Single Women in the Media

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the book, "Pride and Prejudice," by Jane Austen, and the film, "Pretty Woman," directed by Garry Marshall. Specifically, it traces and explores how single women have evolved in the media and how they still face some of the same prejudices they have through history. It looks at how single women have always faced far more difficulties than single men in literature throughout history and how this is quite evident in these two works. It shows how, though written centuries apart, the women still struggle to be taken seriously, and while women have made great strides in many areas, they still struggle for equality and to gain the same advantages as men.

From the Paper:

"Both women are certainly feminine and feminists at the same time. In Elizabeth's time, that was not such a good thing, and one character even tells her, "Well, it won't get you very far. Men detest clever women" (Austen 59). Another even calls her "emancipated," repeating it as if it were a repugnant disease. Elizabeth is a feminist long before it became fashionable, and she makes it seem so natural and so "correct," that the other women in the book seem unnatural and fake, which of course they were. Elizabeth is much too intelligent and has far too much pride in herself, (thus the title), to turn into a "damsel in distress." That strategy might work for many of the other women in the novel, including her ridiculous mother, however, it would not match Elizabeth at all, and she realizes this, because she also knows herself, along with knowing the men who surround her."

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