Each of the two passages below presents a judgment of a parent by a child. Compare and contrast the passages

Authors Avatar
Essay 6

Each of the two passages below presents a judgment of a parent by a child. Compare and contrast the passages in terms of :

) the kind and severity of the judgements and what they reveal about the social and personal beliefs of Elizabeth and Arkady

2) the narrative techniques of 'showing' and 'telling' employed in each passage and their effectiveness. ( 1500 words)

Pride and Prejudice satires early nineteenth century English social institutions. Elizabeth Bennet is Jane Austen's satirical tool as she explores class, feminism and love in the country estates of rural England. In Austen's society, women's social and economic circumstances are defined by their fathers and eventually their husbands. For the Bennet sisters marriage is more than a means of economic support, it is a source of upward mobility. Elizabeth's turning down two marriage proposals shows that she is an independent character. With her quick wit and loose tongue, Elizabeth rejects the patriarchal society defined by Chris Weedon and does away with the sexual mores of her time. Austen's other female characters embody Hannah More's view on how women should act; they serve as foils for Elizabeth's "very different mode of femininity."Austen's feminist hero challenges the ideals of prudence, decorum, propriety and social responsibility with Mary Wollstencraft's ideals of self-expression, spontaneity and personal fulfillment.

Chris Weedon's patriarchal society defines the circumstances under which Pride and Prejudice takes place. Weedon defines patriarchal as the "power relations in which women's interests are subordinated to the interests of men. These power relations take the form of... internalized norms of femininity." These internalized norms of femininity are nowhere more prevalent than in Pride and Prejudice. Mary Bennet, Lady Catherine De Bourgh and Charlotte Lucas personify Hannah More's typically passive, refined woman. More contends that women's happiness is dependent on restraint and submission and that women must not "[depart] from the refinement of their character" or "[blemish] the delicacy of their sex." Lady Catherine De Bourgh epitomizes the patriarchal society. De Bourgh, "a sharply realized embodiment of a stock comic figure," is a condescending upper-class snob who judges everyone based on manners and decorum. Lady Catherine's philosophy concerning young women is adopted from

More's view:

"An early habitual restraint is peculiarly important to the future character and happiness of women. A judicious unrelaxing but steady and gentle curb on their tempers and passions can alone ensure their peace and establish their principles...

Girls should be led to distrust their own judgement; they should learn not to murmur at expostulation; they should be accustomed to expect and endure opposition... It is of the last importance to their happiness, even in this life, that they should early acquire a submissive temper and a forbearing spirit."

Mary Bennet, Elizabeth's older, more attractive sister, typifies the "delicacy of the female sex." Mary's passivity aligns her with the ideal of a submissive, domestic woman; her maxim that "every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason"conforms to More's idea of womanhood. Charlotte Lucas is a plain girl, not attractive, not ugly. She has no talents and is coming from a middle-class family. More's assertion that

"this world is not a stage for the display of superficial or even of shining talents, but for the sober exercise of fortitude, temperance, meekness, diligence, and self-denial;... life is not a splendid romance...[but] a true history, many pages of which will be dull, obscure, and uninteresting"

describes Charlotte's beliefs and experiences. As she gets older she takes a very pragmatic approach to marriage; by accepting Mr. Collins' proposal, Charlotte is yielding to the idea that life is not a splendid romance. Charlotte's assessment that "happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance" nearly echos More's statement. Charlotte's furthers her dreary outlook on marriage in stating "I am not romantic you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home." These prudent, decorous characters are targets of Austen's satire.

Elizabeth Bennet is the feminine hero of the novel. She is lovely, clever, and outspoken. Elizabeth's wit and outspokenness attract her suitor, Fitzwilliam Darcy. He is attracted to her "liveliness of mind." Elizabeth demonstrates her independence of mind and neglect of decorum several times throughout the novel. She travels across the country side alone, in muddy conditions out of concern for her sister Jane; she is not concerned with "blemishing the delicacy of her sex." When Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth she rejects his offer, despite her mother's wishes. Collins then accuses Elizabeth of rejecting his offer out of proper decorum. Elizabeth pleads with Collins "Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from the heart." Elizabeth is constantly defying femininity. Elizabeth embodies Mary Wollstencraft's feminist ideals.

The genesis of the Russian radical movement is portrayed in Ivan Turgenev's classic novel Fathers and Sons as a shock which resonated throughout the Russian public sphere, effecting change within both families and society. Indeed, historian Daniel Brower argues in {\em Training the Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia} that the radical movement changed not only the lives of the university students who were recruited, but also the society around them, by creating a legitimized niche for such counter-cultural activity. He claims further that most recruits for the movement entered not for intellectual reasons, but because of the recruitment process, which proved crucial to the movement's later success:

Though ideological questions. . . appeared the major concern of radical journalists whose articles and books set the intellectual tone for the movement. . . much of the writing of the radical journalists was far above the heads of potential recruits. . . Rational analysis was not by itself adequate to generate large-scale, collective recruitment of radicals. Family, peers, church, and state all combined to discourage collective resistance. . . Some of the radicals did follow an individual, intellectual path to dissent. But the evidence suggests strongly that only the institutional force of the school of dissent made possible massive recruitment into the radical movement during the 1860's and 1870's. (Brower 18--19)
Join now!


As a realist novel, Fathers and Sons tries to portray details of its historical milieu, particularly forbidden aspects of life, supposedly without bias. Thus, we might indeed expect Turgenev's portrayal of Bazarov to coincide somewhat with a historian's view of a typical radical.

Although three of the four young characters in Fathers and Sons seem to conform with Brower's description, the character of Bazarov seems to be superficially quite different from the others. Despite appearing to be completely intellectualized and unaware of social pressures, Bazarov is often subject to social influence, and cares how he is ...

This is a preview of the whole essay