Pride and Prejudice Reminders

Vol 1 (Ch 1-23) due 12/2 with a reading check (2F)

Reading Checks•Note the location of each family and what

happens where.

•There will be quote identification: note the way in which the characters speak. Knowing their personalities helps identify their quotes.

•Multiple choice and matching

Helpful websiteshttp://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppdrmtis.htmlhttp://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppjalmap.html

Google search, and find the Pemberley websites. These are the most useful.

Free audio: Librivox.org→ search for Pride and Prejudice… listen to version 6 (dramatic reading)

If you download the app, you can speed up the reading!

Helpful chart while reading

Character (list as many as you find)

Family name Home and its location

Characterized as… Social status and attitude towards it

Elizabeth Bennet Longbourn, near Meryton, Hertfordshire

Witty, bold, beautiful

Middle class, content

Mrs. Bennet

etc.

Free Indirect DiscourseIn the dialogue in this initial chapter and frequently throughout the novel, attributions such as "he said" or "she said" are omitted ([3]). In a letter to her sister, Cassandra, dated January 29, 1813, Jane Austen admits that "a 'said he' or a 'said she' would sometimes make the Dialogue more immediately clear—but I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves" (Letters, 202). She expects her readers to display high intelligence and assumes that she is not writing for a stupid or dim-witted audience.

Pride and Prejudice Introductory Lecture

Topics of Discussion:

1. Jane Austen

2. Regency Period England

3. England’s Social Class Structure

4. Women, Patriarchy, and Property Rights

5 Themes

6. Literary and Narrative Techniques

Jane Austen (1775-1817)• One of the most remarkable characteristics of the closing decades of the eighteenth

century was the rapid change of literary taste.

• The brutality of Swift had become disgusting to the new generation

• Jane Austen ranks as a supreme mistress of comedy.

• She is so impersonal in her attitude that one may seek in vain for any trace of her own opinions or thoughts in her writings.

• It is not her fault that romance, sentiment, and large passions are not found in her pages; they were not found in the world she knew.

• She has the clearest eyes to ever detect the foibles of human character. The very limitation of her range of vision explains its intensity.

• She has a hatred of shams, and she uses a quick irony that pierces and exposes them.

• While other writers like William Makepeace Thackeray are really angry with snobs, Jane Austen is too conscious of their absurdities to be irritated by them.

• A woman who carefully concealed the fact that she was a writer would not be likely to uncover the depths of her heart even in her books.

• On her deathbed an attendant asked her if she wanted anything. Her reply and her last words were, “Nothing but death.”

Regency Period•Technically 1811-1820 , during the illness of King George III, when his son held the Regency (Prince Regent)

•The cultural period of influence spanned from the French revolution to the end of George IV’s reign (1790-1830)

England’s Social Class Structure•The Rise of the Middle Class

•The Industrial Revolution (1750-1830)

•The Aristocracy vs The Landed Gentry

Women, Patriarchy, and Property Rights

• Inheritance of Property

•Entailments

•Additional Legal Rights (or lack thereof)

This information can be found in full in “The Economics of Jane Austen’s World” by Katherine Toran

http://www.jasna.org/publications/persuasions-online/vol36no1/toran/

Thematic Concepts of Pride and Prejudice

• Social Class and the Lack of Class Mobility

•Marriage and Family

•Propriety, Social Decorum, and Reputation

•Pride and Prejudice• Initial novel title: First Impressions

The First Sentence“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man

in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

This modest-looking statement sums up the chief conflict in the novel:1. A convention of love – Man pursues woman2. Savage economic reality – Insolvent women

must run down male “property.”

Literary and Narrative Techniques• Irony (Situational, Verbal, and Dramatic)

• Satire• Pay close attention to the characters of Mrs.

Bennet and Mr. Collins. Why do we find them so hilarious?

• Free Indirect Discourse

•Comedy of Manners

Listen and annotate•How might we characterize each person?

•What evidence reveals the Bennets’ economic status?

•What are the attitudes towards courtship and marriage?

•What are the evident rules of social decorum?

•What is the tone of the narration? Does it ever seem to change from one character’s opinion to another?