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

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.

The objective of this research paper is to analyze the problem of feminism about education and place of women in society in the light of Jane Austen's novel "Pride and Prejudice" in which the role and problems of women are discussed. For this purpose, we divided our paper into three sections: First section explains the meaning of feminism and the position of English woman in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Second section deals with Jane Austen's concept of feminism and the social milieu in which she was born and bred which affects her novels. Section three is reflected the irony employed by Jane Austen to address the social and political concerns of men and women of 19th-century. In her society, upper class women are almost always treated as soft gods, and marriage is an elegant courtship, one of the most important parts of British society.

2019

Jane Austen portrays her novel heroines as outliers in the patriarchal society of Regency Britain. For example, in "Pride and Prejudice" (1813), Elizabeth Bennet chose to marry for love and not merely in pursuit of economic security, which is a flagrant violation of the standards expected of women. Due to strict inheritance laws, women are not able to inherit their family’s properties and so, must turn towards marriage for dependency (or as some critics argue, independency) and capital guarantee in their future. Families often see this as an opportunity to quickly accumulate wealth and push their daughters to marry a man of fine wealth, shaping the “universally acknowledged truth” that marriage is a critical step for women to survive and succeed unbeknownst of their inner desires for marriage shaped by true love and passion. Anyone who deviates from this norm is considered a radical and the voices of these activists are suppressed by the government. Jane Austen was one of the few critics who openly disagrees with the patriarchal expectation of an ideal woman who is to serve the man. She acquires the views of Mary Wollstonecraft’s version of an accomplished woman – one who is seen to be of a rational equal of men and able to make her own independent decisions. In this annotated bibliography, I will explore the arguments of six different critics of Jane Austen’s works, illustrating the main principles that they believe Austen was trying to push through the portrayal and personality of her characters. Some arguments will overlap and I will point out the similar and contrasting understandings between critics to develop a more comprehensive picture of Jane Austen’s liberal feminist ideas of marriage in the novels’ social environments and the thorough examination of the heroines will show that they represent rather unconventional views of marriage.

2016

This study examines Jane Austen’s realistic interpretations of eighteenth-century English society with a particular focus on representing women’s oppressions in Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Austen, in these three novels, criticizes several issues related to women’s status in English society and focuses on how men and women should be treated equally. In the novels, she argues that English society creates social order, women’s oppressiveness, and gender inequality through arbitrary social norms and traditions. This paper mainly focuses on two areas that restrict women’s roles in their society: the marriage plot and the educational system. Austen’s purpose of presenting these issues is to voice women’s rights and improve their conditions. She also offers her readers unusual descriptions of female characters in order to correct the stereotypical images of women during the period. Finally, this paper aims to show Austen’s success in redefining women’s status and change the misconceptions of women in British society.

Does the rich class of women face different gender related issues than the poor class ? This paper will try to investigate whether there is any weight in the argument that distinctive classes hold different issues for women or are they all united in being subordinated by men .We will take into account two novels ,Pride and Prejudice and Emma,by the beloved 19th century writer Jane Austen. The female author’s works become the suitable object of inquiry owing to the strong voices, presence and interaction between plethora of women characters belonging to different stations. Even though, several critics have rightfully highlighted the absence of any reference or portrayal of the poor class in Austen’s novels, it is quite interesting to note that the author still highlights the apprehensions and relations within the seemingly close middle class and gentry.

Hence Elizabeth certainly suffers from pride and prejudice, but this is no less an ailment of Darcy as well. Darcy has to overcome his preconceived ideas about Elizabeth's inferior looks and class in order to concede she is handsome, eloquent, and very witty and intelligent – his equal in intelligence, if not in possessions. Class distinctions are then exposed to be illusions and minor barriers to true love because it is she who captivates him with her wit, honesty and intelligence rather than all the simpering fawners who throw themselves at him and defer to him simply by virtue of his looks and fortune. Pride and Prejudice is thus a novel about the overcoming of these vices of pride and prejudice in the protagonists Elizabeth and Darcy in order to encounter true love.

2019

It is a universally acknowledged truth that marriage was a critical element in a woman’s life in Regency England. In the patriarchal society, only men can inherit the wealth of their parents, forcing women to marry to climb the stairs of social status and wealth. Marriage became an instrument through which families could quickly gain capital and parents were desperate to marry their daughters to rich young men, leaving women with no choice but to bow to society’s demands and be a slave to the system. But Elizabeth Bennet is a woman ahead of her time. Through the romantic and comedic scenes in Pride and Prejudice (1813), Jane Austen orchestrates the heroine could live a life which finds herself marrying not for money, but for love and in so, setting herself apart from the traditionalist culture which has done so much to suppress a woman’s right to choose who she wants to marry. She is different in that she refuses to be an object through which her cousin could use to gain her family’s wealth despite there being no sons of her parents and the diminishing possibility of her finding a man who could secure her financial independence. Despite Collins’s repeated attempt to push Elizabeth to accept his poor-thought marriage proposal and her own mother’s disapproval of her actions, she stands her ground for what she believed to be true and free. But by refusing what might’ve been her only chance to escape her precarious position in a family with no sons and with an aging father, she is playing a game which sees her as the player who is willing to gamble her future to stand for her feminist values. This paper will attempt to assess the situation Elizabeth is in, the pressures inflicted upon her to make choices against her will, and how Austen’s views of a postpatriarchal ideal woman influenced this single scene to paint a woman who is not only intelligent and brave but also willing to defy others whom she believes to hold opinions detrimental to the advancement of women. In this analysis, I will be explaining how Austen illustrates her liberal feminist views through Elizabeth and the other characters which contrast her progressive views and, will focus on this proposal scene which I believe best illustrates the liberal feminist views of Austen and Elizabeth through a game of chance, marriage, and integrity.

This study aims to explore feminist viewpoints in Jane Austen's works in general. As a famous 19 th Century novelist, Jane Austen tried to show the realities of women in her time. The common theme in all Austen's works includes the marriages of young women and the general social class structure of England in the 19 th Century. Jane Austen was a published female novelist who wrote under her own name which can be seen as an important feminist quality. She gifted six novels to readers about women centred in the thoughts, desires and behaviours of them. Besides, new innovations in the 19 th Century literature have also been mentioned in this study. ONDOKUZUNCU YÜZYIL EDEBİYATI VE JANE AUSTEN'IN ROMANLARINDAKİ FEMİNİST MOTİFLER ÖZET Bu çalışma, genel anlamda Jane Austen'in eserlerindeki feminist bakış açısını ortaya çıkarmayı amaçlamaktadır. Ondokuzuncu yüzyılın ünlü romancısı Jane Austen kendi çağının kadınlarının gerçeklerini göstermeye çalışmıştır. Austen'in bütün eserlerindeki ortak tema ondokuzuncu yüzyıl İngilteresi'nin genel sosyal sınıf yapısı ve genç kadınların evlilikleri ile ilgilidir. Jane Austen kendi adı altında yazmış olan kadın romancıdır ve bu özelliği ile önemli bir feminist özellik ortaya koyar. Yazar, okuyuculara kadınların düşüncelerini, taleplerini ve davranışlarını anlatan altı roman bırakmıştır. Bu çalışmada ayrıca ondokuzuncu yüzyıl edebiyat dünyasında meydana gelen yeniliklerden de bahsedilmiştir.

I dedicate this study to my parents, Carlos Alberto Oliveira and Marlene Regina Florentino, and to my sister Juliana Honório, whom have supported me to accomplish many challenges in my life. -to my tutor, Flávia Herker Lopes Bernabé for her affection and devotion; -to my boyfriend, Gabriel Malta Bertoni for his moral support.

When addressing to Jane Austen’s literature as a feminist heritage, it comes to be quite controversial regarding the actual sense of the word feminist. In the eighteenth century it did not mean the same as it means today in the twenty-first century. Despite the obvious clues that Jane Austen has left to the reader in her works and through her characters, to think about them as a kind of heroines, they are far from the fact of being considered feminists as we would understand the term nowadays. Nevertheless, there are some striking things going on in all of her novels that must be reconsidered: women with more modern and progressive perspectives of English society that seem to be taking new directions and new social roles in the new century. The dependence on the father, brother or husband is not that obligatory anymore.

Jane Austen’s "Emma" as a feminist novel, 2022

This dissertation aims to evaluate Jane Austen’s Emma, with special reference to the feministic traits of the text and the main character of Emma Woodhouse. With this thesis, I want to prove that Jane Austen was a feminist of her time and in Emma, she presented a feminist heroine, who expressed views and opinions standing in opposition to those of the majority of the women in the 18th and 19th centuries. I will attempt to do that by the analysis of the novel Emma itself and academic texts about Jane Austen and her works. In the first chapter I provide a short biography of Jane Austen, alongside the historical and literary background of Emma, I also present a brief history of feminism, its origins, and its most characteristic features. The second chapter is a dissection of Emma Woodhouse, her character, behaviours, autonomy, and feministic traits. Finally, the third chapter covers Emma’s attitude towards marriage and how she portrays marriage as a result of mutual love between two people, instead of seeing it as an economic proposition.

2019

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public.