Discuss the Satire of Pride and Prejudice.

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Cordelia Walsh                English Coursework

01/05/07                Mrs. Burns

Discuss the Satire of Pride and Prejudice.

The explanation of satire in the Oxford English dictionary is “using humour or exaggeration to show what is bad about a person or thing...” In Pride and Prejudice this notion is almost played upon, with Jane Austen using satire throughout the novel in different ways.  It is an entertaining way of subtly “poking fun” at a person, or group of people, which they are perhaps unaware of.

        Pride and Prejudice is a light-hearted novel, which although it picks out particular faults in society which existed then, and as Jane Austen sees them, it is a different type of satire to the type of satire that George Orwell uses in “animal farm”.  Whilst Orwell is poking fun at a political system, Austen is poking fun at the social circles that surround her in everyday life.  In my own personal view, both successfully ridicule the groups that they intend to.  Both authors play on the faults, and enlarge and exaggerate them.

        Although Austen uses satire in her novel, it is concealed to all but the intelligent; who see the real purpose and not just the comical factor of it all.  Austen uses it lightly, and subtly, it is not blatant.  She uses it benignly, and never means to be harsh, and offensive.  She shows what she has observed, and picks people’s traits; it is the people around her who are the inspiration for the characters in her novels.

        Using satire she showed the social snobbery between the classes.  She showed how the wealthy upper class abused their rank and class and considered himself or herself higher than anyone else.  They used people to gain social status in society, and for example, Mr. Collin’s used to name drop to gain respect from others, when frequently it would backfire on him, and the people would either end up laughing at him or disliking him entirely.  Quite often when a person was being rude to them, they would not notice, as it was subtle, this is satire.  It is a way of stirring, but it is only ever-affected people if they could interpret it properly.

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        In the text itself, it is very effective.  On the surface the novel seems like a complicated love-story, but underneath it shows the true traits of society in the time of Jane Austen.  Austen uses characters from the novel to depict the different types of people that there were in those times.

        In the novel there are several characters that are continually made fun of satirically.  The novel starts with a strong statement, “It is truth universally known that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in need of a wife.”  This is as if it ...

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