Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as...
-
Upload
baby-halker -
Category
Documents
-
view
221 -
download
0
Transcript of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as...
![Page 1: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
![Page 2: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Regency Period
• Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry
• Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding colonial system
• Strived to align themselves with England’s landed aristocracy
• Purchased estates and country homes to rival aristocratic mansions
• Newly acquired wealth and possessions
![Page 3: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
Austen’s Novels
• Privileged circle of England’s landed gentry and aristocracy
• Upper class was old hereditary aristocracy and the new landed gentry who came into money through commercial enterprise and ascended from the middle class
• Upper class did not work and frequently employed farmers to work their land
• Upper class controlled England’s politics
![Page 4: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
Austen’s HouseChawton
• The house where Jane Austen lived and wrote most of her novels; a pleasant seventeenth century house in the pretty village of Chawton in Hampshire not far from her birthplace of Steventon.
![Page 5: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Mr. Darcy
• Darcy is representative of hereditary aristocracy
• Wealthy landowner who does not have to work for a living
• Employs workers to farm his land, surrounding families depend on his patronage
![Page 6: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
The Bingleys
• Bingleys represent the new landed gentry
• Bingley’s father acquired wealth through trade, gave up his business, and moved his family to the country
• He and his sisters are now considered upper class
![Page 7: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
The Bennets
• Bennets own land, but they are a middle-class family
• Longbourn House in Hertfordshire – 2,000 per year
• Must work to cultivate land
• Few servants and limited financial resources
![Page 8: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Women, Patriarchy and Property Rights
• Women had few legal rights• Depend on men for
protection and survival• Women could not own
property (they were considered property)
• Depended on fathers to “give them away” to a lucrative marriage
• At death, property went to another male heir
• Finding a husband was a necessity not a social preoccupation
![Page 9: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Women, Patriarchy and Property Rights
• “Entailment” determined how property would be passed through several generations within a family; usually closest male relative
• Lady Catherine DeBourgh, patroness of Rosings Park, is a rare example of an independent woman who inherits the estate of her father.
![Page 10: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Theme of Social Class and Lack of Mobility
• Conflict that arises when members of middle class, such as Bennets, mingle socially with members of the upper classes, represented by Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley.
• Austen was critical of the social barrier between middle and upper class (while remaining silent about members of lower class)
• Elizabeth Bennet breaks class barrier
![Page 11: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Theme of Marriage and Family
• Future of Bennet’s daughters depends on successful union with suitable husbands
• Women often forced into marital unions purely out of financial necessity
• New ideal of marriage and partnership based on mutual respect and love
• Expectation of social network above individual desire for privacy
• Family’s reputation was tied to reputation of each individual member
![Page 12: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Theme of Propriety, Social Decorum, and Reputation
• Person’s value depends on respect of friends and neighbors
• Woman who engaged in inappropriate behavior with a man prior to marriage was morally corrupt. No virtue = social outcast
• Elizabeth values personal worth and individual character over reputation and status
• Standards of proper social etiquette
![Page 13: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
First Impressions
• Original title of P & P• Premature preconceptions
complicate the relationships between characters
• Both characters must set aside their pride and prejudice and form an opinion based on respect and cordial friendship
• Error in judgment with Wickham who creates a bad image of Darcy
• Must look beneath the surface of a person’s character
![Page 14: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
Satire
• Humor or with in order to criticize or ridicule a particular person or group
• Disguise criticism of an intended target by clothing it in humorous language, funny characterizations, and sarcasm
• Austen satirizes Mrs. Bennet and her need to marry her daughters; also Mr. Collins’ high opinion of himself which often makes him the laughingstock of society
![Page 15: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
Free Indirect Discourse
• Narrative style known as “free indirect discourse”
• Third-person perspective to convey ideas and thoughts from point of view of a particular character usually the heroine.
• Hard to determine objectivity of ideas
• Precursor of “stream of consciousness”
![Page 16: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Regency Period Middle class gained social status; known as landed gentry Profits from Industrial Revolution and expanding.](https://reader030.fdocuments.net/reader030/viewer/2022032517/56649c8a5503460f949448b9/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
Comedy of Manners
• Uses elements of Satire to ridicule or expose behaviors, manners, flaws, and morals of members of the middle or upper classes.
• Incorporate love affairs, witty and comical exchanges between characters, and the humorous revelation of societal scandals and intrigues
• Witty banter between characters