Theme Of Moralism In Pride And Prejudice

Register to read the introduction… This is why her characters are moral rather than psychological constructs. Austen's purpose is not to explore their inner lives, but to expose particular moral pathologies to the attention of the reader. Don't act like this: Don't cut off your relatives without a penny after promising your father you would look after them and justify it with self-serving casuistic rationalisations (as John Dashwood does in Sense and Sensibility). Don't be like this: Morally incontinent like Mrs Bennet; or struck through with a single huge flaw, like Mr Bennet's selfish wish to live a private life while being the head of a family (Pride and …show more content…
To show us what true amiability should be, she shows us what it isn't quite. Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, is so excessively amiable as to put her own dignity and interests at risk, so self-effacing that her true love almost doesn't notice her (until events intervene). Mr Bingley's amiability inPride and Prejudice is pitch perfect, but fails to discriminate between the deserving and undeserving. Emma, meanwhile, is very discriminating, but she is a snob about it: she is rather too conscious of her social status and does not actually respect others as she should (which, of course, gets her into …show more content…
We see them learning from their mistakes, as Elizabeth and Darcy both learn from their early mistakes about his character (Pride and Prejudice). We even see them engaging in explicit, almost technical, moral philosophy analysis, such as debating to what extent Frank Churchill should be considered morally responsible for his failure to visit Highbury (Emma), to the evident boredom of the less morally developed characters stuck in the same room as