Pride and Prejudice

"I am amusing myself with Miss Austen's novels, She has great power and discrimination in delineating common-place people; and her writings are a capital picture of real life, with all the little wheels and machinery laid bare like a patent clock"

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet and educator: journal entry, May 1839.

Using a novel as a "primary source" can end up being a really effective way of learning about social history. Such is the case of "Pride and Prejudice", a novel written by British author Jane Austen and published in 1813.

The story depicts what happens to Elizabeth Bennet, a clearly ahead-of-her-time character who finds herself struggling against British society's views of propriety, marriage, decorum, women's role, morality, justice, and family breeding. On the way, and against all odds, she happens to find love in the unconventional Mr Darcy. 

Even though the story's historical context portrays the societal and cultural features of mid-19th century England, it still mirrors current conflicts and issues of today's society. It has been adapted to films, TV series and re-tellings of the most interesting kind as presented in the following clips:

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)

Lost in Austen (TV series 2008)

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ‎(Novel - 2009)‎

TASK 1: Based on the clips above, answer the following questions:

1. Why do you think "Pride and Prejudice" continues to be a referent for modern tales? 

2. What do you think is the effect that these different authors (film directors, producers, modern writers) want to achieve in today's audiences?

3. If you had to choose one of the previous versions to analyse, which would be the one and why?

Review of important terms

Class: David Cody provides a basic definition of class on The Victorian Web, an EDSITEment-reviewed website. He explains:

Class is a complex term, in use since the late eighteenth century, and employed in many different ways. In our context, classes are the more or less distinct social groupings which at any given historical period, taken as a whole, constituted British Society. Different social classes can be (and were by the classes themselves) distinguished by inequalities in such areas as power, authority, wealth, working and living conditions, life-styles, life-span, education, religion, and culture.

Gentleman: Cody again provides a helpful description on The Victorian Web, an EDSITEment-reviewed website. He states:

Members of the British aristocracy were gentlemen by right of birth (although it was also emphasized, paradoxically enough, that birth alone could not make a man a gentleman), while the new industrial and mercantile elites, in the face of opposition from the aristocracy, inevitably attempted to have themselves designated as gentlemen as a natural consequence of their growing wealth and influence. Other Victorians [as well as those who lived earlier in the nineteenth century]—clergy belonging to the Church of England, army officers, members of Parliament—were recognized as gentlemen by virtue of their occupations, while members of numerous other eminently respectable professions—engineers, for example—were not.

<http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/jane-austens-pride-and-prejudice-novel-historical-source#section-16101>

TASK 2: CC pp. 287, 288 "Jane Austen and women's emancipation"

Glossary

• self-indulgence: To pity oneself
• youth: state in life when one's considered young
• whilst: while
• excursive: tending to avoid the main subject
• envisage: view
• reverberate: replicate
• stifling: suffocating
• unscrupulous: absent of values or moral norms

TASK 3: CC pp. 289, 290