Social, historical and cultural contexts - Pre-1914 Prose - 'Pride and Prejudice'

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English Literature Coursework – Social, historical and cultural contexts

Pre-1914 Prose – ‘Pride and Prejudice’

Introduction: In Pride and Prejudice we see the ups and downs of many different relationships and the growing obsession of Mrs Bennet to get her five daughters married to wealthy handsome young men. The novel is based on love, with marriage resulting in some cases.

In the 19th century there weren’t many positions for work for middle or upper class women, so marriage occurred in many of their lives, resulting in a ‘full time job’ of cleaning, cooking and looking after the children. This time was very different to today, as women still have all these jobs to do, but it is getting increasingly common for men to do them as well, leaving women with time to work. Women could only have their own house if they got married, and no other way. As women who didn’t marry didn’t have their own home, they had to remain under the authority of their dad or a male relative. If women had any money or possessions, they became the property of their husbands when they married. Divorce was very much frowned upon and so almost never happened, and engagements were very rarely broken off. At this time, high death rate was associated with childbirth, which sometimes put women off marriage. Knowing this, though, most women still got married.

Marriage is mentioned quite a lot in this book. One example of this is said by Charlotte Lucas in chapter 6, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance”. Throughout the text we see four weddings take place: Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, Lydia and Wickham, Elizabeth and Darcy, and Jane and Bingley.

There are two different types of pride represented in this novel. The first is the sort when you’re proud of someone, for example Mr. Bennet’s pride for his daughters-being proud of them and wanting them to do well in everything they do. The other type is the sort shown by Mr. Darcy, where he thinks he is above everyone, and looks down on people like the Bennets, who are less fortunate than him.

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The first character I am going to talk about is Elizabeth Bennet. Out of all the Bennet sisters, Elizabeth comes across the most headstrong one. She knows what she wants and won’t agree to anything to anything that people want her to do if she doesn’t want to. For examples, Mrs Bennet wants Lizzy to marry Mr. Collins and get quite overexcited at the thought of her daughters marrying, no matter who it is to. However, Lizzy is not attracted to Mr. Collins in the slightest, and makes this known in her several refusals to his marriage proposal. One ...

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