Ans:
When Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in
1813, people were still getting used to the idea that women would do something
so totally immodest and exhibitionist as to actually have strangers reading
something she wrote for money. Oh, how shocking and taboo! Just one step away
from prostitution! (We're not even joking about that.) Because of all that, the
novel came out anonymously, as had her book Sense and Sensibility only a year
earlier. We can imagine how those people
would feel about sex bloggers.
Not only was it a big deal for women to be authors,
but it was also kind of a foregone conclusion that everyone would think that
their novels were automatically kind of silly and chick-lit —you know, not like
man-novels, what with their deep thoughts and serious subjects. Especially when
your novel, like Austen's, was essentially about marrying off a bunch of
sisters. Austen made fun of those expectations in a letter she wrote to her
sister:
{“Pride and Prejudice” is rather too light &
bright & sparkling; —it wants shade; —it wants to be stretched out here
& there with a long Chapter […] about something unconnected with the story;
an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Bonaparte
—or anything that would form a contrast & bring the reader with increased
delight to the playfulness & Epigrammatism of the general stile. (Letter to
Cassandra Austen, February 4, 1813)}
How do we know she's kidding around? Well, we could
just imagine: we're flipping pages frantically during Mr. Darcy's proposal,
trying to find out what Elizabeth Bennet says, and all of a sudden the narrator
starts in on a long essay about contemporary literature. It kind of ruins the
mood, right? But that's exactly what most people expected from books—a little
non-fiction mixed in with your fiction, just enough so you can say, "Yeah,
I know, it's a novel—but I'm reading it for the articles."
In reality, the novel deals with plenty of its own
deep thoughts and serious subjects. At the turn of the century, the old debate
between rationality and emotions was heating up again. The 18th century had
been the Age of Enlightenment, with Voltaire and David Hume and Adam Smith
making sense of life in a super-scientific, man-centered, non-religious way.
These Enlightenment ideas about the rights of men and the value of individuals
got a bunch of people fired up in the American colonies, and pretty soon they
were doing it up democracy-style across the Atlantic. And just across the
English Channel? The French Revolution led to an overthrow of the entire
monarchy. Kings all over Europe were making sure their heads were still
attached to their necks.
Austen was no dummy, and it's no coincidence that
characters spend a lot of time debating whether they're supposed to be making
decisions based on reason and rationality or feelings and impressions. These
were high-stakes questions for individuals as well as nations—particularly
educated women, who suddenly looked around and said, "Hey, how come we
don't get to own property? How come earning our own money is somehow
disreputable? How come we have no rights or political power? How come we're
supposed to be all quiet and not talk or think, even though we have
brains?" Ugh, parents are so embarrassing for these reasons.
Well, yeah. And they have been for at least two
hundred years. Pride and Prejudice matters because, unlike a lot (okay, most)
of novels published around the turn of the nineteenth century, it's about
everyday people doing everyday things in everyday places. Like being humiliated
by their parents, or having a hard time telling their crush how they feel, or
finding themselves attracted to someone who's kind of embarrassing. Elizabeth
Bennet thinks so, too.
Sure, Pride and Prejudice is full of $10 words and
long sentences. But it's about real women living lives just (okay, almost) like
this time—because Jane Austen just about invented English-language novels.
Sure, there was prose fiction before Austen, but it
was mostly wild and crazy —people going on strange voyages, having lots of
unbelievable and interminable adventures, and doing outrageous and totally
impossible things which are adventures like Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's
Travels, and trashy Gothic novels, the 18th-century equivalent of Twilight.
Austen was pretty much the first writer to say, “Hey,
you know what else is interesting? Our actual, universal, lived experiences,
how people interact with one another, and how relationships happen or don't.”
In other words, pretty much everything that isn't about vampires or zombies or
desert islands comes straight from her. And that's worth caring about.
Jane Austen is pretty much disgusted by the women of
that time. She bloom these characters sarcastically. Like they don’t have much
to do rather than collecting good husbands. But they don’t think that, actually
what will get them good husbands. And what it is we readers! It’s definitely
qualities. It’s also like succesess. If we have good qualities, if we have
skills to trade, we will succeed anyway. But without them no one is even a
thing. Which is called in Bengali “opodartho”.
The women have really something to do. They don’t
have to do only household works. Apart from household works they must have to
read and write. Because without knowledge any man can harm them including their
Goddot Husband. Austen is so unsympathetic about this matter. She wants to
teach us about how should the women do their work by drawing Lizzy. Her wit,
her beauty, her special observation power all is need for survival of a women. But
on the other hand, greater part of women are like foolish. And one thing they
only focus on is a good husband with wealth. Which is pretty much gross.
However, Austen pretty much sympathetic for that
they really need a husband to survive in this society. To protect them, to care
them, to help them in their serious condition. Even it doesn’t matter how much
a women strong is, all they want to be mother inside themselves. So, it also
make them cozy for a hubby.
Pride and Prejudice may not be a dissertation about
political independence or the relative merits of passion and reason—but it's
definitely a reflection on what those ideas might mean for women's lives.
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