Love And Love In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice
In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, behind the love affairs of the five Bennet sisters, Jane Austen depicted the rigidity of the English society of the end of 18th century, beginning of the 19th century. She raises the problems in which are confronted the women of the gentry, social security and status. It is a very codified, very distinguished society but where the human sins, the stupidity, the greed, the envy are developed as well as somewhere else. Elisabeth, Lizzy for her family and main character refuse two weeding offers, which nevertheless would assure her material future and rank in the society because she expects from it a “true and robust happiness”.
Love can convey optimistic or pessimistic visions of happiness, but can also be translated as an engaged vision or an against moral and political order because love is often lived in a feeling of gap with the rest of the society. It is necessary to go back to the older literature, the philosophic literature to define the meaning of love otherwise than has through the society. Symposium by Plato stages several sensible characters that give their vision of love, its nature and its definition. Eros, Philia and Agape, the three words in Greeks who means love will be the main subjects. The characters are going to develop very different approaches. We shall quote only some of