Jane Austen’s is an influential, powerful writer and her unique style is one that is recognizable. Her two comedy of manners novels, Pride and Prejudice and Emma, reveal Austen’s personal views and opinions of the mid eighteenth century society while she makes the reader laugh at the witty truths in her writing. The styles of the novels reflect one another through the use of irony, characterization and theme. Jane Austen uses irony to get her point across in a comedic manner. The opening line of Pride and Prejudice starts with a form of verbal irony. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” This in itself is ironic because the novel starts with Mrs. Bennett
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Gender roles are defined in Austen’s writing, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and her sisters have to marry or possibly become cleaning ladies for families. In Emma, Miss Woodhouse can find a husband or live with her father through her adulthood. Unlike today, going to college to get an education and peruse a career is not a priority for a young woman in 19th century England. Austen is not an anti-men novelist but she does want women and men to be seen as equals in society. The two novels show Austen’s opinions and gives perspective to they limited options that women have in this time. The importance of wealth was not just for flaunting purposes. In this time period the rich and poor were very divided without much of a middle class. The Bennett girls feel the pressure to get married or else they could end up in poverty. The matchmaking Emma’s match making strategy is fixed on wealth. Emma pairs people who do not belong simply based on the fact that they man/woman can provide for the other. “It was unsuitable connection, and did not produce much happiness.” Wealth is a huge determining factor on how people make decisions everyday and would risk marrying someone they do not love so they have a financial safety net. Social class holds a high standing in an old English setting. Social class is how others view and classify one another in society in the early 19th century. Jane Austen shows she does not agree of how much social class effects a person. Austen does not bash everyone who is snobby, she lets them progress into people who are genuine and do not care as much about “keeping up with the Joneses”. Mr. Darcy was boastful and egoistic man during most of Pride and Prejudice and he let that side of him go to be with his true love, Elizabeth. Emma was the one who cared about the social classes of individuals more than anyone else in the novel. She
Gender roles are defined in Austen’s writing, in Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth and her sisters have to marry or possibly become cleaning ladies for families. In Emma, Miss Woodhouse can find a husband or live with her father through her adulthood. Unlike today, going to college to get an education and peruse a career is not a priority for a young woman in 19th century England. Austen is not an anti-men novelist but she does want women and men to be seen as equals in society. The two novels show Austen’s opinions and gives perspective to they limited options that women have in this time. The importance of wealth was not just for flaunting purposes. In this time period the rich and poor were very divided without much of a middle class. The Bennett girls feel the pressure to get married or else they could end up in poverty. The matchmaking Emma’s match making strategy is fixed on wealth. Emma pairs people who do not belong simply based on the fact that they man/woman can provide for the other. “It was unsuitable connection, and did not produce much happiness.” Wealth is a huge determining factor on how people make decisions everyday and would risk marrying someone they do not love so they have a financial safety net. Social class holds a high standing in an old English setting. Social class is how others view and classify one another in society in the early 19th century. Jane Austen shows she does not agree of how much social class effects a person. Austen does not bash everyone who is snobby, she lets them progress into people who are genuine and do not care as much about “keeping up with the Joneses”. Mr. Darcy was boastful and egoistic man during most of Pride and Prejudice and he let that side of him go to be with his true love, Elizabeth. Emma was the one who cared about the social classes of individuals more than anyone else in the novel. She