Special education of uzbekistan karshi state university the faculty of roman-german philology

Chapter II. Analysis of “Pride and Prejudice”, a remarkable
novel of Jane Austen.

This chapter is dedicated to the literary analyses of artistic qualities of the novel Pride and Prejudice taking into account critical opinions of distinguished literary critics.

One of the world's most popular novels, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has delighted readers since its publication with the story of the witty Elizabeth Bennet and her relationship with the aristocrat Fitzwilliam Darcy. Similiar to Austen's other works, Pride and Prejudice is a humorous portrayal of the social atmosphere of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, and it is principally concerned with courtship rituals of the English gentry. The novel is much more than a comedic love story, however; through Austen's subtle and ironic style, it addresses economic, political, feminist, sociological, and philosophical themes, inspiring a great deal of diverse critical commentary on the meaning of the work.


2.1.Background of the novel.

There is a saying that literature somehow aims at studying society. Literature gives a faithful representation of life and thought of mankind. What’s more, each work of literature has its own theme, emblem and fascination, which brings the readers endless after taste and consideration, so is Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Austen began writing the novel in 1796 at the age of twenty-one but the publishing company refused to even consider it. Between 1810 and 1812 Pride and Prejudice was rewritten for publication. Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, is Austen’s earliest work; and in some sense also one of her most mature works. While the original ideas of the novel come from a girl of 21, and final version has the literary and thematic maturity of a thirty-five year old woman who has spent years painstakingly drafting and revising. From 21 years old to 35 girl of 21, and final version has the literary and thematic maturity of a thirty-five year old woman who has spent years painstakingly drafting and revising. From 21 years old to 35 years old, Austen didn’t find her ideal man during these past years. As a 35 years old woman, her understanding of life and marriage must be much more profound than a 21 years old girl. She knew how hard the life was. But she still insisted on her views. She didn’t comprise to reality. She would rather prefer to live alone than get married without love.
Similar to other Austen novels, this is written in gentle or Horacian satire. The main object of Austen’s satire in the novel is the mercenary and the ignorance of the people, a common criticism of the 18th century. Characters in the novel which best carries these qualities are:
Pride and Prejudice is deeply realistic image of characters and customs of an English society. Austen says about serious things in such a comic way that this novel is read as the wittiest comedy in the best traditions of a rich dramaturgic culture of England. Elizabeth Bennet is the heroine of Pride and Prejudice.
The story follows the main character, Elizabeth Bennet, as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education and marriage in the society of
the landed gentry of early 19^th century England. Elizabeth is the main
heroine in the novel. She is the second of five daughters of a country
gentleman, living near the fictional town of Meryton in Hertfordshire,
near London. Though the book’s setting is a uniquely turn of the 19 century, it remains a fascination of modem readership, continuing to remain at the top of lists titled “most loved books all the time”, and receiving considerable attention from literary critics.
In Pride and Prejudice, the characters have conversations with each other, about trivial and not-so-trivial matters and it might be accurate to say, also, that the book’s narrator is having a conversation with us: the readers. Austen’s novels are fascinating examples of the use of romance and comedy, satire and sentimentality, fairy tale and realism.
In literature, novelists tend to use dialogue as one of several techniques with which to express a character’s outlook on the world and to show us how they are thinking and how they are feeling. Jane Austen’s use of dialogue has long been regarded as one of her most significant creative achievements and Pride and Prejudiceis a striking example of how she uses conversations to show the ways in which her characters are behaving. The conversations we read communicate that a character might be feeling optimistic, or perhaps rather sad and concerned. Austen even uses conversation to show how we can be both selfish and generous in how we speak with each other. The conversations in Pride and Prejudice illustrate the themes of the novel and also give us an impression of how people would have spoken to each other two hundred years ago. Some of the ways in which people spoke then might be quite different to how we speak English today; but, in other ways, we might be able to identify many similarities.
Whilst Pride and Prejudice is a novel that ends happily, this conclusion is only arrived at after a series of more difficult situations have developed. In this way, the novel is believable and ‘true to life’ and the importance of conversations is key to this quality.

To some extent, she is the spokesman of the author. Elizabeth is born in a common middle class without plenty dowry, so it is difficult for her to marry a gentleman in Austen’s time. However, she gets very good education as a daughter of a gentleman. Reading widens her knowledge and sharpens her perception. Her easy, unaffected personality and lively talent cast a light on the arrogant and wealthy upper-class young gentleman—Darcy. The novel begins with a series of misunderstandings between Darcy and Elizabeth and ends with Darcy and Elizabeth’s true love. Darcy and Elizabeth’s marriage presents us the power of true love, which overcomes class boundaries and prejudices. The emphasis of this novel lies in the perfect marriage that is arrived at the combination of physical life and mental life.

Not surprisingly, Austen has achieved the greatest subtlety of psychological drawing of character of the second row. It shows all complexity of their contradictory feelings, their regard, pride and weaknesses. They are alive people who are capable of a big feeling. Austen at times admires Darcy - his mind, strength of mind, ability to love, but it does not prevent her to show convincingly how strongly he is brought up in environment prejudice, self-confidence and pride. More close to the writer is Elizabeth, undoubtedly, one of her favorite heroines. Elizabeth is in judiciousness, but later she understands how frequent she is inclined to be mistaken, as it is difficult to break her pride counteracting her love to Darcy and correct understanding of his acts.
The novel is very rich in irony. It paints dialogues, defines the latent sense of the remarks thrown on the move, and prompts estimations of acts, the relation of the writer to people. So, nonsense of Mrs. Bennet becomes already obviously from the first pages of the novel in one short dialogue of the respectable lady with the spouse. She is the embodiment of the second part of the rule. Her marriage is based on the principal of financial gain, and she desires her daughters to be the same. She was able to attract Mr. Bennet, a seemingly sensible and self-controlling man, by keeping her mouth shut and smiling a lot. Basically stated, she entered their marriage under false pretences. She had no real love for him only a desire for financial gain. Every action taken by her in the novel is directly intended to underline her daughters’ marriage, guiding them toward financial gain.
Crafty enough irony of Austen becomes aggravated, when speech comes not about the fools, similar to Mrs. Bennet and to spouses of Lucas, and about the fools, causing her indignation or dislike.
As the novel opens, Mr. Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman, rents a country estate near the Bennets called Netherfield. He arrives in town accompanied by his fashionable sisters and his good friend, Mr Darcy. Bingley and Jane Bennet begin to grow close despite Mrs Bennet’s embarrassing interference and the opposition of Bingley’s sisters, who consider Jane socially inferior.³ Elizabeth is stung by Darcy’s haughty rejection of her at a local dance and decides to match his coldness with her own wit. As the same time Elizabeth begins a friendship with Mr. Wickham, a military officer who is a prior acquaintance with Darcy. Wickham tells her that he has been seriously mistreated by Darcy. Elizabeth immediately seizes upon this information as another reason to hate Darcy. Ironically, but unknown to her, Darcy finds himself gradually drawn to Elizabeth.
Mr Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features within five minutes after his entrance, and everybody was interested in his having ten thousand a year. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come to Netherfield again. At his own ball he offended two of three young ladies, by not asking them to dance; and Elizabeth spoke to him twice herself without receiving an answer.
When Mr Bingley introduced Elizabeth to him as a suitable partner for him at the ball, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth and coldly said “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I’m in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men ”.
This is one of the bad impressions of Elizabeth about Darcy’s prudence. When Miss Lucas said that Mr Darcy had a right to be proud because of his family fortune and everything in his favors, Elizabeth replied ‘7 could easily forgive his pride, if he hadn’t mortified mine ”.
Here we can also see that Elizabeth is very clever and a broad-minded girl than other girls. All the adult girls in the town think only about how to find a rich husband and get married as quickly as possible. Women had a difficult role in society; they were almost totally dependent on men. Women could not honorably work, except perhaps as governesses, tutors, and writers. As we see in Pride and Prejudice, women could not inherit property either. For financial security, the only option was to marry, and to marry well. In fact, this expectation is addressed in the famous opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife." Austen is speaking ironically, of course. What she is saying is that a woman must be in want of a single man with a good fortune.
Moreover, mothers are also not out of this subject, one of them is Elizabeth’s mother Mrs Bennet. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. The business of her life was to get her daughters married.
Jane Austen was among the first English woman to break the male monopoly of novel writing. Austen’s works always focus on the everyday life rather than the important historical or political subjects. This might be called the limitation of Austen. In fact, in a broader sense, the big social problems can be perceived through the description of the daily life in the small town—a very narrow world. It is just from these unimportant domestic affairs of countryside that the social relations and class conditions of England at that time could be reflected. As readers of today, her novels remain fresh, providing not only an enjoyable sight but an opportunity to examine human nature in a different historical setting. Thus, Jane Austen has enjoyed steadily growing popularity, especially in the 20th century, and she has sometimes been ranked among the truly great English novelists by critics and literary historians.
Social Background. Jane Austen lived in the first decades of the nineteenth century, generally known as the Regency period in England. The society was highly stratified. In this period, social position tended to be established in terms of families, not individuals. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat were arising after Industry Revolution. In rural area, the nobility still possessed power and the squires still behaved submissively. With the development of capitalism, social stratums were subdivided delicately. Meanwhile, the concept of value had been converted yet that money became more and more important. In a word, at that time, the value of people counted on the possession of a fortune.
England always praises itself as a country of ladies, but in fact women were discriminated in Austen’s time. If a woman from the gentry didn’t marry and had no family members who could take her in and provide for her, often the only somewhat respectable alternative was to become a governess or a teacher in a school. Even those positions, however, lowered her social status, making it almost impossible for her to attract a husband who could provide for her adequately. To make matters worse, the income she could earn through such means was, in most cases, barely enough for survival. Thus marriage to an economically respectable man was considered to be the only legitimate choice for most women of gentry or the aristocracy. It was a tradition that men inherited all fortune. Therefore, women had to obey and gain their life necessities through an adequate marriage.
Obviously, this concept has a deep influence on Austen. The intended marriage mentioned in the novel mainly concerns financial conditions and subsistence rather than love and appreciation. This also explains why Austen creates her ideal man to be a single man in possession of a good fortune.