The concept of gender helps to understand that the inequality between sexes is not the result of biological difference but is socially produced and examines the various way in which women suffers systematic social injustice. Pride and prejudice can be read as a novel written in a style very different from that of the sentimental genre and containing a fine understanding of feminine identity, romantic desires and gender relations as shaped by social context. The famous opening sentences of Pride and Prejudice is often quoted as a brilliant example of Austen's ironic style: 'it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in a possession of good fortune must be in a want of a wife'. The consciousness of the narrator obviously does not
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By Anne Thackeray Ritchie
NOTWITHSTANDING a certain reticence and self control which seems to belong to their age, and with all their quaint dresses, and ceremonies, and manners, the ladies and gentlemen in "Pride and Prejudice" and its companion novels seem like living people out of our own acquaintance transported bodily into a bygone age, represented in the half dozen books that contain Jane Austen's works. Dear books! bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting.
She has a gift of telling a story in a way that has never been surpassed. She rules her places, times, characters, and marshals them with unerring precision. Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and naturally in her mind that, in describing imaginary scenes, we seem not only to read them but to live them, to see the people coming and going the gentlemen courteous and in top boots, the ladies demure and piquant; we can almost hear them talking to one another. …show more content…
She paints in glowing language the scenery of Lyme. She speaks almost with rapture of a view which she calls thoroughly English, though never having been out of England she could hardly judge of its scenery by contrast. She was deeply impressed by the sea, on which, she says, "all must linger and gaze, on their first return to it, who ever deserves to look on it at all." But admiration of the picturesque had "become a mere jargon," from which Jane Austen recoiled. One of her characters is made to say that he likes a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles; that he prefers tall and flourishing trees to those which are crooked and blasted; neat to ruined cottages, snug farmhouses to watchtowers, and a troop of tidy, happy villagers to the finest banditti in the
By Anne Thackeray Ritchie
NOTWITHSTANDING a certain reticence and self control which seems to belong to their age, and with all their quaint dresses, and ceremonies, and manners, the ladies and gentlemen in "Pride and Prejudice" and its companion novels seem like living people out of our own acquaintance transported bodily into a bygone age, represented in the half dozen books that contain Jane Austen's works. Dear books! bright, sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting.
She has a gift of telling a story in a way that has never been surpassed. She rules her places, times, characters, and marshals them with unerring precision. Her machinery is simple but complete; events group themselves so vividly and naturally in her mind that, in describing imaginary scenes, we seem not only to read them but to live them, to see the people coming and going the gentlemen courteous and in top boots, the ladies demure and piquant; we can almost hear them talking to one another. …show more content…
She paints in glowing language the scenery of Lyme. She speaks almost with rapture of a view which she calls thoroughly English, though never having been out of England she could hardly judge of its scenery by contrast. She was deeply impressed by the sea, on which, she says, "all must linger and gaze, on their first return to it, who ever deserves to look on it at all." But admiration of the picturesque had "become a mere jargon," from which Jane Austen recoiled. One of her characters is made to say that he likes a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles; that he prefers tall and flourishing trees to those which are crooked and blasted; neat to ruined cottages, snug farmhouses to watchtowers, and a troop of tidy, happy villagers to the finest banditti in the