Destiny Hagenow
English 491
4/21/17
Literary Theory/Source Criticism Analysis
Brown, Lloyd W. . "Jane Austen and the Feminist Tradition." University of California Press
28.3 (1973): 321-38. JSTOR. Web. 17 Apr. 2017.
This journal article argues whether or not Austen was a true feminist. The author looks at whether or not Austen’s works can be described as “feminism” or a negativity towards “womanhood.” It discusses that in her culture the assumption was that “ideal’ womanhood means emotional fulfillment through sexual “dependency” and motherhood. Austen loathed the idea of being dependent in love, possibly due to her poor relationship with her mother, and she disliked children, possibly because “envy of the maternal role is to be expected in a childless woman.”
After deciding she’s a feminist, Brown likens Austen to her predecessor Mary Wollstonecraft, arguably one of the first feminist writers. He believes they shared similar themes and “questioned certain masculine assumptions in society.” In Pride & Prejudice, Austen points out the imbalance in the education of women and the relationship between education and marriage. Brown discusses the scene in Pride & Prejudice at Netherfield where the characters discuss “female accomplishment.” The upper class talked of standards for a truly accomplished female, including “a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half-deserved.” Notice that all of these “accomplishments” are purely decorative for the hopes of attracting a man? I didn’t see any knowledge of calculus or economics in there. Elizabeth Bennet laughs at their impossible standards. “I’ve never beheld such a woman.”
Chang, Hui-Chun. "The Impact of the Feminist Heroine: Elizabeth in Pride and
Prejudice." International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature 3.3
(2014): n. pag. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.
This paper examines the feminist significance of Elizabeth Bennet, protagonist of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. According to Chang, the feminist view found in Pride and Prejudice is “well-supported in literary criticism yet little discussion has focused on Elizabeth’s feminism as seen in the prominent contrast to her female foils within the novel, namely Caroline, Jane, and Charlotte.” Each of these women conforms to the gender norms of Regency England, while Elizabeth “artfully challenges gender inequality.” As other women adapt their views to increase their chances of marriage, Elizabeth persistently refuses to submit to society’s norms. In fact, in refusing Mr. Collins’ hand, she risks the chance of never being asked again and dying an old maid, which is social suicide. Defying traditional gender norms, Elizabeth asserts her feminist perspective by helping to shape Mr. Darcy’s moral character to match her own. Elizabeth inspires Mr. Darcy to set aside the pride he has in the higher class in society in order to win her affections and take her hand in marriage. The author pointed out that maybe Elizabeth’s character is not feminist in isolation, but is understood only in contrast to Caroline, Jane, and Charlotte. Chang supports this claim with an in-depth comparison of Elizabeth and each of the female foils.
Daiches, David. "Jane Austen, Karl Marx, and the Aristocratic Dance." The American
Scholar 17.3 (1948): 289-96. JSTOR. Web. 21 Apr. 2017.
I found this article incredibly helpful for my research paper section for Marxist theory in Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. “Everywhere there is decorum, social propriety, gentility maintaining itself against the inroads of vulgar tradespeople, and, winding through the whole, the perpetual quest for eligible marriage. Yet how ruthless is the clarity with which Jane Austen observes and records the economic realities underlying this graceful social dance! In a society where wealth came mostly from landed property, which descended through the male heir, the fate of well-brought-up woman was to find a suitable husband or retire forever into the outer darkness.” Mr. Bennet needed to marry off all his daughters otherwise they would suffer an awful fate of gentility without money, which is an idea that haunts most of Austen’s novels. No one wanted to end up as a shabby old maid.
I always read Pride & Prejudice as an escape novel.Every year at Christmas time, I read it to escape to a different culture and time period where women wore long dresses, read books all day, and attended the town ball at night. However, looking at this novel through the Marxist theory lense has made me realize that this isn’t an escapist novel at all, it’s a incredibly realistic novel from that age. This is funny to me because she was writing Marxist ideas before Marx was even around. As I read the novel, I notice that she points out the time period’s social and economic behavior with an “ironic smile.”
This theory makes me think of Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend Charlotte Lucas. She accepts the hand of someone she loathes, the frustrating and oblivious Mr. Collins, because she knows that if she doesn’t accept this offer then she may never receive another offer of marriage. Charlotte doesn’t want to become an unmoneyed old maid in a gentile society, because it is a fate to tragic for her to even think about.
Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. N.p.: Psychology Press, 2002. Print.
Eagleton argues, “ Marxist criticism is not merely the ‘sociology of literature,’ concerned with how novels get published and whether they mention the working class. Its aim is the explain the literary work more fully; and this means a sensitive attention to its forms, styles, and meanings. But it also means grasping those particular forms, styles, and meanings as the products of a particular history.” I really liked this as a short summary of his ideas when it comes to Marxist criticism, because it made it less surface level studying and more deep, critical thinking. Just because a novel mentions social class does not mean it falls under this theory. It’s about looking deeply into a particular piece of literature by observing everything and looking at the time period and culture of the time. It’s about finding what the author is truly trying to say about social structures.
Wollstonecraft, M. (1792). A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Regarded as the first philosophical feminist work, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women in an effort to explain her beliefs on why men and women should be treated as equals. Wollstonecraft would probably cringe at how some people would define feminism, because Wollstonecraft didn’t believe that women are better than men or call for men to be subservient. She purely called for equality. In fact, she also wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Men. A Vindication of the Rights of Women is a revolutionary work published in 1792, which is less than twenty years after the United States was founded. Because of the time period’s culture, Wollstonecraft was pitting herself against some pretty closed-minded people who really believed that men and women were two different species.
In her writing, Wollstonecraft laid out a public education system that would give girls and boys equal and free education. This is a system that’s around in much of the world today. She also believed that women should be allowed to have careers in politics and medicine and be able to speak their minds without fear of being called “masculine” or undesirable. Wollstonecraft thought that women’s interest in looking pretty and dressing up is mostly from nurture, not nature. She also talked about it being unfair that women are shamed for having sex before marriage but men weren’t. This work is over 200 years old, but some of these issues are still relevant today.
This source would be great to use in my research paper over Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Published in 1813, Pride & Prejudice was published in a time period and culture close to that of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Pride & Prejudice depicts a time where a woman’s reputation was everything. A woman was expected to behave in certain ways and stepping out of line made a woman vulnerable to ostracism. Women were second class to men and could not retain property on their own, which was a major problem for the Bennet family because there were no male heirs for after Mr. Bennet. The daughters needed to marry well in order to take care of their family. Later in the story, one of the younger sisters runs away with a man unattended. Because she is unmarried with little hopes of being married, this situation could soil the reputations of ALL the Bennet sisters and ruin their chances at marrying. This wouldn’t have been as big of a deal if the genders were flipped.
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