Pride and Prejudice

In her essay Jane Austen and John Keats: Negative capability, Romance and Reality, Beth Lau connects the two writers previously not commonly associated. Most comparisons of Austen and Romantic poets are with Wordsworth and Byron, as it is known she read their works. Alas, even without her reading works of John Keats, parallels between ideas in their works can be made (Lau, 2006). The fact remains that concepts of Romantic period, canon and ideology are based on the assumption of shared…

In the novel Great Expectations the author presents many different forms of love and different approaches to love through various characters such as Estella who communicates distant love to Pip, Miss Havisham who displays selfish love and as well as Pip who learns what love is and how to love throughout the novel. Great Expectations reveals a sort of coincidental relationship. Characters relations and behaviour link from one character to another for example, Estella’s withheld love is a result…

Watson 1 Jane Eyre Literary Analysis Nautica Watson Ms.Lovin AP Literature 02/08/18 SOCIAL CLASS STATUS IN JANE EYRE Charlotte Bronte's novel by the name Jane Eyre is set in Victorian England, a place that social class played a huge factor in life as well as in society. Therefore, the novel plays a critical role in exploring the Victorian England strict hierarchy. Of importance, is that through Jane the main protagonist in the novel, Charlotte attempts to show that social class relationships…

In Erin McCahan’s book Love and Other Foreign Words, sixteen year old, gifted Josie tells about her trials in trying to understand love and it’s nature in all relationships. Josie’s sudden urge to comprehend being in love was triggered whenever her older sister Kate gets engaged to the intolerable Geoff. She automatically could not stand him because he was just as witty as she was. In attempt to start to understand love, Josie agreed to go to Prom with her former friend Stephan Knot which ended…

Gender is a socially constructed term which could be defined as attitudes, feelings, and behaviors that a given culture associates with a person’s biological sex. Based on The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde that is set in late 19th century, the Victorian era. In the 19th century, men are supposed to be more dominant than women. Wilde’s purpose of this play is to criticise the hypocritical society and hence, gender reversals is observed in this play. Gender reversal can be seen in…

A Long time ago in India, women were criticized and stereotyped for their femininity, in particular how they react in a crisis. In “The Dinner Party” by Mona Gardner, women are falsely accused of being weak during a crisis. “The Dinner Party” is set in India, where there is a huge dinner party going on. The colonel makes a false accusation that during a crisis, women usually scream and have less self control than men do. However, the hostess of the party proves him wrong. There is a cobra in…

In George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, he highlights the issue of language in relation to class structure. Borrowing ideas from the Greek myth Pygmalion, Shaw creates character Henry Higgins, a phonetician, who tries to transform the flower-selling, cockney Eliza Doolittle into a lady. While exploring the idea of creation between Higgins and Doolittle, Shaw chooses to focus on their social dimensionality. While Eliza is trained to speak and act like a lady, she does not gain the proper instincts in…

In Stephen Tanner’s The Art of Self-Deprecation in American Literary Humor, he explains self-deprecating humor as a means for the reader to understand the writer on a relatable level. He writes, “The reader, instead of feeling superior to the character, sympathizes with him or her and feels, ‘Here’s a person who suffers much the same frustrations I do…’” (55). In Fey’s case, she uses herself as the character and explains to her reader, females in particular, how she is different from the…

Sex and Economics The third and final rubric I devised for the remaining two texts of the course is regarding sex and economics in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad. These two texts are very deeply rooted in sex and the economics of marriage. Woolf presents yet another willful, married woman. Yet Mrs. Dalloway seemingly trapped in a conventional and boring marriage with a conventional man, appears to be fairly content with her decision. The debate of marriage…

The Evolution of Elizabeth Elizabeth Bennet There is a complex and intricate weaving of gender, classism, and societal ideology of the institution of marriage in Elizabeth Bennet’s era of time was intricately built upon the foundations of patriarchy, social class restrictions, and female subjugation. All of these finely defined constructs formed a cohesive bond within this interestingly and distinct tapestry within the framework of patriarchal dominance, female submission, and playing the game…