Masaryk University

Faculty of Education

Department of English Language

and Literature

Jane Austen at the Edge of Romanticism and

Victorian Era in Pride and Prejudice
Bachelor Thesis

Brno 2016

Supervisor: Author:
Mgr. Jaroslav Izavčuk Jitka Müllerová
Prohlašuji, že jsem bakalářskou práci na téma „Jane Austen at the Edge of Romanticism and
Victorian Era“ vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných pramenů, dalších
informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty
Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech
souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění
pozdějších předpisů.
Souhlasím, aby práce byla uložena na Masarykově univerzitě v Brně v knihovně Pedagogické
fakulty a zpřístupněna ke studijním účelům.

V Brně dne…………………………..

Podpis……………………………….
Prima facea, I would like to express my deepest and sincere gratitude to my supervisor Mgr. Jaroslav
Izavčuk for the continuous support, immense knowledge and motivation. I would also like to thank my
charming friend Martina for her patience, useful notes and corrections. Finally, I would like to thank
my family and friends for cheering me up and standing by me through the good times and bad. I also
place on record, my sense of gratitude to one and all who, directly or indirectly, have lent their
helping hand in this venture.
Annotation

In my thesis I focus on a well-known novelist Jane Austen and her classification in periods.
The aim of this thesis is to prove, to what extent should she be considered as a writer of
Romanticism or, despite of the time anticoincidence, Victorian Era. By virtue of following
particular elements in her novel Pride and Prejudice, serving me as a support for my research,
and classifying the period, I also establish the aspects of her uniqueness. This thesis is a view
both on the society and literature of the two periods watching the social changes and mapping
the influence of period and life of the author on her literary production. How much is the fact
of Pride and Prejudice being the source of fantasy and the way how to escape the daily
routine or only the amusing description of what the society really looked like is to be
demonstrated too.
Key words
Jane Austen, Victorian Era, Romanticism, uniqueness, Pride and Prejudice, focus, social
position, society, classification, relationships, love, marriage, affection, affairs, romantic,
gender, prejudice, pride, aspects of gender, prejudice of gender, happy marriage, unhappy
marriage, love environment, irony, satire, humour, influence, gender issues, historical
background, fantasy, daydreaming, description, legacy to Victorian literature, legacy, ideals,
errors, standards, novel
Anotace
V mé práci se zaměřuji na známou novelistku Jane Austenovou a její příslušnost v periodách.
Cílem této práce je zjistit, do jaké míry by měla být považována za spisovatelku romantismu
nebo, i přes časový nesoulad, spisovatelku viktoriánské éry. Díky sledování prvků v jejím díle
a zařazení do období určím také aspekty její jedinečnosti. Pro podporu budu využívat novelu
Pýcha a předsudek a zkoumat různé aspekty v práci a určovat jakému žánru odpovídají. Tato
teze je pohledem na společnosti těchto dvou žánrů sledující společenské změny a mapující
vliv doby a života autorky na její dílo.
Klíčová slova
Jane Austen, viktoriánské období, viktoriánská éra, romantismus, jedinečnost, Pýcha a
předsudek, novela, pozice ve společnosti, společnost, vztahy, láska, manželství, aféry,
romantické, genderová problematika, ironie, satira, humor, vliv, pýcha, předsudky vůči
pohlaví, aspekty a role ve společnosti, fantazie, denní snění, dědictví, ideály
 Table of contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 6
1. The two periods ............................................................................................................................... 9
1.1 Romanticism .................................................................................................................................. 9
1.2 Victorian Era ............................................................................................................................... 14
i. Chronological Significance ........................................................................................................ 14
ii. Standards and Attitudes of Victorians ....................................................................................... 15
iii. Ideals and Gender Issues .......................................................................................................... 18
iv. The Capital ............................................................................................................................... 19
v. Victorian Literature ................................................................................................................... 22
2. Austen the Dreamer ....................................................................................................................... 25
3. Austen the Novelist ....................................................................................................................... 28
4. Pride and Prejudice ........................................................................................................................ 33
4.1 Focus and Social Position............................................................................................................ 34
4.2 Affection and Affairs................................................................................................................... 38
4.3 Prejudice and Aspects of Gender ................................................................................................ 45
4.4 Satirical and Humorous Aspects ................................................................................................. 54
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 60
Works Cited........................................................................................................................................... 62
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. 67
Resumé .................................................................................................................................................. 68
Introduction
In my thesis I focus on a well-known novelist Jane Austen and her classification in

periods. The aim of this work is to prove, to what extent should she be considered as a

writer of Romanticism or, despite of the time discrepancy, Victorian Era. By virtue of

following particular elements in her novel Pride and Prejudice, serving me as a support

for my research, and classifying the period, I also establish the aspects of her

uniqueness. This thesis is a view both on the society and literature of the two periods

watching the social changes and mapping the influence of period and life of the author

on her literary production. How much is the fact of Pride and Prejudice being the

source of fantasy and the way how to escape the daily routine or only the amusing

description of what the society really looked like is to be demonstrated too.

My thesis is divided into four parts. The first part is theoretical that is describing

Romanticism and Victorian Era. I closely look into historical context, people’s lives as

well as social situation. I also investigate connections between these three aspects

leading to literature, its’ main function as well as typical features. By discovering and

defining the two periods tentatively, I create a support for my later investigation of the

particular features in the scrutinised novel and following classification.

Continuing with the life of Jane Austen in the second part, I briefly describe her life

story and nature. This chapter will help me further in my thesis as I try to find

connections and similarities between her real life situation and situations she provides in

her novel Pride and Prejudice.

In the third part, Jane Austen’s written discourse is my object of research. A complex

view on her literary production as well as development in writing is discussed. Further, I

investigate the critical approaches towards her writing including the one she wrote

6
herself. At the end of this chapter I use several academic sources that speculate,

alternatively classify Austen into a certain period or a literary movement.

The fourth part of my thesis is investigating the novel Pride and Prejudice and its’

elements by which I try to prove and reveal the classification or legacy to the period.

The first features I discuss in the first subchapter are focus and social position of the

novel. Firstly, I reveal the roots and reasons of the focus. Nevertheless, the reasons of

the ‘background topics’ are to be considered too. As the main focus is connected to

social position, I investigate whether and to what extent it is important to characters and

plot in the story. Finally, I classify the social model in Pride and Prejudice to a certain

period.

In the second subchapter called ‘Affection and Affairs’ I examine love and marriage

and its presence in the novel. At the beginning of this section I talk about how

Romanticism and Victorian Era are connected to the topic, then I try to look critically

into romantic relationships of the characters and reveal the uniqueness of the love

environment Jane Austen had done. The happy and unhappy marriage is discussed with

the examples of couples in the novel.

As the objects of my investigation in the third subchapter ‘Prejudice and Aspects of

Gender’ are especially stereotypes connected to the woman role and its authenticity to

the world of Jane Austen. I compare the male and female’s perception and also their

role in society according to their gender revealing functions of particular characters in

Pride and Prejudice. I also discuss the distinct influence upon the future generation and

classify features of gender issues presented in the story.

The last subchapter in chapter Pride and Prejudice analyses the appearance and

possible roots of irony and uniqueness of such feature in the novel. By using satire and

7
humour Austen creates an incredibly interesting atmosphere leading to errors that are

also investigated in this subchapter.

In my thesis I suggest and discuss the possible unique features of Jane Austen, a

reflection of her legacy in the Victorian literature and leave her at the edge of the two

periods as an unforgettable author inspiring both male and female authors through the

centuries until today, including me.

8
1. The two periods
There are two periods I distinguish in my thesis, Romanticism and Victorian Era. The

aim of this chapter is to define each of the periods with the most important and known

features. From the time definition I establish the period to be connected either with

literature or a particular historical era. Apart from revealing the historical and social

background, the issues of both of the periods are to be analysed. Literary production

with the most significant features in the literature is to be picked together with the most

famous authors and publications. The aim of this chapter is not to ‘connect’ these two

periods, but to find both the similarities and dissimilarities influencing the future

Victorian Era. By defining and investigating particular findings about the period in this

chapter I set the basic support for my later analysis of elements and their classification

in the fourth part of the thesis concerned with the novel Pride and Prejudice.

1.1 Romanticism

In this chapter I collect and investigate the findings about the Romantic period in

order to support and discuss the later topics of Pride and Prejudice in connection to the

period classification, features and other social aspects. The thematic scope I discuss is

aimed on the upcoming subchapters of my thesis. Firstly, the period is to be classified in

the time frame, followed by its historical background. Secondly, the features of

Romanticism in literature are to be connected with the social background and different

issues of the period. Finally, the theoretical basis for my later examination of Pride and

Prejudice is established with the support of Victorian representation of Romantic

writing.

9
 Romanticism is implicitly a literary or artistic movement that is not to be referred to

a certain historical period and was as a matter of fact a term created and used by the

next generations. We have to distinguish between several types of Romanticism that

spread all around the world at different times. According to one type, Jane Austen

belongs to the British Romanticism that according to Burgess has not a proper date of

beginning, but claims the fact that many people connect this movement with the French

Revolution, yet it started in the Age of Reason (165). Nevertheless, Behrendt suggests it

to last in years 1780 to 1835 (3). The time classification is ambiguous as Sanders, on the

other hand, claims it to last from 1780 to 1830 (338). However, Ruston believes “the

exact dating of this period is a matter of some dispute” (2). Consequently, it is obvious

from the possible classifications already mentioned that the Romantic period in Britain

cannot be easily defined, because up to now, there is no proper definition of it.

Generally, the period is influenced by the historical background indicated mostly by

the political situation in Britain, which was changing and becoming worse as the

revolution in France started in 1789. Encouraging the sense of nation at the time of

French Revolution became the pivotal motto of literary and cultural Romanticism as

“the Union Jack flag was first used in 1801 to symbolize this new nation, and

stereotyped character representing the English and the French” (Ruston 5). The

revolution awakened the fear in the House of Commons, which mostly consisted of

middle class and gentry, being afraid of working class and its potential attempt to

imitate the same in Britain and unfortunately something similar to this dread happened,

when the most of radicals started calling for reforms; the British government accepted

on avoiding problems by imprisoning the leadership of radicals, which led to opening

the question of political freedom, criticising the excessively power of the British

monarchy and aristocracy over ordinary people and as the result, though the working

10
class’ demands were not heard, the first working-class political organisation was

established, called the Corresponding Society (McDowall, 125 - 128). Besides the

critical political situation and imminent danger were the living conditions getting worse

for the poor population and often led to the food riots as in England was “the dramatic

rise in population […] more than doubled between 1771 and 1831” (Ruston 16). Not

only due to the war years the national debt grew, even at the start of the period by virtue

of both the war expenses and the rising population number (Ruston 15). Antecedent to

the Great Exhibition in Victorian period, the inventions in areas such as chemistry,

electricity, geology or natural history, as Ruston suggests, were innovations and

advances deciding and directing the Industrial Revolution forward indicating the

greatness of the British Empire (33).

Being influenced by the literature of France and Germany, the Romantic ideas moved

to Britain. As the opposite to the Enlightenment ideas connecting the new industrial

world of technology, Romanticism is mostly connected to poetry. The key document

indicating this movement’s beginning is Wordsworth’s book Lyrical Ballads, indicating

the principles of poetry and where he already required a return to older literary

standards (Burgess 166).

According to Burgess, one of its features is individualism, through which new

standard and own rules are developed, hiding the rebellious under the sign “lawful”

(165). On the other hand, hatred to despotism is emphasised, although most of the

Romantics were radicals according to the historical context as a reaction to Napoleonic

wars and their thirst for revolution was bigger than ever (Barnard 109 – 110). It was

religion that helped the society to retain moral values at the time of revolutions and wars

where ‘God’ was standing for the “’moral truth’ [and] not [for some] ‘mystery or

obscurity’” (Sanders 342). For “the majority of the population in England during this

11
period belonged to the Anglican Church of England, but in the other countries of Britain

there was quite a different picture”, “the Catholic question” arose (Ruston 26 – 27).

Focusing mostly on emotions and instinct, Romantic writers returned back in time to the

Elizabethans, nevertheless we find mystic, exotic and magical features referring to the

new supernatural world created by Romantics (Burgess, 165 – 168). The medieval

topics and the outcast character are cornerstones for Romanticism (Barnard 109). The

two powers worshipped here are nature, emphasized by connecting with the soul, and

love, either happy or unhappy in its very extremes (Burgess, 166 – 171). The love-

affair is “unfulfilled […], but it is ultimately a tragedy without real substance“,

represented mostly by loveless marriage (Sanders 344). Endless is according to Burgess

a search for beauty, being true Romantic (176). As a personalization of Romanticism

and its features is considered Lord Byron (Barnard 108). With John Keats and Percy

Bysshe Shelley they represent Romantic era in poetry. This movement brings attention

to new “forms like travel writing, scientific discourse, sermonic literature, writing for

children, and ‘popular’ forms like Gothic fiction, sensational or sentimental romance

fiction” (Behrendt 3).

The new movement had registered a positive approach toward taboo topics: “Sexual

passion was not eliminated from women’s lives after 1750, but rather the new emphasis

on romance and domesticity encouraged it.” (Heydt-Stevenson 312). Nevertheless, the

position of women is described by Wollstone as “a general enslavement of women by

universally tyrannical men”, indicating the subsidiary and frantic position of women in

the period (Wollstone qtd. in Sanders 345). On the other hand, although being

prominent in all genres, they mostly wrote and read novels as Ruston assumes (4). A

classification into “gender lines” is suggested in order to differ between two types of

Romanticism in Britain; the first one being masculine, that is “concerned with nature

12
rather than society, introspective, and looking beyond the material world to something

transcendent” and the second one being feminine, celebrating “the domestic affections,

family and social bonds” (Ruston 3).

One of its greatest feature, imagination, serves as a source of morality and sympathy

for the individual and as Ruston suggests it “has a social function: it enables us to feel

for one another and as one other” through empathy leading to the ability of

understanding and possible reforming of the contemporary problems in society (107).

On the other hand, the “form of realism” comes when “the heroine or hero must cast off

the illusions and settle for much less” (Beer qtd. in Lau 100).

Victorian representations of Romantic writing kept changing, as the whole literature

movement with its features and writers was shaping, but women were “neglected and

ignored, creating a skewed sense of the texts produced and most appreciated during the

period”, whereas men, especially poets, became valued over women (Ruston 108).

In conclusion, I place British Romanticism timing within 18th and 19th century. In

historical background is this movement connected to bad political situation caused by

running revolution. For people, these times were very desperate and they found comfort

in their religion that stood for a moral truth and also the need for their nationalism grew

with the situation at that time. In literature, the movement was influenced by the French

and German. Among basic features can be included individualism, sensibility,

supernatural, the outcast character, nature and the most significant love; by emphasized

romance and domesticity we find love in extremes, often leading to a love tragedy

interpreted by a loveless marriage. There is a suggestion of Romanticism to be divided

into two gender lines; in masculine overbearing transcendental and in feminine, social

situations. This tentative definition will help me further in my thesis for support and

investigation of the particular elements in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

13
 1.2 Victorian Era

The chapter aims on classifying and defining Victorian Era from both the social and

literary point of view. By discussing the historical background and social sphere,

including contemporary issues, social positions and also the capital London, I move to

literature and find the basic features that will support my claims and help me by

investigating the potential legacy of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice to Victorian

Era later in this thesis.

i. Chronological Significance

Victorian Era is timely limited by the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901 or

otherwise by “the legacy of radical Romanticism and the Industrial Revolution” (Moran

1). Alexander suggests it to last also in the reign of William IV (259). Victorian Era as

well as literature is divided into early, middle and late as it is considered to be a period

“of growing pains, of confidence in the 1850s and a loss of consensus after 1880”

(Alexander 259). At the beginning of Victorian Era “Britain possessed different types of

colonies, including Australia, Canada, British India, Ireland and West Indian colonies”

(Plunkett and Vadillo 233). The Empire was at its height evoking imperialism,

optimism as well as “faith in Britain’s world-leading institutions and ideals, as well as

its industrial and economic strength” (Plunkett and Vadillo 47).

Despite of the seeming perfection and uncontrollable progress in Britain in this period,

there were, as Burgess suggests, “such social and political problems”, because “the

Victorians … [were] obsessed with questions peculiarly their own”, mostly connected to

religion and the growth of population (180). These were times of doubt leading often to

“feverish religious debates” (Plunkett and Vadillo 98). Its biggest reason is Charles

Darwin’s publication The Origin of Species that appeared in 1859, in which he describes

a theory that provoked both the society and the Church (Burgess 180). Rogers believes
14
it to cause “Victorian crisis of faith”, expressed by pulvinated political questions in

philosophy (340). This publication caused the ‘Victorian dilemma’ in religion and was

the reason of possible secularization of population. Religious reforms came yet in 1829

with Roman Catholic Relief Act, being a continuation of discussions in Romanticism

and removing “restrictions upon Catholics holding parliamentary office” (Plunkett and

Vadillo 2). Such a move ensured the position of the Catholic Church and strengthened

the possibility of accepting other religions in future. In politics, the Reform Act in 1832

led to “’democratising’ parliamentary representation” by trying to make the “genuine

representation for the people, less of the corruption and cynicism that animated

politics”, followed also by the Reform Act in 1867 and 1884 (Burgess 180).

The inventions had a crucial role in people’s lives and everyday life; by inventing the

telegraph, the telephone or voice recording, these all producing “invisible and absent”

started to change the thinking and see “the experience of space and time” (Moran 62).

The immense growth of the population and deriving urbanization is unbelievable, in

1800 lived 80 per cent of the population in the countryside, whereas in 1900 lived 80

per cent of the population in the towns and cities (Plunkett and Vadillo 46).

ii. Standards and Attitudes of Victorians

An important part of life in Victorian Era was property. The idea of wealth has

changed, there happened “a perceived shift of influence from traditional structures of

wealth based on the massive fixities of landed property to new ones based on the

liquidities of manufacturing, commerce, speculation, and credit” (Herbert 188).

Friedrich Engels claims, that “the middle classes in England have become the slaves of

the money they worship” (Engels qtd. in Herbert 188). The value of money in society

was exaggerated, became ‘fictitious’ and led to almost considering the money as a

‘sanctity’. Weber says, that everything materialistic becomes “transcendental” with a

15
result of dominating one’s mind and that money-making becomes “the ultimate purpose

of his [one’s] life” (Weber qtd. in Herbert 190). Considering the fact that “material

wealth is spiritual poverty”, leads to the true definition of wealth, thus being a “power

over men” (Ruskin qtd. in Herbert 193). The whole Victorian money-worshiping was

the antithesis to Christianity, which believes in property as a source of good and money

as a source of evil leading to destruction and polluting the good. Materialism gradually

started to control people’s minds being in conflict with the religious faith and leading to

the deformation of social sensation. It is expressed in Disraeli’s Sybil, where he claims

through the young stranger’s character Britain to be not one but two nations – “THE

RICH AND THE POOR.”(Disraeli 76). The difference started to be even more marginal

as middle class’s view on the working class was becoming more and more intolerant

considering them as “anonymous, unknown but powerful and, possibly, sinister…a

source of social contamination, with slum diseases” (Moran 42). Peck and Coyle

suggest the fact that “Victorian society developed an ideology of what was considered

normal and respectable, with people deviating from this shared standard being judged as

aberrant or dangerous” (177). These people ‘deviating’ had their place in society too by

The New Poor Law from 1834 legalizing pauper to workhouses “in order to control an

increasingly complex society” by a “social regulation” (Peck and Coyle 169).

Society in Victorian Era was “a society that simultaneously celebrated and

disappointed itself” (Moran 1). By having both extremes of greatness and poverty at the

same time, people lead different lives according to their social position and possession.

Because of the social situation, social thinkers were extended, among them Carlyle, the

most influential social thinker (Rogers 306). According to Rogers, he described

Victorian society as “the Mechanical Age”, showing us the growing differences

between the rich and the poor in cities, he criticised the outside flourishing of increased

16
national wealth and the result of making everything mechanical and industrial was

reflected into lives of people, applying these qualities into relationships and opinions

(306). People were faced to this fact of social differences and prompted to change it, by

these thoughts to awaken the national spirit he tried to lead people to balance the

desperateness and minimalize the effects of dissimilarity and poverty (Rogers 306). It

was “a new motion of self” that became “a central element in the thinking of the

Victorians and an important constitutive feature of the social formation” (Peck and

Coyle 177).

What Victorians valued most were according to Moran “stability, tradition, authority

and grandeur in public life” (1). Even though Victorian ideals being very high, it is

well-known, that poverty predominated in big cities and was a cause of child labour,

prostitution and very poor living conditions. Nevertheless, it was “the strict morality,

the holiness of family-life, owed a good deal to the example of Queen Victoria herself”

that defines this period (Burgess 181). Plunkett and Vadillo claim a defining feature of

the period to be “the sanctity of marriage and the home, and the role of women as moral

guardians, maintaining the sanctity of the hearth amid the anxious turmoil of modern

public life” (17). Because of the social morality, the biggest ineffable topic in the period

was sex, being “the area most famously tabooed in Victorian discourse” (Herbert 186).

According to Mosher’s survey that was published later in the twentieth century, Dr.

Clelia Duel Mosher “surveyed 45 married women on varied aspects of their intimate

life, including sexual attitudes and behavior” (Seidman 68) with the result of a “little

evidence…of Victorian prudery” (Mosher qtd. in Seidman 68). Seidman claims this

survey to be “a generational shift or the development of a post-Victorian culture that

reconfigured the relation between sex, love and marriage” (72). On the other hand,

Plunket and Vandillo claim the sexuality of female gender to be passive in all sexual

17
activities and having “seldom desired sexual pleasure”; women suspected of being

‘active’, meaning prostitutes, had to undergo “compulsory inspections” legalized by the

Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869 that often led to detentions in lock

hospitals (73).

iii. Ideals and Gender Issues

A woman in Victoria Era had to play two roles: the first one of a loving wife and the

second of a mother, taking care of households; no discussions on her own interests were

led as “a woman’s interests were indistinguishable from the interests of a class equally

invested in redefining property” (Cohen 347). To fulfil the expectations of the class and

agree with the idea of perfect woman, aspects such as profession or self-development

were thrown away at the moment of concluding marriage. Whereas men were the

breadwinners and legalistic owners of the money, women had a role of housewives, not

being able to dispose of their husband’s possession. Burgess claims it to be “an age of

conventional morality, of large families with the father as a godlike head, and the

mother a submissive creature” (181). At the beginning of Victorian Era “women were

defined legally, by the doctrine of coverture, as objects rather than subjects with rights:

a husband owned his wife’s property and was responsible for her actions” (Plunkett and

Vadillo 71). In the background of foundation of feminist organizations stood mainly

“sexual double standards which punished women, but forgave men, for erotic

experience” out of marriage and also the fact that “a married woman had no legal claims

over her arnings or inheritance acquired after marriage” until 1870 (Moran 36). In

addition, women also had to “wait for suffrage until well after the death of Queen

Victoria” (Plunkett and Vadillo 47). There were many impulses in Victorian Era leading

to feminism, the biggest one presumably the impossibility for women to live a life

society desired for, meaning to have a husband and to live through a successful

18
marriage ever after; in the middle of 19th century “42 per cent of women between the

ages of 20 and 40 were unmarried”; this ripped the ideal of a perfect marriage and social

demands apart with women not having the opportunity for realization of such an

expectation or demand (Plunkett and Vadillo 71). Women started to think more

independently as they had no one to care about and for, therefore secondary schools for

girls started to be established and also women began to enter the “traditionally male

professions such as medicine” (Plunkett and Vadillo 71). Gradually with the population

number, the level of literacy grew through the era too (Plunkett and Vadillo 205).

iv. The Capital

London happened to be a centre of the negative impact and clearly mirrored the

contemporary social change. The increased population number caused a problem of

overcrowding, leading to dreadful living conditions, permanent traffic jams and

widespread diseases bringing the cholera epidemics (Wilson 104). Having the social and

health improvement in the foreground, there were no notes about a presence of cholera

and meanwhile hiding this fact from the public, tens of thousands died within 1840s and

1860s ( Wilson 104). Leaving out the reality, that the poor had terrible living

conditions, most of them were living on the streets or slums. A great need for

accommodation and other problems of the poor population started to be solved very

late. The traffic problems were solved by underground railways, through which we can

see a great Victorians’ spirit of desire to improve and to connect the engineering skills

with the mental ones (Wilson 104).

In the capital London in Victorian Era railways played an important role in people’s

lives. As the railway site was permanently extended, the poor were affected with the

progress; these were mostly Irish migrants working and living in very bad conditions,

poorly paid with families forced to living separately in dormitories, while the navvies

19
had to live in lodgings and in 1846 a riot burst out with the result of an absolute fail of

the Metropolitan Police (Wilson 100 - 101). According to Moran, “through railways,

Victorian Britain was transformed into the modern state we recognize today” (64).

The age of inventions and progress was visible in both architecture and appearance in

the capital city. During the reign of Queen Victoria new stock-brick suburbs and Gothic

Houses of Parliament were the results of permanent building. The population number

increased from hardly a million in 1801 to 4.5 million in 1881 (Wilson 100). And

because of the continually raising number of population, the traffic started to be

unbearable in the centre of the city. This caused an “engineering miracle”, the

underground railway, first underground trains were gaslighted, but after few disasters

they were replaced by the tube railway (Wilson 105 – 106). The building-up of public

service buildings came in the second half of the 19th century. The luxury hotels with

electric lights and lifts were very domestic and in demand by both of the families or

travellers. In 1860, the Westminster Palace Hotel in Victoria Street was opened,

offering three hundred bedrooms and fourteen bathrooms, but probably the most famous

and legendary is Savoy Hotel (Wilson 108). Restaurants, such as spectacular Café Royal

in Regent Street or more casual Kettner’s exist up to now (Wilson 109). For permanent

accommodation were built block of mansion flats, in famous streets such as Victorian

Street or Chelsea Embankment (Wilson 110).

From 1st May 1851 to 15th October 1851, London organized The Great Exhibition of

the Works of Industry of All Nations in Crystal Palace that visited more than six million

visitors (Plunkett and Vadillo 34 – 35). For Britain, this was an act of showing the

flourishing country and industry emphasizing the greatness and power of the

imperialistic Empire. Later on, it was technology that “shaped the environment” (Moran

62).

20
 We can consider Londoners living in Victorian times prejudiced as the anti-Semitism

against Jews was visible in opinions, that Jews are “as an entire people of misers,

usurers, extortioners, receivers of stolen goods, cheats, sheriff’s officers, clippers and

sweaters of the coin of the realm, gaming-house keepers; in fine, the charges, or rather

the accusations, of carrying on every disreputable trade, and none else…“ ; this

stereotyping is visible in works by Dickens, Lamb or Thackeray (Wilson 103). In

Dickens’s works we can the developing situation in London from being “a city of stark

contrast, but [it] can be still escaped“ to become “encroaching and unrelieved, a

microcosm of a weary, stale, and unprofitable world in which the only hope for the

future lies in individual regeneration” (Rogers 315).

The technical progress affected the way of people’s social living also in the

biggest city at time, in London. With building hotels, restaurants and department stores

the new different possibilities of social interaction came. All these buildings became

centres of social life in a luxury and domestic atmosphere, to stay domestic and to make

“the cult of home” was one of the most important values of Victorian (Wilson 108 -

109). Home didn’t mean only a house, but already a flat too as the block of mansion

flats were dominating in famous streets at the end of the 19th century, all of them having

room for servants as almost one fifth of the poor worked in domestic service for having

the opportunity to live in a clean and tidy environment (Wilson 110). The biggest

changes were for women, to these times used to make visits to other friends’ houses, in

changing the climate of the social event and having the possibility to meet new people

or going with husband into public, while not having to go to a ball or to arrange a

meeting. For men, the socializing act happened in men clubs, very much favourite at

these times, helping them to climb higher at the social ladder (Wilson 110). The ulterior

21
product of urbanization contributed to the change of using leisure time too as there was

a quite a difference between living in a city, town or countryside.

Thru and thru, the Victorian London was a rapidly fast developing city with great

social opportunities – until you were rich. Other side of this technological paradise were

barefoot children, starving to death. “In the capital of the richest empire the world had

ever seen was poverty that would compare with the most deprived parts of Africa or

South America in the 21st century.” (Wilson 113).

v. Victorian Literature

Literature in Victorian period is a reaction to the contemporary political, social

and religious situation. That Queen Victoria had an “indirect influence over literature”

is obvious as she served as an example of the strict morality (Burgess 181). In poetry,

not being so distinctive, the central poet was Alfred Tennyson that later became Lord

Tennyson being “most Victorian in his attitude to the sex”, when his characters possess

the Victorian morality: “they may sin, but the code of Victorian respectability always

wins” meaning that “Christian marriage is unshakable” and of course “it is rarely,

indeed, that we see the flesh of a woman” (Burgess 190). Typical authors of Victorian

fiction writing were e.g. William Makepeace Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Brontë

sisters – Charlotte, Emily and Anne, G.B. Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Arthur

Conan Doyle and the most prominent Charles Dickens, that is considered to be a

canonical writer and “the artist of ‘many voices’” (Rogers 314). Prose in Victorian Era,

again had the characteristic of “the higher moral purpose [that is] allied to a Romantic

technique: language is rich and highly ornamental” (Burgess 181). Alexander claims

“the popularity of romanticism…had an inflationary effect on the literary medium”

(264). These were “books, annuals and periodicals brought a regulated Romanticism

into Victorian homes … all subsequent literature … is post-romantic” (Alexander 259).

22
On the other hand, Moran indicates “the dominant mode” in Victorian novel writing to

be that one ‘imitating’ life as “[they] use many narrative techniques to convey an

unromanticised picture of ‘real’ experience: a focus on the everyday and on social

diversity; detailed sense description; chronological cause-and-effect plotting; familiar

settings“ (146). Victorian desire for domesticity was visible both in literature and life. It

“included the idea of home as a refuge from a hostile and competitive social world…the

separation of home from place of work” (Kelly qtd. in Cohen 346). Speaking of the

narrator view, Wheeler claims that Victorians novelists work “in a tradition which runs

from Fielding through Scott and Jane Austen” and “often consciously or unconsciously

play God to their characters” (159).

Victorian Era is a period of British history named after empress Queen Victoria. The

imperialistic Britain in this period was full of contrasts. On one hand, faith and a lot of

positivism dominated in the Victorian mind as it was time full of new inventions,

reforms in religion and politics, innovative technology and industry. Urbanization took

place and the life of most of the population was in cities accompanied by new chances

and possibilities. London mirrored the sudden development and urbanization and

happened to be a centre of literature, glittering exhibition of inventions and

development in the industry and technologies. On the other hand, all of these promising

factors had also the side effects represented by social problems, especially in big cities

poverty, political, religious problems and intolerance. People and their minds in

Victorian Era were limited and affected by the value of money, causing enormous social

differences. The traditional family model was a key point Victorians stuck to and finally

found themselves in the world of lies and hypocrisy; women were considered to be tools

for bringing up children and keeping up the family’s spirit. Doomed to fulfil the model

23
and restricted by their situation in society, women’s anxiety to remain a spinster was

enormous. Literature represented the traditions and social model, expressing the attitude

to contemporary situation. Through this definition I will investigate particular elements

in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and reveal whether there is any possibility of Jane

Austen influencing Victorian writers by sharing common features.

24
2. Austen the Dreamer
Born in 1775, her life can be described as happy and full as sad and empty. Her father,

a Hampshire clergyman, had one more daughter and also six sons, two of which were in

the navy (Thornley and Roberts 115). Other two brothers became clergymen (Dillon

218). Unfortunately, her father had “no fortune to bequeath his daughters”, therefore she

and her family had a particularly hard time after her father’s death (Halperin 725).

What is well-known, is that Jane Austen was unmarried, but she had a great number of

admirers and relationships, despite most of them ended in disappointments. She never

“expected to remain a spinster [that would have] chosen such a fate willingly” (Halperin

qtd. in Dillon 216). Her love life was complicated as she was not as prudish as one

would expect to. The very first man she was interested in was Tom Lefroy, described by

a twenty-year-old Austen as “a very gentlemanlike, goodlooking, pleasant young man”,

who later admitted Jane she was “a boyish love”; they both were in love with each

other, yet Tom did not take advantage of her romantic affection (Halperin 722). It was

very difficult for Austen to move on and find someone as ‘acceptable’ as Lefroy. It is

believed that her early novels are connected to this romance running in 1790s. Followed

by “one-sided romance” with Blackall, Austen, now twenty-two-year-old, found him

“pompous and didactic” and it was visible for everyone she would not return such

interest (Halperin 724 – 725). She was getting older and her chances to find a husband

and material secure started to alert. A rich Mr. Holder came to the scene, “having made

a good fortune in the East Indies” and in favour of Austen “he was in want of a wife”;

not only Jane, now twenty-four, but all her family expected her to be proposed

promptly, as he was attracted to her and being “youngish, intelligent, charming and

handsome man”, yet the proposal did not come with the of the summer and soon after

25
his death was announced (Halperin 725 – 726). After this bitter disappointment, the

Austens decided to move to Bath, where they hoped to find husbands for their

daughters. In 1802 Jane was proposed by a twenty-one-year-old Harris Bigg-Wither,

that fulfilled all the important assumptions. Firstly, she accepted, but the next morning

rejected, according to Dillon, it was as she saw the danger of time-consuming care of

children that were likely to be a result of such marriage (214). Finally, in 1808, the last

chance to get married came with Edward Bridges proposal followed by Austen’s

declining “the honor” (Halperin 733). Hodge suggests that “she was condemning herself

to a lifetime as a second-class citizen, an object of contemptuous humour, an old maid”

(83). She felt embarrassed and miserable by having to accept man she did not feel

attracted to and the fact, that “the men she met in real life suffered by comparison”,

contributed to her decision not to finally get a husband, too (Halperin qtd. in Dillon

215). She had several chances to get married and make herself financially secure. Her

very last romantic feeling in 1815 happened to be the one with physician Mr. Haden,

being younger than Jane, that turned out to be the last hit, when he unfortunately found

a younger wife and Jane’s heart was definitely closed. Whether Austen really “chose

fiction-writing over a husband” or really waited for the real love stays hidden for us, but

one thing is for certain – she depicted herself into novels so much that the impact of this

is visible through all her works with the love motif being in the foreground (Dillon

215).

For characteristics, Austen was “tall & slight, but not drooping; well balanced, as was

proved by her quick firm step… a mottled skin, not fair, but perfectly clear & healthy in

hue; the fine naturally curling hair, neither light nor dark; the bright hazel eyes to match,

& the rather small but well shaped nose“ (Le Faye 418 – 419).

26
 She had an access to the world of gentry as she visited the parties and trips (Rogers

292); most of these were a base for her scenes in novels. As a member of gentry, she

was one of “the impoverished lesser gentry”, meaning that although her mother had

descendant of “the titled nobility”, “in financial terms, she was never well off.” (Downie

81).

At the age of forty, she started suffering from adrenal tuberculosis (Halperin 734).

Jane Austen finally died at the age of 42 in 1817 (Burgess 174).

Her life was full of both happy and sad moments, full of joy and despair. Although

dying as a spinster, she led an interesting life full of love adventures and opportunities.

Love disappointments and possible chances of successful marriages introduced formerly

influenced the process of her life heavily. Being a strong personality, she reflected

herself into her novels and other written productions.

27
3. Austen the Novelist
In this chapter I discuss Jane Austen’s written discourse from her early writing to the

‘triumphant’ well-known novels. By her critics and critical reviews in Victorian Era, I

reveal the possible relation and influence upon the future Victorian novelists. Finally,

the classification into periods with a support by several academic sources is to be

revealed too.

Jane Austen started with writing at the age of twelve, discovering her own

possibilities, skills and literary talent (Rogers 292). Her intentions for becoming a

professional novelist started early in her childhood. Composing short works as

experiments for her family, she stepped into the world of writing very soon (Levy

1015). Austen was writing for her family and friends the whole life, these were either

poems or letters, which were comical and satirical (Levy 1021). In the years of active

writing, the French revolution went on. In her books she created a pseudonym saying

“By a Lady” (Hogan 39). Her very first novel, Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811,

was a rewritten version of a novel written 16 years ago; unfortunately, this piece of

writing was unsuccessful at publishers and apart from Price and Prejudice, published in

1813, she published another four novels within four years, namely Mansfield Park

(1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey (1818) and Persuasion (1818) (Thornley and

Roberts 115). Another two books were published posthumously (Hogan 39). She was

not known so much during her lifetime, as interest in her works increased after her

death. “The total profits were approximately £700”, sum “extremely small” according to

Hogan (39). According to Thornley and Roberts, her novels mirror the calmness of life

without being touched “by the ugliness of the outside world” and managing “her

characters with a master’s touch” (116). Thanks to the interest of vast public, her works

28
were published in America first in 1832, but there is an evidence of sending the English

editions there much earlier (Hogan 53).

Austen always had a great number of critics and reviewers, being a subject of intense

discussions. Between the earliest reviews belong these by British Critic in 1813, The

Critical Review claiming Pride and Prejudice to be “superior to any novel we have

lately met in the delineation of domestic scenes” or by Quarterly Review commenting

that there are “no dark passages; no secret chambers;… no drops of blood upon a rusty

dagger – things that should now be left to ladies’ maids and sentimental washerwomen”

(Hogan 41). Anthony Trollope, one of the biggest Victorian novelists, at the age of

nineteen “had already made up his mind that Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in

the English language”(Hogan 53). In addition, Skilton claims Trollope to be “unusual in

his generation” because of “his admiration of Jane Austen” and also states that he

“considered Pride and Prejudice the greatest novel in the language until Thackeray’s

Esmond appeared in 1852” (211). It is no wonder that Wheeler believes “[Trollope]

owed her much“(124). To the contrary and according to what Skilton claims to be

‘usual’ in the Victorian Era novelists Charlotte Brontë claimed that in Austen’s works is

seen “an unnatural frigidity” and that “the Passions were perfectly unknown” to her,

showing disrespect toward Austen’s novels (Lynch 710). Fullerton shares the negative

opinion with Brontë as she claims Pride and Prejudice to be “throughout much of the

Victorian era…a neglected novel” (22).

Although she had many critics, the biggest one was herself as her interest in novels

and passion for fiction writing was huge and she tried to learn from her own ‘mistakes’.

This supports the fact, that three of her six novels were rewritten– namely Pride and

Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion revised; such

29
self-criticism and the ability to admit her ‘failures‘ is extraordinary even today (Hopkins

403). This is what she criticised in Pride and Prejudice:

The work is rather too light, and bright and sparkling; it wants shade; it

wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if

it could be had; if not, of solemn, specious nonsense about something

unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter

Scott, or the history off Buonaparte, or something that would form a

contrast and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness

and epigrammatism of the general style. (Austen qtd. in Hopkins 407)

Confession like this indicated her mind being independent and causing the splendid

effect in her works by connecting her earlier and later thoughts by rewriting or revising

them.

When comes to classifying Austen into certain period, it is always difficult. There are

many authors discussing the impossibility of doing so, but there are also those, who try

to place her within a period, that ‘best defines her’. In her lifetime, the two major

branches were to be distinguished: “the novel of purpose and the Gothic romance”; in

what branch Austen belongs is not easy to say, yet she had an inspiration in Romantic

novels and Gothic stories having them in her family library (Hopkins 402). Behrendt,

for example, considers Austen a Romantic writer “to a lesser extent”. On the other hand,

Lynch says Austen is related “to both realism and romanticism” (690) or furthermore,

that her realism is “that of a naturalist” (693). As a complete Romantic writer she is

considered by Burgess and Rogers, strictly classifying her into a period mostly known

for poetry writing. Sampson, Thornley and Roberts together with Peck and Coyle

30
suggest her to be a 19th century writer as “[her] novels appear at a time when the

rougher manners of the eighteenth are starting to be a distant memory and when a new

social formation has been clearly established” (Peck and Coyle 147). The difficulty of

placing her within a particular period is according to Favret “mythical” and is linked to

“a desire to comprehend the phenomena of girlhood, womanhood and spinsterhood.”

(373). According to Lynch, Austen “has caused trouble for literary history” by “her

problematic femaleness…compounded by spinsterhood and childlessness”. (Lynch qtd.

in Favret 373). In her works are features considered as “break from Augustan literary

conventions” according to critics (Cohen 347). Woolf compares Austen to Sleeping

Beauty as “the allegory of periodization and literary history as a fairy tale that would

awaken Austen from a slumberous past and revive her for the present” (Favret 374). She

was also “temperamentally unresponsive to romance”, as Hopkins proposes (402). Lau

describes Austen’s relationship to Romanticism as “a vexed one” (81), although she

“like the male Romantics believed in the imagination as a moral agent essential to our

ability to sympathize with and love others” (91); she tries to compare Austen to Keats

with the result, that “their writings exhibit a number of significant similarities” and

claim that “Jane Austen is without qualification a Romantic writer” (109 – 110). By

Mellor, is Austen’s place in “feminine Romanticism”, but claimed her not to have “the

spirit of the age” (Mellor qtd. in Lau 81). Ruston suggests Austen to be the writer of

“the novels of manner”, highlighting present adaptations of her works and strictly places

her to Romanticism. Nevertheless, by Alexander, her novels are “post-romantic” (259).

Although she influenced the future generation of Trollope, Gaskell and Elliot through

“sanity and balance”, “[her] influence upon early Victorian fiction was minimal”

(Wheeler 9, 16, 81). Austen is considered to be the biggest novelist of the age often

compared to Shakespeare. The comparison to Shakespeare inheres in “faculty of

31
penetrating into the most secret recesses of the heart, and of shewing us a character in

its inward and outward workings”; she is even considered to surpass Shakespeare by

“instead of telling us what her characters are and what they feel, she presents the people

and they reveal themselves.“ (Lewes qtd. in Lau 87). Woolf linked her with

Shakespeare, too, as she considers both of them as authors “about whom we know so

little and who got his or her work expressed completely” (Woolf qtd. In Levy 1016).

Jane Austen’s passion for writing started very early, when she entertained her family

and friends by funny poems and letters. She was therefore influenced and inspired by

her personal experiences and memories that she mirrored and included later in her

writing. Under the pseudonym ‘a Lady’ she is known mostly as a novelist, nevertheless,

she also wrote poetry. Despite not being famous and appreciated in her lifetime, she

slowly became an important writer having a lot of critics including herself. She was

never classified definitely into a certain period and became a longstanding problem for

literary scholars in the literary academic world, nevertheless stays as a canonical writer

compared to Shakespeare appreciated for being surpassing and unique having a great

impact and influence on the reader and present pop culture, where her works are widely

interpreted in the form of films or serials.

32
4. Pride and Prejudice
In this chapter I discuss and investigate the core phenomena in Pride and Prejudice

according to the subchapters. This introduction serves as a theoretical basis about the

publications and publishing costs helping me to understand the environment of

publishing the novel.

Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813 first under name First Impressions

(Thornley and Roberts 115). Austen was disappointed by Egerton’s offer as she “would

rather have had 150 £, but we could not both be pleased, & I am not at all surprised that

he should not chuse to hazard so much“ so she “sold the manuscript to Egerton for

£110“ (Austen qtd. in Fergus 10). Fergus argues that “the offer was rather niggardly” as

Egerton profited more than 450 £ on the first two editions (10); selling the copyright,

Austen did not profit money as she would with “the change of intellectual property” in

1841 (Clair 34). The first edition had 1,000 copies and the second 750, both sold “three

shillings more than Sense and Sensibility” causing Pride and Prejudice to be

overcharged as it was longer than Sense and Sensibility and produced on cheaper paper

(Fergus 11). Fergus also estimates Austen to earn 475£ in case she published it for

herself (11). Publishing anonymously under a pseudonym “a Lady” in Sense and

Sensibility, in Pride and Prejudice it was “the author of Sense and Sensibility” (Clair

40). Fergus claims Pride and Prejudice to become “’the most fashionable novel’” in

May 1813. However, “its popularity eventually meant the end of Austen’s anonymity”,

but simultaneously “certainly increased the demand for Sense and Sensibility” (Fergus

10-11). The vogue of the novel continued to the middle of 1830s, when two to three

thousand of collected editions and piracies were sold (Claire 41).

33
 Downie claims Pride and Prejudice to be a domestic novel often called ‘bright’ or

‘sparkling’ agreed to be set in the 1790s (71). According to Ruston, it is “the novel of

manners” (73) and a ”light-hearted social comedy” (74). Planned to every detail, it has

ingenious structure. The process of revealing characters is firstly to introduce the minor

characters and picturing the environment that are preparing space for later space for the

privileged protagonist and others major characters. This is called “narrative

asymmetry”, pushing the minor aside while the main characters are in the foreground of

the novel (Levy 1026).

For most of the places in the novel Austen picked up places that really exist, e.g.

London, Bath, Longbourne or Meryton. There is a wide gap in Pride and Prejudice

between real sites and imaginary ones that Austen does not specify. A mystical

atmosphere is created and the location is at the edge of reality and fiction.

4.1 Focus and Social Position

In this chapter I will discuss and reveal the focus in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and

Prejudice and investigate the roots of the focus. The connections between her life and

focus in the novel are important in the tour of defining her uniqueness. Jane Austen’s

focus is rather than on environment or historical background aimed on social aspects

such as relationships and social positions in society. Firstly, the probable reasons why

are the historical events in the background of the story, are to be revealed. Then I come

to the basic focus, for this novel being a social one. The elementary term a gentry is to

be examined too as it is wide and needs a number of explanations. Social positions of

families and characters as well as Jane Austen’s will help us to detect the social system

and focused society in Pride and Prejudice. Whether the social position makes a strong

and necessary point in the life of the characters or whether there are factors more

important than money and position of the social ladder are the key findings in this

34
chapter; as a support I will use the most important family in the story – the Bennet

family. A classification of social positions in terms of periods is to be discussed to and

connected to Austen’s legacy in the Victorian literature. If the fact of Pride and

Prejudice being a source of fantasy or dreaming is true or if it only describes the

contemporary society will be demonstrated too.

As mentioned in my thesis before, Jane Austen lived in times of French revolution and

the violence and presence of fights were influencing lives of everyone. She determined

to ignore and not to include the facts of such environment; the reasons for this sort of

ignorance may be various – from the personal experience, when her two brothers joined

the navy and she did not want to share this with her readers or, more likely to her

character, she was not just interested in such a topic. Naval officers were by rights

admired and “rarely criticized” (Drum 108). Nevertheless, military in Pride and

Prejudice is present in the form of army officers, differentiating from naval officers

heavily and represented the same way as in the real world, revealing the whole

hypocrisy about army. “The military impressed the public more as a spectacle than as a

fighting force,” (Austen qtd. in Drum 108). Jane Austen criticises as well as the

contemporary society a state of mind, where soldiers were more admired for their

uniforms than acts they had done. At least three characters in the story match this

absurdity absolutely – all are women and silly; the two Bennet sisters Lydia and Kitty,

having nothing else to do than following officers and taking walks in Meryton, place

full of soldiers and the third is Lydia and Kitty’s mother, eager to marry her daughters

and capable of everything to achieve the goal of having all her daughters married.

Austen ridicules the position of army and the officers by almost defining them as

‘philanderers’. The greatest example of such army stultification can be found in the

relationship of Lydia and Wickham that represents Austen’s point of view and where

35
their “sexual dalliance” becomes a serious issue (Fulford qtd. in Downie 108).

However, we should not take Austen’s picture of army as a complex realistic

description as she reveals only the pieces she wants to. The intentions she aimed are

mirrored here too as she investigates the army institution from the social point of view

without any concrete fact and therefore creates an enormous disillusion.

Coming to the basic focus, we have to distinguish the term gentry in the sense of

social position, so often repeated in connection with Pride and Prejudice. This is to be

discussed in families, rather than individual characters as position of the individual

equals to position of his or her family. If Lee-Milne’s claim is right, that “the landed

gentry of Great Britain are the only untitled aristocracy in the world”, then the gentry

and aristocracy are equal (Lee-Milne qtd. in Downie 69). What differentiates one from

the other are the state of their bank accounts and the size of their estates. Austen

provides the financial circumstances and estates of her characters through the story,

followed by revealing their social position. We have to realize, that “what Austen

describes in Pride and Prejudice, as well as in her other novels, is the complex

interaction of the various groups which made up the ruling class of Georgian England.”

(Downie 72). Georgian Era preceded Victorian Era and was the time Austen lived in. It

is obvious and understandable, that she shows us the social position of the characters at

the turn of the nineteenth century. “The nobility and gentry made up the British

aristocracy at the turn of the nineteenth, just as they continued to do until well into the

twentieth century.” (Downie 82). Austen’s picture of society therefore ‘touches’ the

bridge between the two centuries and lasts in the beginnings of Victorian Era. Social

situation is not possible to be inherited; this being the opposite case, it develops and

floats through periods.

36
 The Bennet family serves as a great example of so-called ‘gentry’. Austen reveals the

fact that ”Mr. Bennet's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a

year“ (18). This, being not a small amount of money, claims Downie that Mr. Bennet

“is therefore quite clearly that of a prosperous member of the landed gentry and most

certainly not that of an impoverished country gentleman struggling to make ends meet”

(71). Such a claim can be supported also by a fact, claims Downie that the Bennet

family had a number of servants to be employed at their household (70). A proof is

served, when Mr. Collins during one of his visits compliments on the dinner: “The

dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and he begged to know to which of his fair

cousins the excellency of its cooking was owing. But he was set right there by Mrs.

Bennet, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a

good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen.” (Austen 41). What

Mrs. Bennet does in this situation is emphasizing their social position by reminding that

they have servants and are ‘higher’ on the social ladder as her daughters are not taught

to cook. Nevertheless, there are other families that shine ‘brighter’ than the Bennet

family and exceed it in many factors. Of course, nothing compares to Pemberley.

The Bennet family, both by property and general situation is the member of gentry.

But when the social scale is not equal to the moral scale, always something bad

happens. The behaviour determines their position to be lower than they actually are. Mr.

Bennet’s, Lydia’s and Kitty’s acting makes the situation even worse and despite Mr.

Bennet is called ‘a gentleman’ and Elizabeth ‘a gentleman’s daughter’, the family

reputation is badly hurt by such acting of the three characters. The two Bennet sisters

Elizabeth and Jane are examples of how ladies of this position should look like.

However, term ‘low connections’ is used a lot. As one of Mr. Bingley’s sister says “I

have an excessive regard for Miss Jane Bennet, she is really a very sweet girl, and I

37
wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and

such low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it.”, the “low connections”

disable Jane to be taken more seriously (Austen 23). All families present in the story

consentient their positions in society. Finally, Habakkuk suggests, that the Bennet

family is “not exactly one of the lesser gentry” (Habakkuk qtd. in Downie 71). What

determines the Bennet family to be a ‘lower’ class in the story makes basically –

excepting the fact of the inappropriate behaviour - the fact that only the landed gentry

occur in the story and the other social layers, such as servants, stay in the background as

the story develops.

The focus in Pride and Prejudice roots in Austen’s interests and simultaneously

responds to her life. The historical background is illustrated only by the presence of

army officers with real war topics and situation staying in the background. Drum claims

that according to the fact of her two brothers being in the navy “it is hardly surprising

that Austen paints a far more favourable portrait of naval than army officers” (108).

Social position in Pride and Prejudice is by most of the families the same - the landed

gentry; the key factor is money. Nevertheless, there are other factors considerably

influencing the perception of social position in either positive or negative way; it is

behavior closely bounded to the moral scale and good manners. The social system

presented in the novel is a model of Austen’s contemporary society, where “[Austen]

takes considerable pains to accord the awkward position of the Bennet daughters the

prominence it clearly would have merited in English society at the turn of the nineteenth

century” (Copeland and Delany in Downie 71).

4.2 Affection and Affairs

In this section I discuss the topics of love and marriage in Pride and Prejudice in

connection with Romanticism and Victorian Era and then go through the aspects of both

38
of the periods that are visible in the story in connection with the topic and provide an

example from Pride and Prejudice. The possibility of such relationships from the novel

in a real life at the contemporary time and the degree of authenticity with Jane Austen’s

life experiences are to be revealed too. What are the key aspects of Austen’s uniqueness

in love problematics and whether she sticks to the model set at her times or fantasises in

the story are the questions here to be answered.

The topic of love is one of the main topics in Pride and Prejudice and the reason why

Jane Austen is sometimes called a Romantic writer. The power of love and connected

troubles are qualities Romantics mostly cope with and all the couples experience either

happy or unhappy love (Burgess, 166 – 171). On the other hand, as you can see in the

following paragraph, Austen pointed out the importance of money and therefore

constellated people becoming “the slaves of the money they worship” in the middle of

19th century in Victorian England (Herbert 188).

Yet the introductory sentence in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice “It is a truth universally

acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a

wife.” shows us clearly the situation of rich young men and ladies at the contemporary

time (Austen 2). This represents an “epigrammatic maxim in the style of eighteenth-

century” in an ironical context, but the position of narrator seems even so neutral (Lau

98). A visible proof of the importance of possession is given and leads us through the

story yet ironically. Most of the relationships in the novel are influenced by either social

position or money, mostly connected together. The financial situation and social

positions are cruel features for the possibility of any marriage to happen. These features

were important in the Romantic period, but they became even more visible in Victorian

period, where the middle class was bound both by business and marriages so as to be

secure in both of these areas at the same time and the differences between ‘the rich’ and

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‘the poor’ intensified. The contrast in relationships determined by the social position

and the financial situation is seen through the story and it is enormously influencing the

development of the story and possible ‘connections’. One of the potential marriages in

the story between Elizabeth and Mr. Collins mirror the necessity to get married in order

to be financially secured as Mr. Collins is about to inherit all of Mr. Bennet’s

possessions as Mr. Bennet has no direct male descendant and women had no right to

inherit a fortune. In the story, this fact is emphasized by Mr. Bennet: “my cousin, Mr.

Collins, who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases”;

shortly after is Mr. Collins blamed from “a most iniquitous affair” and that “nothing can

clear Mr. Collins from the guilt of inheriting Longbourn” (Austen 39). In the very

similar situation found Austen herself, when she rejected marriage in order not to

financially secure herself. A significance of chance in the context of marriage and

connected social position is obvious, nevertheless, an “ideal choice” is of “a rare

occurrence in her novels” (Weinsheimer 404). By such an act of a rejection of the

‘unideal chance’ Austen surpassed the love standard in her life, contemporary period

and also her novel Pride and Prejudice. Weinsheimer claims the non-dividing of choice

and chance to be “an important aspect of her realism” as chance is the opposite of

choice being “rational and deliberate” (404). In Austen’s life as well as in Pride and

Prejudice we find the heroine to stand in front of more chances, but not always does she

pick the one responding to the social standards, but to her own nature supporting the

independence and character of the author sympathizing and mirroring herself into the

story.

Nevertheless, each couple lives through either happy or unhappy love, both in its very

extremes, so typical for the Romantic period (Burgess, 166-171). Yet the first one

couple we meet in the story, Mr and Mrs Bennet, are actually the ‘unhappy’ ones. The

40
relationship exists only outside, not having something in common. Their characters are

clearly described at the beginning of the novel:

“Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and

caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to

make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop.

She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain

temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of

her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.”

(Austen 4).

This couple is a perfect example of a result of arranged marriages, very frequent at

those times. Gibbs describes these marriages as “fruitless”, “foreign” or “loveless”. Mr.

Bennet, being the most ironical character in the story, treats his wife in a very funny

way without her realizing it: “You and the girls may go, or you may send them by

themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of

them, Mr. Bingley may like you the best of the party.“ (Austen 3). Although their

seemingly unhappy marriage, they managed to brought up daughters together despite

their differences and learned to live next to each other with toleration. This type of

marriage was very likely to happen and could be called ‘mechanical’ as there was no

love match.

In Pride and Prejudice a hierarchy marriage is present; being what Weinsheimer

claims that “each couple seems to be yoked because both partners achieve the same

moral rank, and thus are fit mates” (page 406). Unfortunately, this is not only the case

of morality, but also a rank of an intellectual matureness. Through the story, couples get

together not only thanks to liking each other, but above all to similar acting.

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 The exception is Charlotte and Mr. Collins’ marriage that demonstrates a complete

truckling to social claims. According to Marcus, they present “a complete abandonment

of personal claims in favour of social claims, but their individual adjustments are

distinctly different” (275-6). For Mr. Collins, it is Lady Catherine, thanks to which he

decides to find a wife so as to set a social example and fulfil her wishes. For Charlotte,

it is the only alternative and despite the fact of the lack of love affection she takes the

chance to get married. She ‘sacrificed’ her possibly good future in order to have a

husband, that has nothing to lose and is not much interested in who his wife is. It is her

choice that determines the relationship and yields to the social concept of courtship.

Austen created a pathetic marriage full of irony and opposites. By ‘connecting’ these

two characters, so different by nature and opinions from each other, there originated an

ironical marriage in order to fulfil the society’s demands and pretending to be ‘a happy’

one. The wispy and foolish Mr. Collins even tries to convince himself of him and

Charlotte to be a perfect match: “My dear Charlotte and I have but one mind and one

way of thinking. There is in everything a most remarkable resemblance of character and

ideas between us. We seem to have been designed for each other.” (Austen 126).

Through Charlotte’s character, we are witnesses of what Marcus determines to be “the

process of capitulation of social claims”, when she is ‘manipulated’ by the claims and

her characteristic such as intelligence and integrity emphasized by Austen are

simultaneously pushed aside (276) . On the other hand, “Collins has lost nothing by the

marriage because he had nothing to lose”, so it is quite possible that when not Charlotte,

it would be another ‘desperate’ young lady to accept marrying him.

A good example of the ‘same moral rank’ relationship is Wickham and Lydia, both

being controlled by their sexual passion and intellectual immaturity. Their marriage is

even more gregariously ‘demanded’ for their spontaneous runaway causing Bennet’s

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family the highest degree of disgrace. It is again a ‘collective fault’, not being an

individual that determines this relationship to become a marriage. Lydia is playing only

an object in the game of revengeful and untruthful Wickham that leads to her personal

‘catastrophe’; luckily, thanks to her nature, she considers it to be a happy ending as it

means for her seeking “freedom and excitement” (Marcus 276). Austen demonstrates us

the consequences leading from the connection of two characters, one as an authentic

representation of social claims and second craving for revenge unaware of the plausible

accomplishments.

Bingley and Jane, for their similar qualities and general “immobility”, the inability to

express their feelings and wishes, represent the passivity that Austen pointed out to be

unpleasant and by what she dramatized the whole story (Marcus 275). Both lacking the

self-confidence, Mr. Bingley happens to be unable to defence his feelings and interests

in Jane under the pressure of his very best friends Mr. Darcy that keeps convincing him

about the inadvisability of such marriage. On the other hand, Jane’s quickness to believe

that Mr. Bingley suddenly lost interest in her expresses her “inability to assert personal

claims” (Marcus 277); Austen opens the question of Jane’s good-hearted behaviour and

lets us decide whether it’s because of Jane’s naivity or that she is dumb and let herself

‘break’ so easily. In every aspect, this relationship is what Jane Austen desired for as

they were literally ‘made for each other’ – both by being good-looking and having

similar behaviour. Nevertheless, both of them also are not individualists making the

story complicated and hard to reach the ‘happy ending’.

What is Pride and Prejudice most praised for is the control of plotting and “the skill

with which the relationships between Collins and Charlotte, Wickham and Lydia, and

Bingley and Jane function, sometimes ironically, to bring together Darcy and

Elizabeth.” (Marcus 275). However, every relationship has its own beginning, and the

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one between Elizabeth and Darcy is not the typical one, when the very first sentence

Darcy says about Elizabeth is: “"She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt

me.“ (Austen 8). This brings in the reader in opinion that they are not possibly ever

about to be together and makes it surprising, when they later fall in love with each other.

They stand at the centre of events and the development of the story is simultaneously

the development of their relationship. What high-positioned Fitzwilliam Darcy

fascinates, is Elizabeth’s rebellious acting, witty and conscious responses. For Lizzy, he

is acceptable in every way, for his character being so complex and interesting. The

initial disinterest overgrows in love that has no concrete beginning. Darcy says that “"I

cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is

too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun." (Austen 221), on the

other hand, Elizabeth claims that "It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know

when it began. " (Austen 217). By struggling, they reconcile with their earlier unjustified

claims, taming their temperaments in order to unify their peculiar personalities. To

reach their happy ending, they have to “undergo some changes of heart and of opinion”

(Sherry 609). It is Elizabeth that “recognizes that individualism must find its social

limits” and Darcy ‘only’ has to ‘reconcile himself’ with his lover’s social situation

(Duckworth qtd. in Sherry 609).

There are also areas connected to love and emotions Austen does not mention in the

novel. What Pride and Prejudice lacks first is the fantasy in the love matter. In many

situations in the story we meet a person that is in love and struggles, but not a single

thought about the person is apparent. This causes an effect of a realistic view, being an

opposite of the Romantic one. It is sexual passion and attractiveness we do not see in

the story. Nevertheless, Casal suggests laughter to be a substitution of the sexual

tensions as it “many of Austen’s contemporaries saw … as vulgar”. On the other hand,

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Allen believes that “[character’s] mutual attraction is metonymically displaced … [by]

proposals to dance, glances, and walks“ (426).

A question comes to every mind when studying Austen’s life, why does she provide a

husband to her heroines, when she herself remained unmarried? She apparently

sympathizes with Elizabeth she is the heroine and “the most authentically powerful

figure in the novel” supporting the individualism both in her nature and love matter, it

was the “individualism that had ties to the French and the Industrial Revolutions”

(Newton qtd. in Marshall 42).

The issue of love and marriage is therefore very important in investigating Austen’s

observation of relationships in her own environment. It is very likely that she was to

some extent inspired by her relatives or social events. Every relationship in the story has

a contrast; either they are ‘successful’ or ‘unsuccessful’ being Romantic features. What

Austen creates is the game of couples and courtship, which reflects the importance of

having relationship or someone sharing life with; the never-ending ‘husband-chasing’ is

an expression of the necessity to get married in order to become a ‘complete’ human-

being. The only obstacles are the features of individualism and lack of self-confidence,

even if individualism is a key feature of Romanticism; it has to be broken in order to

fulfill the society’s demands, so important for the upcoming Victorians. In addition,

lack of any visible sexual attraction and simultaneous lack of imagination contributes to

the fact of the ‘prudishness’ and high degree of morality in Pride and Prejudice that is

core for Victorian Era.

4.3 Prejudice and Aspects of Gender

Gender role in Pride and Prejudice is one of the most important features and is an

important part of my thesis as I try to reveal Austen’s uniqueness by investigating some

of the characters in the novel and assigning their role according to their gender. At the

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end of this section I decide whether the social concept of gender role corresponds more

Victorian Era or Romanticism. By virtue of the Austen’s biography chapter I investigate

the influence of her life and possible similarities between the characters and the author

and resultant opinions of Austen.

The identity of each character is closely bound to property. Austen was led by a

concept of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, where women had legal status

“covered by her husband’s thereby precluding her from owning property” (Cohen 361).

This fact influences the whole story and characters, bound to their family financial

situation. On the other hand, new forms of ownership were formed in order to protect a

wife and children in case of husband’s financial troubles (Staves 132). Dangerous

gambling cost many families their homes as they went bankrupt. Women and their

property were “limited to matter of propriety and conduct, a woman’s interests were

indistinguishable from the interests of a class equally invested in redefining property”

(Kelly qtd. in Cohen 347). The necessity to fit in society’s claims and not to

differentiate was huge as women had to match the social standards.

„Jane Austen’s heroines are all young girls at the outset of adult life.“ (Rogers

292).”All of Austen’s heroines possess the capacity for entering into the feelings of

other, which often distinguishes them from other, less empathic characters.” (Lau 89). A

good example is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, growing up through the story

from a girl into a woman. As the narrator often identifies with the heroine, it is clear that

Elizabeth’s character is partially autobiographical. That Austen sympathizes and unites

herself with the character of Elizabeth is apparent, when she writes about her to her

sister: “Miss Benn really seems to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as

delightful a creature as ever appeared in print. And how shall I be able to tolerate those

who do not like her, at least I do not know.” (Austen qtd. in Hopkins 423). Projecting

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one’s own personality “into thoughts and feelings of others, and remain open to a

variety of points of view” is “a key element in the creative process and an important

characteristic of the creative individual” called “Negative Capability” (Lau 84). Only

this individual, in Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth Bennet, is capable of such acting by

admitting her own fault and being ashamed for judging the others within the limits of

her mind, that was determined to prejudice without her even realizing it. The reader

starts admiring her for overcoming both the limits of her mind and prejudice at the same

time. The act of opening one’s mind is unique for Jane Austen and for making the

character complex. When she chooses love instead of material security by rejecting Mr.

Collins, she “pushes against early nineteenth-century standards regarding women’s

limited choices by rejecting the pompous clergyman.” (Dillon 214). Austen herself once

rejected a marriage proposal for the same reasons as Elizabeth did. The ability to reject

a man she could not respect comes from Austen’s social belief. This fact reflects the

author’s opinion and attitude to the contemporary problematics and clearly shows us

visible parallels between Jane Austen and Elizabeth by “confronting society’s

overbearing claims” through which she tries to influence the reader (Honan qtd. in

Dillon 215). When we consider situations Elizabeth often occurs in, these are balls,

visits or other engagements with the gentry, the author is visibly aware of all the

situations and its’ process. “Elizabeth is more likely to be verbally aggressive with Mr.

Darcy, Mr. Bingley, or Lady Catherine than with intimate female friends.” (Kaplan qtd.

in Dillon 219). The irreverent way Elizabeth communicated with people of a ‘higher

social status’ is determined by her prejudice of rich people, most of which she considers

priggish and excessively proud. That explains Austen’s personal attitude and the

impertinence displays the independence and disagreement with the social cliché of the

duty to be nice and servile to people being ‘higher’ on the social ladder. Her

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independent thinking is unique as she decided to break the ‘rules’ “rather than being

part of a collective response to a social situation.” (Kaplan qtd. in Dillon 220). Elizabeth

plays an important role pushing the social standards to the back and emphasizing the

importance of common sense rather than dogma and position in society. Witty as she is,

Austen created a new type of heroine that happens to be an ideal for women of the past,

present and possibly future as well.

To understand the complexity of Austen’s female characters, not only individual

characters, but characters in connection with the others is important, too. The strongest

relationship is to be found in Elizabeth and Jane as they have a really deep connection

and therefore “is something of Jane Austen in both Jane and Elizabeth” (Halperin qtd. in

Dillon 215). By connecting these two female characters Austen describes and

characterizes herself. She highlighted female friendships as for her were really

important too and through which she responded “to women’s social and economic

vulnerability” (Kaplan qtd. in Dillon 217). Why female friendship was more important

for Austen is easy to guess as she and her sister Cassandra had six brothers and

therefore shared the female status only together. “Their affection for each other was

extreme; it passed the common love of sisters, and it had been so from childhood.“ (Le

Faye 420). Another aspect indicating the connection between the author and characters

is the fact, that “Austen herself and her sister Cassandra remained single” (Kaplan qtd.

in Dillon 216). Through Elizabeth and Jane’s characters Austen creates a life she hoped

to become her and her sisters, thus getting married to men they were attracted to.

An example of a capricious, envious and eager woman is Mrs. Bennet. She represents

the female as the only thing to ever reach is to get married and to be financially secure.

Getting easily distracted, keeping speculating and expressing her feelings and opinions

in an inappropriate way, she becomes an annoying character full of prejudice.

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Corresponding to social standards, she has no common sense and ridicules the whole

system.

On the other hand, her eldest daughter Jane, admired for her beauty and distinguished

by artlessness, serves us as an example of a pure soul. She is the only character in the

story not trying to judge in advance and keeping her emotions inside. Taking all

compliments by surprise, Jane seems unaware of her beauty. Although everyone around

is prejudiced, she never says a negative word. Whether it comes from the passivity or

innocence is hard to determine, most likely is the combination of both. Jane, aged 23, is

ridiculed for being a spinster at such an age by Lydia. She is an archetype of beauty in

the story connected with her shy nature, which makes her a hard time. Her role

represents an unending hope, not only in the search for a husband, but a well-balanced

soul able to wait.

A foolish, spontaneous and very young lady Lydia and the youngest daughter of Mr.

Bennet, turns up through the story very confident and unaware of results of her

behaviour. "I am not afraid; for though I am the youngest, I'm the tallest." (Austen 6).

The same as Mrs. Bennet, she ridicules herself all the time by the desire for men and

excitement.

How Austen makes from a common character an extraordinary one is miraculous. Her

ironical notes on the happening on the scene make the reader feel the atmosphere and

guess the right temper of the speaker. Mary represents a type of girl not being ready for

life, hiding her character underneath books, playing piano, likely never getting married

and therefore becoming a remaining part of the puzzle of the characters in the story. She

can be considered partly an autobiographical character, as Austen remained unmarried

and was an accomplished musician.

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 Charlotte Lucas, at the beginning of the story the eldest unmarried woman, suffers by

her age, making her at the age of 27 too old to be proposed and also to get married to.

She has many fine qualities for being intelligent, sensible and loyal; for these being the

best friend of Elizabeth. The importance of marriage in order to be financially secure is

demonstrated by her character vastly, causing her to become financially secured, but

still an unhappy woman. In a wider and feministic sense, she can be considered a

prisoner in the system Jane Austen created and that agreed with the contemporary

political system. She is a counter character to Elizabeth Bennet, where the standards and

values of society were demonstrated by fulfilling them and which shows us the result of

what could have happened if Elizabeth had married Mr. Collins.

Not so important character in the story, but undoubtedly an interesting one, is Caroline

Bingley. Austen created woman, being in a high social position and treating Darcy in a

flirting way. This extract from Pride and Prejudice shows us the power of sexual

allusion “I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mind it for you. I mend pens

remarkably well.”; surprisingly Darcy answers “Thank you – but I always mend my

own.”(Austen 30). An example of apparent reference to autoeroticism opposes Heydt-

Stevenson’s claim suggesting that Austen’s novels are “sexually sanitized” (314). The

fact of woman high on social ladder, but still unmarried and with flirting behaviour,

corresponds to the fact of hypocrisy of such social standards.

“Austen is centrally concerned with the impossibility of women escaping the

conventions and categories that, in every sense, belittle them.” (Gilbert and Gubar qtd.

in Dillon 217). Women in Pride and Prejudice can be divided into two groups

according to this declaration. On one hand those ones accepting the conventions and

behaving according to society’s expectations; on the other those that are trying to escape

and overcome the given impossibility of such acting demonstrated in the character of

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Elizabeth, that is representing Austen herself. Both sides have its own stumbling blocks

according to the circumstances and chances given to them, either accepted or not, they

lay upon their common sense and personal persuasion about propriety of taking such a

chance; these sides are blending together with the development of the plot as well as the

development of the characters.

Men, same as women in the story, are diverse. Compared to women’s ones, male

friendships are not so developed because “they have no adequately developed same-sex

relationships or correspondences through which their power can be realized” causing

minimization of men’s power in society (Kaplan qtd. in Dillon 217). The social

problems that influence the life of women are not so visible in the life of a man.

For Mr. Bennet is a character full of irony, his role being that of a breadwinner and

father of five daughters, taking care of his small country estate, is to be discussed in one

of the following chapters called ‘Irony’.

Mr. Darcy, admired for his possessions, but hated by the major part of the Pride and

Prejudice society for his pride, is the most complex man character in the story. Austen

created a character that is somehow hiding his true nature behind the face of a very

proud, rough and contemptuous face. Initially, he is admired for both his position and

fortune, but shortly afterwards, when he is seen publically, hated for the same thing. By

Elizabeth’s character, we get to know him through the story and reveal his true

character, being brave, grateful and honest. The importance of money is obvious by the

fact that it can justify his outer ‘misbehaviour’, when Mrs. Lucas claims that “One

cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his

favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be

proud.“ (Austen 12). As a lover, Darcy is faithful, shy and steady in his feelings, but

skilled in hiding his affections towards Elizabeth. He is a very moral character, being in

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many moral contradictions and decisions through the story, all of which he manages to

get under control. This character of proud and none the less shy Darcy defines and

represents Austen’s vision of a perfect man for being extraordinary; unfortunately, „she

found them only in her novels” (Halperin qtd. in Dillon 215). She created a type of a

man she desired for in her real life with all the qualities she expected him to have. Mr.

Darcy is a gentleman that despite his outer behaviour deserves both his fortune and

Elizabeth’s love; he plays a role of a faithful lover and also a sensible man with power.

A relationship, although not as deep as the one between Elizabeth and Jane, is the one

between Bingley and Darcy. Even though they are not related, they respect and treat

each other as brothers. Their different natures secure their balanced relationship.

Nevertheless, Mr. Darcy is, indeed, a stronger personality. He possesses the ability of

manipulating with his best friend Mr. Bingley by changing his opinions as Bingley is

hesitating all the time. Mr. Darcy uses this skill to protect his best friend from being hurt

and therefore plays the superior role in this relationship.

Mr. Bingley can be considered as a male version of Jane that differs only by a higher

position on the social ladder and better financial situation; what Austen makes us think

about, is that these two characters are same personalities, but that the role of their

gender and also position directs their fate and lives completely. His qualities are

undoubtedly comparable to these of Jane, as they both are beautiful, kind and generally

nice and gentle to everyone. One characteristic that they share is their hesitance, in the

case of Bingley even more visible as men are in charge of disposing the property. By

this quality is he subtly manipulated and often not able to express his own opinions and

wishes properly. His character shows us the exception that even men that should be

‘ruling’ over women in Pride and Prejudice, are limited not only by their social position

and wealth, but also by the level of their ability of making their own decisions.

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 Another character, being an object of Austen’s keen criticism and irony, is Mr.

Collins; whose character and personality is discussed in more detail in the following

chapter. Incapable of normal personal feelings and affections, he is undoubtedly a

mechanical character. There is no single act where he acts freely and spontaneously; his

acting controls brittleness and unbelievable courtliness. Being absorbed by his social

masks, he becomes blind and Austen’s example of irony and sarcasm.

Jane Austen, although being a woman, does not describe women in the story

exaggeratedly heroically, but she tries to balance the good and the bad with both

genders. Austen created a character mixture that makes her a unique author not

comparable to any other. Every character, male or female has its own function through

the story showing us various aspects of human nature. It shows us that the role of

gender is not sometimes important, as we all are prejudiced and proud in some way.

Male and female’s perception differ from each other, men are feeling powerful and

women resentful. The most important thing about a woman in the story is the age,

beauty and social position. On the other hand, men must be in possession and have a

good social status. Austen tried to influence the future generation to change the

circumstances of social situation through the story of social inequality. Unfortunately,

these features intensified, being features of Victorian idealism, where the social status,

possession, appearance and outside moral standards meant more than true emotions.

Even though that the story was at the very end of the era of gentry living in the country,

the ideals mirrored in the story are the future of Victorian Era. Jane Austen emphasized

the importance of a common sense through the character of Elizabeth, creating a new

type of heroine satisfied with her true nature and mirrored her wishes and dreams of a

perfect man into Mr. Darcy.

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4.4 Satirical and Humorous Aspects

Irony, being the most significant feature in the story, is the one Jane Austen is famous

and unique for. Where this feature can be found, what it means and what is the biggest

source of irony in Pride and Prejudice is to be examined in the following paragraphs.

Discussing Austen’s ironical and satirical view and possibility of it to be the result of

her life development or a period she lived in leads us to the question what does irony

mean in Pride and Prejudice and why does Austen use it.

Before I start investigating particular features, it is important to realize that what is

most ironical about irony in Pride and Prejudice is the fact that “Jane Austen never uses

the word ‘irony’ and yet the term has proven to be one of the most useful words for

describing the quality of her vision” (Sherry 611). Presumably Austen did not want to

point out the ironical content in her novel to the reader as she tended them to recognize

it by themselves.

The name of the novel is not random as it was first entitled First Impressions, but the

renaming to Pride and Prejudice caused the effect of focusing on both pride and

prejudice and emphasizing the significance of these features in the novel becoming the

main source of irony through the story. Character that is mostly connected to pride is

Mr. Darcy according to his acting at the beginning of the novel. Austen shows us the

stereotypical irony of being rich, where the money and position mean more than

politeness; when Miss Lucas utters:

His pride does not offend me so much as pride often does, because

there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young

man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think

highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a right to be proud.

(Austen 12)

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 The social position and financial situation of Mr. Darcy determines and widens the

‘borders’ in his behaviour as he has a ‘right’ to feel superior. Later in the story we

discover and re-evaluate the qualities of Mr. Darcy that are revealed to be positive;

nevertheless, before happens so, his character becomes a subject of a bittersweet irony.

The only thing that can overcome pride is in his case love expressed by proposing

Elizabeth; however “Darcy’s rejection by Elizabeth at the moment when he seems to

have felt an impulse stronger than pride is an irony which we as readers have been fully

prepared to appreciate” (Sherry 616). An example of overcoming the most significant

aspect of Darcy’s nature from our point of view followed by such degradation

emphasizes yet ironically the fact that money is not as important as we may think in the

love matter represented by Elizabeth’s common sense and denial of Darcy’s ‘right’ to

be proud. Nevertheless, most people agree on Darcy being the most proud character in

the story yet at the end of the novel he shows up not that much more pride than the other

characters. Linked to this idea is another irony functionally applied on the readers and

the main character Elizabeth; both were meant by Austen to be prejudiced from the very

beginning as he was considered proud and unpleasant, finally, he is not as bad as the

others. Through Elizabeth, “Austen forces the reader to experience the same errors that

Elizabeth makes and to realize the difficulty of arriving at truth in a constantly shifting

world” (Moses 155).

It is a level of common sense that determines prejudiced behaviour. With a common

sense plays Austen game, in which not only these having it win or loose; people with a

lack of common sense do not usually bother with their situation and are rescued by

these having the common sense . As a result, there is almost no impact in their lives by

acting foolishly; the effect of such accomplishments makes the reader think or laugh

about the absurdity and irony that is visible through the story. The example of Lydia’s

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character with a lack of common sense demonstrates us the zero effect of it, when she

runs away with Wickham, unmarried, so young and with no plans in advance. Only

thanks to Mr. Darcy having a great level of common sense is she rescued in her

otherwise desperate situation that would probably lead to eventual dishonour of society.

There are two levels of irony in a disgrace of Mr. Darcy that Austen shows us; the first

one is helping a young lady he does not respect despite his very high standards not in

order to win Elizabeth’s heart – as he did not tend to ever tell her about the great support

he provided to his ‘enemy’ Wickham and Elizabeth’s sister Lydia – but in order to

protect the honour of a young lady that rejected him; the second one, even more

marginal, it is our prejudice that places him in such a disgrace.

Characters are means carrying a huge burden of Austen’s irony. The most significant

is Mr. Bennet, yet for his qualities and characteristics, always having a sharp tongue and

a witty answer ready. Through the story, we are not sure whether to try to understand

him or not as his behaviour and opinions change. A manner he speaks with we find

interesting and funny, but in the background of all his outside casualness we reveal an

ironical and hurt soul, not ready to be opened and decided what role to play. Mr.

Bennet’s objects of irony are switching through the story; they are mostly his daughters

with the exception of Jane and Elizabeth, whom he considers sensible. One of his

objects becomes Mary, not seen in the story much, the object of the irony yet at the

beginning of the story, when Mr. Bennet treats her: “For you are a young lady of deep

reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts.“ (Austen 5). The coming

note even more emphasises the situation: “Mary wished to say something sensible, but

knew not how.“ (Austen 5). Mary is a young clever lady and a representation of

Austen’s irony incapable to perform any social interaction and being recipient; she is a

56
product of such society that determines ladies to be wives and does not care about the

others.

Through the story relationships are developing; some of them favourably and the other

ones not that much. They are suffering from social standards preventing them from the

‘and they lived happily ever after’ by building different obstacles, that the characters

have to deal with; these are either owing to one’s social position or temperament

characteristics. As a result, the expectations demanded by society become sources of

misery; being one of the biggest ironies in the story. By fulfilling the standards, the

socially expected equals the unhappiness. Austen, again, emphasises the possible results

of being in control of the social demands in a very unusual and exemplary way. As a

result, ‘plastic’ marriages are originating. One of them is Mr. Collins and Charlotte,

emphasizing “Austen’s successful depictions of fools as well as ‘people of sense’” (Lau

87). Their natures being antitheses to each other highlight Mr. Collin’s foolishness and

humorously ridicule the clergy as he is a representative. His absurdity and disability to

think complexly leads us to a complete misinterpretation of the clergy career. However,

it is Mr. Collins’ vanity that satirizes his character most. Because of the acquaintance

with a wealthy Lady Catherine, Mr. Darcy’s aunt he acquires the impression of being

superior, especially to the Bennet family. He considers his proposal to Elizabeth as

something patronage and business-like. In Mr. Collins’ character we see “the humor of

[Austen’s] mind upon the abnormal in fiction – bombast and pedantry, affectation,

vanity, absurdity, falseness of feeling, and offense against sound reason” (Hopkins 425).

Nevertheless, a direct reference or opinion about the clergy is not given; therefore we

can consider the importance of such career for Austen being lesser. This makes us think

about Austen and her father’s relationship as he was a clergyman. Through the story,

characters are socializing and getting together all the time, but there is a “little sense in

57
contemporary parlance of ‘what they do’” (Drum 92). Apart from clergy, members of

military and their simultaneous ridiculing by Austen is present too. Questions for what

do Mr. Darcy or Mr. Bingley do for a living are not answered.

Another ironical context we can recognize in the story is the relation towards the

Gardiners that Downie marks to be “a signal indication of the layers of conscious irony

at work in Austen’s fiction that the final sentence of Pride and Prejudice concerns the

Gardiners, because they complicate the novel’s social hierarchy in an important way”

(72). Prevented by their good taste they are no longer people of ‘low connections’ being

at the end of the story “always on the most intimate terms” with Darcy and Elizabeth

that “really loved them” (Austen 226). It is Mrs. Bennet ridiculing and representing the

‘low connections’ in the Bennet family. Austen highlights the genuine representation of

social standards in her characters indicating the results of fulfilling them; Mrs. Bennet

“happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which [she] got rid of her two most

deserving daughters” (224). It is quite obvious that no mother with maternal feelings

would ‘get rid of’ her daughter.

The whole concept of irony presented through the novel is an opposite of the

Romantic ideas; Romantics inclined to feelings, being a contrary to the rationality

represented in irony. Austen moralises the readers with the intention of enlightening the

future generations, possibly including also the Victorians, and shows us the fact that

money do not always mean you can buy everything. However, money became

unfortunately more and more important factor in the society from the times of Victorian

Era up to now. The author’s brilliant description of characters representing irony and

their nature is genuinely unique. She includes the clergy and ridicules the representative

all the time; whether she is influenced by her life or just inspired by the fact of her

father being a clergyman is arguable as there is no proof. Through the story, we

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recognize several ironical errors, the two most prominent of a ‘double-irony’. The first

one is the fact of people with a lack of common sense have less troubles and

simultaneously people with a considerable common sense have more of them and very

often have to solve troubles the one’s with a lack of it. Austen makes us feel the irony

on ourselves in the second error as we were, with a little help from her, indeed,

prejudiced from the very beginning and fulfils the ‘mission’ of Pride and Prejudice.

Such play with self-irony and at the same time ‘shrift’ by means of the identification

with the main character Elizabeth gives us the morals that everyone has errors and is

another factor of Austen’s uniqueness.

59
Conclusion
Jane Austen restricted her story narrowly to the topic of society omitting the important

historical events surrounding her and ignoring the fact of violence in Europe. By doing

so, she draws an idealised picture of this time split society. Providing the evasion from

the cruel environment during reading Pride and Prejudice, she corresponds to the time

definition of Romanticism. As has been noted through the thesis, there are also topics of

love and individualism representing the Romantic ideas. On the other hand, besides

leaning into a Romantic phantasy world full of misery, Austen draws, more or less, a

realistic view of the world of choices with no extremes in life. Nevertheless, taking a

feminine Romanticism into the account, she could be also considered as a genuine

representative of this movement.

Despite the time discrepancy, Jane Austen is surely an author influencing and

retaining legacy to the future Victorian period. As can be seen in the fourth chapter that

is analysing Pride and Prejudice, she ‘anticipated’ many aspects of the upcoming

Victorian Era including moral standards, gender issues, class differences and the

importance of money. Given these points, in order to fulfil the standards of society there

is a significant repression of individualism and a simultaneous change of the concept of

society influencing the behaviour and relationships seen in the story. However, what

remains hidden is poverty and misery of the Victorian Era which was about to come.

As illustrated in the first chapter ‘The two periods’ we have to distinguish

Romanticism and Victorian period from the two points of view – the first one is

historical and the other literary. Whereas Romanticism is connected to literature and its

features, Victorian Era is bound to its standards and morals; they differentiate from each

other in various aspects that are mixed together in Pride and Prejudice by combining

60
the future Victorian stereotypes and therefore Austen creates a ‘bright and sparkling’

life in literature.

What is for sure, Jane Austen was a unique writer that deserves her place in the literary

foreground. Her uniqueness lies in her ability to dread and make the reader laugh at the

same time. Having the nature of wit, she contributes the novel with her own personality

and makes the story amusing. On the other hand, she reacts to the contemporary social

problems and additionally she influences and encourages the reader through irony and

various situations in the novel.

Altogether Pride and Prejudice is a genuine source of both daydreaming and fantasy

as Austen fulfils her love dreams and ideals against standards but simultaneously

represents the whole standard conception. According to my research in the thesis I

would place Jane Austen neither in Romanticism nor Victorian Era and leave her at the

edge of Romanticism and Victorian Era as an unforgettable and inspiring author being

one of the most prominent woman novelists that deserves her unique and ‘mysterious’

place in literature.

61
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 Abstract

In my thesis I focused on a well-known novelist Jane Austen and her classification in

periods. The aim of this thesis was to prove, to what extent she should be considered as

a writer of Romanticism or, despite of the time discrepancy, Victorian Era. For the most

part Jane Austen follows Romantic features; nevertheless, she draws a realistic and

idealistic picture of society in the middle of revolutions and violent environment. In

case taking a definition of a ‘feminine Romanticism’ by Mellor and Ruston into the

account, she could be considered as a genuine representative of such movement

connected with domestic and social topics. On the other hand, Jane Austen is surely an

author influencing and retaining legacy to the future Victorian period. As illustrated in

the fourth chapter analysing the novel Pride and Prejudice, she ‘anticipated’ many

aspects of Victorian Era including moral standards, gender issues, class differences and

the importance of money. By virtue of following particular elements in her novel Pride

and Prejudice, serving me as a support for my research, and classifying the period, I

also established the aspects of her uniqueness. Overall, her uniqueness lies in the ability

to dread and make the reader laugh at the same time. Contributing to the story with her

own personality and experiences, she creates a world of a witty humour encouraging the

reader to think about issues, she signalized by means of irony or satire through the story.

This thesis is a view both on the society and literature of the two periods watching the

social changes and mapping the influence of period and life of the author on her literary

production that was particularly obvious in the love matter.

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 Resumé

V mé práci jsem se zaměřila na známou novelistku Jane Austenovou a její příslušnost v

periodách. Cílem této práce bylo zjistit, do jaké míry by měla být považována za

spisovatelku romantismu nebo, i přes časový nesoulad, spisovatelku viktoriánské éry.

Většinou vykazuje Austenová znaky romantismu, nicméně ilustruje realistický až

idealistický náhled na společnost, která se nacházela v období plném revolucí a násilí.

Pokud vezmeme v úvahu definici tzv. „ženského romantismu“, kterou podpořil

například Mellor či Ruston, mohla by být považována za autentickou autorku tohoto

hnutí, které se vyznačuje hlavně rodinnými a sociálními tématy. Na druhé straně je Jane

Austenová bezpochyby autorka, která ovlivnila a předala dědictví až do doby

viktoriánské. Ve čtvrté kapitole mojí práce, která analyzuje novelu Pýcha a předsudek,

se dá říci, že Austenová „předpověděla“ mnoho aspektů přicházející éry, mezi nimi

pravidla morálky, genderovou problematiku, třídní rozdíly a také důležitost peněz. Díky

následování těchto aspektů a znaků dob v novele Pýcha a předsudek, která mi sloužila

jako podpora mého výzkumu, jsem také určila aspekty jedinečnosti této autorky. Její

jedinečnost tkví především ve schopnosti čtenáře vyděsit a rozesmát zároveň. Díky

tomu, že do příběhu přispěla i svou osobností a zkušenostmi, vytvořila svět plný

duchaplného až „kousavého“ humoru, který nutí čtenáře se zamyslit nad problémy, na

které je v průběhu příběhu pomocí ironie či satiry upozorňuje. Tato bakalářská práce je

pohledem na společnost a literaturu dvou období a zkoumá změny jak ve sféře sociální,

tak i vliv období a života autorky na její literární tvorbu, který byl markantní zejména

v oblasti milostné problematiky.

68