Context-Pride and prejudice
Discuss what comment Jane Austen is making about her society’s attitudes towards women and marriage through a variety of characters.
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 in Stevenson, Hampshire. The daughter of a clergyman, she was the seventh of eight children. Her formal education ended when she was just 11 years old, but her father, rather like Mr Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, had a good library and Jane used it well. Even as a teenager, her writing was lively and humorous. Although Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, she'd written an earlier version many years before – it was refused by a London publisher in 1797.While Austen wrote a great deal about marriage, she never married or had children herself, although she used to love spending time with her many nieces and nephews. She died on 18 July 1817.Jane Austen writes many things in relation to the status of women and how important marriage was to them in regency England. This essay will discuss how Jane Austen relates the importance of marriage and the status of women through her novel: Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen uses both Lydia and Elizabeth to tell readers a lot about the importance of marriage, and the advancement it could have brought to the status of a woman in her time. 'Lord, how I should like to be married before any of you; and then I would chaperone you about to all the balls' (In this time, an unmarried woman needed a married woman, known as a chaperon, to escort her to a ball). Marriage was the only way...
