"Pride and Prejudice" and the French Revolution

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the social and historical significance of Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice", written at a time when shockwaves from the French Revolution were still rolling across the European social landscape. The paper points out that Austen's native England was not spared the repercussions of the middle class' breaking through the previously stable societal order, and, along with other female authors of the time, Austen wrote about anticipated changes that a new class structure would entail for women of marriageable age. In comparing the characters of two sisters, Lydia and Elizabeth Bennett, the paper shows how the novel presents alternatives for starting social change one woman at a time. Lydia wages a one-woman revolution against all that is sacred to her family and the social order, while Elizabeth engages in an evolutionary, subtle alteration of others and herself as a way to keep pace with a changing environment and strengthen her society with a blending of different social classes. The paper concludes that the success of Elizabeth's evolutionary approach both changed her view of herself and gave her a future that she and other women of her time only dreamed possible.

From the Paper:

"Elizabeth is inclined to resist society's expectations for her as a woman of marriageable age, as shown by her refusing to dance with Mr. Darcy and her declining the marriage proposal of Mr. Collins, both of whom represent a higher social class. In fact, when sending Mr. Collins away, she tells him that he would not make her happy, a factor few women dared consider in a husband, and less dared to voice. The fact that a Bennet-Collins marriage would allow Longbourn, the Bennet estate, to stay in the family is of no concern to Elizabeth. When Charlotte later accepts Mr. Collins' proposal, and admits that she seeks "only a comfortable home" and not romance, Elizabeth laments that Charlotte is "a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem," (Austen 87)."

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