The Pride and Prejudice Essay Options

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This is my The Pride and Prejudice Essay I did for english... It sucks, so critique away... And no, I didn't check for grammar beyond what word picked up.




During the 18th century, citizens of England submissively take pride in who they are and what they are. In Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, Austen depicts a story the surrounding the Bennet family in this extremely proud society and their interactions with Fitzwilliam Darcy and the caricatures created by Austen. By using Mr. Darcy and caricatures, Jane Austen portrays the pride within the old English society.

Fitzwilliam Darcy, a wealthy gentleman of the Pemberly estate, is first introduced as an arrogant character at the Meryton dance to portray the theme of pride. At the dance, “Mr. Darcy danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Bingley [and] he declined being introduced to any other lady…” (p.7). Even when it is against the etiquette at the times of “Pride and Prejudice” to not dance with others at a party and refuse invitations, Mr. Darcy is still too proud to allow himself to converse and dance with others that he finds unworthy of his attention. He not only dances with a very limited number of women, he also rudely points out that “… there is not another woman in the room who it would not be a punishment to [him] to stand up with.” (p.8). Due to his pride in his own social position, Darcy finds the rest of the women present completely unworthy of dancing with him and if he did dance with them, it would be torture for him. However, that torture soon transforms to love as he begins to become fond of Elizabeth. Elizabeth, on the other hand, does not return this love and rejects his proposal to marriage. After she rejects him at the Collins’s home, Darcy still confesses that he does not “…hope of relations whose conditions in life is so decidedly beneath [his] own…” (p.165). Even when speaking to someone he loves so much, he still keeps his pride in his social position and relates Elizabeth’s family as “beneath” his own. Although Darcy can comprehensively represent pride, Jane Austin also uses caricatures to enhance the theme.

In “Pride and Prejudice”, Jane Austin forms the characters Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine De Bourge into caricatures to further exemplify pride in the old English society. After Mr. Collins confirmed his entailment of the Longbourn estate, he proposes to Elizabeth. Although Elizabeth harshly rejects Mr. Collins after his proposal, he feels that he will “do [himself] the honour of speaking to [Elizabeth] on this subject” again and hopes to “receive a more favourable answer…” (p.94) next time. Mr. Collins feels that he is honoring Elizabeth by proposing to her and Elizabeth needs to change her mind and agree to this “honour”. Even though Mr. Collins is a prime example in of someone who is proud of unworthy ideals, Jane Austen also introduces Lady Catherine. Lady Catherine believes that the way the Bennets live is completely impossible and says that she has “… never heard of such a thing” (p.142) as having no governess for the Longbourn estate. Because of her pride, Lady Catherine is unable to accept the Bennets’ social class and behavior. As the story proceeds, Lady Catherine discovers Darcy’s plan to marry Elizabeth. The extremely proud Lady Catherine feels that if a “… young woman of inferior birth [and] of no importance in the world” (p.305) marries his nephew Darcy, her family would be disgraced. Catherine only wants a woman of her social status to marry Darcy. She is extremely proud of her position in society and if anyone of a lower class came into her family, her pride will be broken.

Jane Austen uses three characters in “Pride and Prejudice” to weave the theme of pride in 16th century England. By writing Mr. Darcy, Lady Catherine, and Mr. Collins as characters proud their social standing, Austen successfully created the sense of pride that surrounds the community of England. Without these characters, the theme of pride would not be complete in “Pride and Prejudice” and the book may know just as Jane Austen’s “Prejudice”.

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I find it amusing that topics with actual sentences (vs poetic sentences) and has more than 15 sentences do not have any replies...

[Heathasm]

hmm, well i read it. It seems rather boring...but you could probably pull a B off of it

[def_gn]

essays are no fun thats why it might seem boring lol