Women in Jane Austen through Pride and Prejudice (1813)
22 mayo, 2013 by Bego
Argument:
The peaceful life of the rural aristocracy of the English countryside, and particularly the Bennet family, is altered when they get two new neighbors, Bingley and Darcey, perfect candidates for any girl’s pretenders. Marriage plans meant that the mother has for her daughters will be mixed with individual intentions of each of them, will suffer all sorts of adventures and misfortunes, through which learn to correct their defects, and end up finding happiness in the case of Elizabeth with Darcy’s hand, after overcoming all the impediments placed by themselves and by others.
Women in Pride and Prejudice:
In all the work of Austen, the female character is very important and is always the protagonist of the story. There are some shared characteristic profiles depending on the novel be more important or less. In the case of the chosen work, having wide range of women in the cast, they accommodate different types of personality. Each sister embodies a character style, with its shades, virtues and defects. Appears kindness, intelligence and suspicion, the study, frivolity and pragmatism. It is always reflected the woman’s life revolves around marriage.
However, Mrs. Bennet was a woman of low intelligence rather uncouth and unequal temperament. His goal in life was to marry their daughters.
Bingley’s sisters were pretty nice, had been educated in one of the best schools in the capital and had a fortune twenty thousand pounds, belonged to a respected family in northern England.
However, as criticism of this, the author gives them a character hypocritical, arrogant and unpleasant, while the main characters gives them no such luxury and ancestry, but have intelligence and good feeling, yes, always with some defects along which the work will reveal, but unlike antagonists recognize and try to change.
This will be a feature in all the work of the author: the protagonist throughout the story make an inner journey through which more thoroughly know, will be conscious of their shortcomings and learn to change or at least accept. In the case of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth learns that first impressions are not always true, but not only limited to this, but because of this, she realizes that her security itself is excessive, and therefore need a good dose of modesty. In other Austen novels will find this same trip: in Emma, the protagonist learns to stop playing with the safety of its perfection, in Sense and Sensibility Marianne extreme sensitivity makes you get sick, etc…
Already at that time the wickedness shows between women, discrediting more among themselves, rather than being criticized from the opposite sex:
“Elizabeth said Miss Bingley, when the door had closed behind her- is one of those girls who try to be nice to the opposite sex to your own discredit, I will say that does not give a result with many men, but in my opinion is a vile trick, a bad habit.” (Pride Prejudice, page 77.)
Also appears frequently male viewpoint about opposite sex typically by reducing it to a little lower, in fact, is the point of view of the society marked by men;
“I have often observed how little young people are interested to books with serious themes, though they were written for his sake. I confess that I am astonished, because he can do nothing so advantageous to them as instruction.” (Pride and Prejudice, page 87)
However, women are not only despised by men, but is they who by their education and freedoms not granted to them or to others. This can be clearly seen when the protagonist acknowledge and agree that a man can marry for money to have some freedom and independence, but as is the case with Charlotte, her best friend, sees it as a gesture despicable and degrading.
But, she is inflexible about one thing, it is true that many women have admitted that frivolous and superficial characters, but does not consider the result of the fairer sex, but the consequence of poor education, which demonstrates that all and be one of the first writers and doesn’t show excessive feminist women does not consider at all inferior to men.
Oh my I love it. I am fortunate enugoh to be visiting the Jane Austen Centre later this year and hubby is also taking me to Jane Austens house – I shall purchase some postcards of the house for you xx