the plot as well as the story material of an Austen novel. And so her novels show characters trying, frequently with a comic but serious lack of success, to understand the world around them, and understanding or sound judgment, like "taste" and like "manners," has to be cultivated. That is why one of the most important words--or rather values--in Austen's novels is "elegance," and why the word is applied to mind as well as manners. Indeed, her novels seem designed to show that one can hardly have elegance of manners without elegance of mind (Rogers, 2006). However, the elegance for Austen is clearly the product of cultivation; the ability to judge correctly, to discriminate, to exercise proper taste is an art that is learned through practice. It is in this sense that Austen's novels are "novels of education" (Teachman, 2005).

Thus, true to the culture of her class, the Anglican gentry, Jane Austen shows that observation and judgment are not ends in themselves, but they are for conduct, for the leading of one's life in a civil community.

Overview of the Novel: Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet is of course described (humorously but significantly) as a "philosopher" because she does reflect strenuously (though of course she is somewhat too proud of her reflectiveness); and in terms of what I have ...