victorian england week five: pride and prejudice wed oct 31, … · victorian england week five:...

Victorian EnglandWeek Five:

Pride and PrejudiceWed Oct 31, 2018

Institute for the Study ofWestern Civilization

Jane Austen1775-1817

Literacy 1700-1900Vast expansion of literacy in UK 1700-1900+

Driven by charity schools movement of the 18th C.Begins with Dissenters setting up schools

Anglicans follow.

Examples: The Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge

Increasing trade and commerce(Export-Import) demandedmore clerks. Drives charity school movement.

Thousands of schools established and maintained with foundations money.

In the Victorian Era the government gets into edu.passes mandatory edu acts.

18th Century literatureIncreasing literacy yields

NewspapersMagazines

Coffee houses with newspapersExplosion of 18th C theater

and the creation of the one great MODERN literary form:

THE NOVELDaniel Defoe the first great novelist but 18th C England

is the creator of the modern novel.Daniel DefoeHenry Fielding

Jane Austen

The NovelThe Novel develops in 18thCearlier models:Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-1615)a sign of the developing middle classin beginning overwhelmingly for MC womensign of growing MC literacy/affluence (esp England)book buying public(same people buying PAINTINGS)1742: Fielding/Joseph Andrews sold 6500 copiesauthors: could make moneyDr Johnson got 1575pounds/dictionarythus get new freer authors/write & sell it to public

Entrance of Women onto Western Literary Scenewomen authros: Jane Austen

writing novels/reading novels

and novels about women:Pamela (Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is an epistolary novel by English writer Samuel Richardson, first published in 1740)Moll Flanders Pride and PrejudiceMadame Bovary Anna Karenina

Part of Western Tradition Civic/Public Aspect to lifeCicero-Dante-Petrarch-Dost/publish/read public/libraries

the novel is a new kind of literaturefor broader class(gets broader all thru 18-19thC)time of Dickens appeals to the not nec rich classes

ANTI-TRADITIONAL REVOLUTIONARY FORM FOR REVOLUTIONARY AGE

Novel is first major literary art form in West that does not take its stories from myth/history/scripture/previous lit

Shakespeare & Milton did

new world world changes we are differentcooperates with ROMANTICISM

JANE AUSTEN IS THE AUTHOR OF THE GREAT MODERN IDEAL OF MARRIAGE:

GOOD MARRIAGE MUST BE BASED ON TRUE ROMANTIC (“Romanticism”) LOVE

BUT AUSTEN GOES BEYOND BYRONBYRON JUST WANTS ROMANCE

AUSTEN INSISTS ON THE MORE SOCIALLYCORROBORATIVE LOVE IN MARRIAGE.

VICTORIA WILL AGREE

AUSTEN IS AN INNOVATOR

A REVOLUTIONARYA MODERN WOMANA TRAILBLAZER FOR

WOMENSOME WOMEN MAY

NOT MARRY

Jane Austen1775-1817 (41)

Father: Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805Mother: Cassandra Leigh Austen, 1739-1827Brother: Rev. James 1765-1819 (3 children)

Brother: George 1766-1838 (Deaf)Brother: Edward 1767-1852 (Knight, 11 children)

Brother: Rev. Henry (married Eliza) 1771-1850Sister: Cassandra 1773-1845

Brother: Adm. Francis (Frank) 1774-1765(11 chil)Jane: 1775-1817

Brother: Adm. Charles (1779-1852) (4 children)

Jane Austen:The

Places ofHer Life

St. Nicholas Church, Steventon, Hampshire

The Steventon Rectory

Father and daughter, 1775-1800

father well educatedmusic, books, balls, socialunderstands her writing

helps get her first book to a publisher

Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy (1796)Thomas Langlois Lefroy (1776 – 1869) was an Irish-Huguenot politician and judge. He served as an MP for the constituency of Dublin University in 1830–1841, Privy Councillor of Ireland in 1835–1869 and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in 1852–1866.

No. 4 Sydney Street

Sydney Gardens

No. 4 Sydney Street

One good reason for the move to Bath were the bathsfor Mrs. Austen.

40 Gay Street

Proposal of Marriage 1802

Why did she turn him down?

Jane’s father died on 21 January 1805 Her father's relatively sudden death left Jane, Cassandra, and their mother in a precarious financial situation. Edward, James, Henry, and Francis Austen pledged to make annual contributions to support their mother and sisters.[85] For the next four years, the family's living arrangements reflected their financial insecurity. They spent part of the time in rented quarters in Bath before leaving the city in June 1805 for a family visit to Steventon and Godmersham. They moved for the autumn months to the newly fashionable seaside resort of Worthing, on the Sussex coast, where they resided at Stanford Cottage. It was here that Austen is thought to have written her fair copy of Lady Susan and added its "Conclusion". In 1806 the family moved to Southampton, where they shared a house with Frank Austen and his new wife. A large part of this time they spent visiting various branches of the family.

Death of Rev George Austen 1805

Death of Rev George Austen 1805

1805-1809, years of wanderings.

Chawton Cottage, 1809-1817

CHAWTON HOUSE (“The Big House”)now the CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY

Church and house in Chawton, where Jane Austen spent the last years of her life: 1809-1817.

House in Chawton, where Jane Austen spent the last years of her life: 1809-1817.

Jane Austen Becomes City Girl1811-1817

Frequent trips to Londonstays with brother Henry.

Meets and negotiates with publishers.comes to know London well.

Work praisedby Prince of Wales

She visitsCarlton House

During her time at Chawton, Jane Austen published four generally well received novels. Through her brother Henry, the publisher Thomas Egerton agreed to publish Sense and Sensibility, which appeared in October 1811. Reviews were favourable and the novel became fashionable among young aristocratic opinion-makers; the edition sold out by mid-1813. Austen's earnings from Sense and Sensibility provided her with some financial and psychological independence. Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice, a revision of First Impressions, in January 1813. He advertised the book widely and it was an immediate success, garnering many favorable reviews and selling well.

Pride and Prejudice is a romance novel by Jane Austen,

first published in 1813. The story charts the emotional

development of the protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, who learns

the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference

between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the

writing lies in the depiction of manners, education, marriage

and money in the British Regency.

It was probably in the winter of 1811, after Sense and Sensibility had been published, but before it was known to be a success, that Jane started to revise the book originally called First Impressions. She now turned it into the Pride and

Prejudice we’d recognise. The story of Jane and Lizzy Bennet had remained a firm Austen family favourite. ‘I do

not wonder’, Jane wrote to Cassandra, ‘at your wanting to read first impressions again.’ But when Jane came to revise it for publication, it had to have a new title. Another novel called First Impressions by a different author had appeared

in 1801.

Pride and Prejudice, the product of Jane’s twenties, as well as her thirties at Chawton, is firmly set in Austen-land, that country neighborhood with the occasional big house and plentiful parsonages. Here people very familiar from Jane’s real life lived, quarrelled and loved. ‘You are now collecting your People delightfully,’ Jane advised her niece Anna, when the latter came to write a novel of her own, ‘3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.’ Not for

her the extravagant adventures of a novel like Mary Brunton’s Self-Control (1811), with its heroine who was

‘wafted down an American river in a boat by herself ’. Why stop there, Jane asked? Why not have her waft right across

the Atlantic and end up at Gravesend?

Mr. Bennet of the Longbourn estate has five daughters, but his property is entailed, meaning that none of the girls can inherit

it. His wife has no fortune, so it is imperative that at least one of the girls marry well in order to support the others on his death.

Jane Austen's opening line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good

fortune must be in want of a wife" is a sentence filled with irony and playfulness. The novel revolves around the necessity of marrying for love, not simply for monetary reasons, despite

the social pressures to make a good [i.e. wealthy] match.

JaneBennet

Rosamund Pike

Pride and Prejudice retains the fascination of modern readers, consistently appearing near the top of lists of "most-loved

books" among both literary scholars and the general public. It has become one of the most popular novels in English

literature, with over 20 million copies sold, and paved the way

for many archetypes that abound in modern literature. Continuing interest in the book has resulted in a number of

dramatic adaptations and an abundance of novels and stories imitating Austen's memorable characters or themes.The 2005

film, Pride and Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen is the most recent Hollywood adaption of the book.

• Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) - the second of the Bennet daughters, she is twenty years old and intelligent, lively, playful, attractive, and witty—but with a tendency to judge on first impressions. As the story progresses, so does her relationship with Mr. Darcy. The course of Elizabeth and Darcy's relationship is ultimately decided when Darcy overcomes his pride, and Elizabeth overcomes her prejudice, leading them both to surrender to their love for each other.

• Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Matthew MacFadwyn) - the wealthy friend of Mr. Bingley. A newcomer to the village, he is ultimately Elizabeth Bennet's love interest. Mr. Darcy is the twenty-eight year old wealthy owner of the renowned family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire, and is rumoured to be worth at least £10,000 a year. While being handsome, tall, and intelligent, Darcy lacks ease and social graces, and so others frequently mistake his aloof decorum and rectitude as further proof of excessive pride (which, in part, it is).

• Mr. Bennet (Donald Southerland)- A late-middle-aged landed gentleman of a modest income of £2000 per annum, and the dryly sarcastic patriarch of the now-dwindling Bennet family (a family of landed gentry), with five unmarried daughters. His estate, Longbourn, is entailed to the male line.

• Mrs. Bennet - (Brenda Blethyn) the middle-aged wife of her social superior, Mr. Bennet, and the mother of their five daughters. Mrs. Bennet is a hypochondriac who imagines herself susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations ("[her] poor nerves"), whenever things are not going her way. Her main ambition in life is to marry her daughters off to wealthy men. Whether or not any such matches will give her daughters happiness is of little concern to her.

• Jane Bennet (Rosamund Pike) the eldest Bennet sister. Twenty-two years old when the novel begins, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighborhood and is inclined to see only the good in others. She falls in love with Charles Bingley, a rich young gentleman recently moved to Hertfordshire and a close friend of Mr. Darcy.

• Mary Bennet (Talulah Riley) the middle Bennet sister, and the plainest of her siblings. Mary has a serious disposition and mostly reads and plays music, although she is often impatient to display her accomplishments and is rather vain about them. She frequently moralizes to her family.

• Catherine "Kitty" Bennet (Carey Mulligan) The fourth Bennet daughter at 17 years old. Though older than Lydia, she is her shadow and follows her in her pursuit of the officers of the militia. She is often portrayed as envious of Lydia and is described as a "silly" young woman. However, it is said that she improved when removed from Lydia's influence.

• Lydia Bennet (Jena Malone) the youngest Bennet sister, aged 15 when the novel begins. She is frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socializing, especially flirting with the officers of the militia. This leads to her running off with George Wickham, although he has no intention of marrying her. Lydia shows no regard for the moral code of her society; as Ashley Tauchert says, she "feels without reasoning."[4]others; his two sisters,

• Charles Bingley (Simon Woods) a handsome, amiable, wealthy young gentleman who leases Netherfield Park, an estate three miles from Longbourn, with the hopes of purchasing it. He is contrasted with Mr. Darcy for having more generally pleasing manners, although he is reliant on his more experienced friend for advice.

• Caroline Bingley ( the vainglorious, snobbish sister of Charles Bingley, with a dowry of £20,000. Miss Bingley harbors designs upon Mr. Darcy, and therefore is jealous of his growing attachment to Elizabeth.'s.

• George Wickham (Rupert Friend, also Albert in The Young Victoria) Wickham has been acquainted with Mr. Darcy since infancy, being the son of Mr. Darcy's father's steward. An officer in the militia, he is superficially charming and rapidly forms an attachment with Elizabeth Bennet. He later runs off with Lydia with no intention of marriage, which would have resulted in her complete disgrace, but for Darcy's intervention to bribe Wickham to marry her by paying off his immediate debts.

• Mr. William Collins (Tom Holland) Mr. Collins, aged 25 years old as the novel begins, is Mr. Bennet's distant second cousin, a clergyman, and the current heir presumptive to his estate of Longbourn House. He is an obsequious and pompous man who is excessively devoted to his patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

• Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Judi Dench) the overbearing aunt of Mr. Darcy. Lady Catherine is the wealthy owner of Rosings Park, where she resides with her daughter Anne and is fawned upon by her rector, Mr. Collins. She is haughty, pompous, domineering, and condescending, and has long planned to marry off her sickly daughter to Darcy, to 'unite their two great estates', claiming it to be the dearest wish of both her AND her late sister.

•

Jane described Lizzy Bennet as the most ‘delightful a creature as ever appeared in print’, and was proud of her

creation. ‘How I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know’, she wrote.

But there would indeed be those who disliked Lizzy, those who thought that she had far more to say than a proper heroine should. Only an ‘entire want of taste’, thought

Jane’s fellow author Mary Russell Mitford, ‘could produce so pert, so worldly a heroine’.

Lizzie, a new kind of heroine..outspoken, opinionated

too sharp-tongued. too modern

Jane’s most discerning readers, such as William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, understood exactly what she

was up to.

Gifford thought that Pride and Prejudice was ‘really a very pretty thing. No dark passages; no secret chambers; no

wind-howlings in long galleries; no drops of blood upon a rusty dagger – things that should now be left to lady’s

maids, and sentimental washerwomen.’

Some readers appreciated the book and the heroine

Pride and Prejudice had terrific sales, helped by more reviews.

The Critical Review in March 1813 praised the novel for the ‘delineation of domestic scenes. Nor is there one

character which appears flat, or obtrudes itself upon the notice of the reader with troublesome impertinence.’

It was all so “natural,” unstudied, flowing.

The secret soon gets out that the author of these books is indeed Jane Austen. Life now changes.

Jane’s fictional world was so perfectly, minutely and solidly constructed that it took another brilliant and unusual writer, Charlotte Brontë, a generation later, to pull it

down.

Brontë memorably described Pride and Prejudice as ‘a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders

and delicate flowers – but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy – no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her

ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.’ She concludes her demolition job with ‘these observations

will probably irritate’.

Charlotte Bronte didn’t like it.

Word-of-mouth publicity about this unknown author of the book of the season was spreading in circles far

beyond Hampshire and Kent.

Annabella Milbanke, who would end up marrying Lord Byron, praised Pride and Prejudice for avoiding all ‘the common resources of novel writers, no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lap-dogs and

parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor recontres and disguises. I really think it is the most

probable fiction I have ever read.’

Annabella Milbanke did like it.

1. The novel opens at Longbourn with Mrs. Bennet trying to persuade Mr. Bennet to visit Mr. Bingley, an eligible bachelor who has arrived in the neighborhood. The visit is followed

by an invitation to a ball at the local assembly rooms that the whole neighborhood will attend.

2. At the ball, Mr. Bingley is open and cheerful, popular with all the guests, and appears to be very attracted to the beautiful Miss Jane Bennet. His

friend, Mr. Darcy, is reputed to be twice as wealthy; however, he is haughty and aloof. He declines to dance with Elizabeth, suggesting (in an asdie

which she overhears) that she is not pretty enough to tempt him. She finds this amusing and jokes about the statement with her friends. Mr. Bingley's

sister, Caroline, later invites Jane to visit.

3. When Jane visits Miss Bingley, she is caught in a rain shower on the way and comes down with a serious cold. Elizabeth visits the ill Jane at Netherfield. There Darcy begins to be attracted to Elizabeth, while Miss Bingley becomes jealous, since she has designs on Darcy herself.

4. Mr. Collins, a cousin of Mr. Bennet and heir to the Longbourn estate, visits the Bennet family. He is a pompous and

obsequious clergyman, who expects each of the Bennet girls to wish to marry him due to his inheritance. He quickly decides to propose to Elizabeth when he is told that

Jane is taken.

5.Elizabeth and her family meet the dashing and charming George Wickham, who singles out Elizabeth and tells her a story of the hardship

that Mr. Darcy has caused him by depriving him of a living (position as clergyman in a

prosperous parish with good revenue that, once granted, is for life) promised to him by Mr. Darcy's late father. Elizabeth's dislike of Mr.

Darcy is confirmed.

At a ball at Netherfield, Elizabeth reluctantly dances with Mr. Darcy. Other than Jane and Elizabeth, several members of the Bennet family show a

distinct lack of decorum. Mrs. Bennet hints loudly that she fully expects Jane and Bingley to become engaged and the younger Bennet sisters otherwise

expose the family to ridicule.

6. In the spring, Elizabeth visits Charlotte and Mr. Collins in Kent. Elizabeth and her hosts are invited to Rosings Park, the imposing home of Lady

Catherine de Bourgh, patroness of Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy's extremely wealthy aunt. She expects Mr. Darcy to marry her daughter. Mr. Darcy and his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, are also visiting at Rosings Park. Colonel

Fitzwilliam tells Elizabeth how Mr. Darcy managed to save a friend from a bad match by convincing the friend of the lady's indifference. Elizabeth

realizes the story must refer to Jane. Mr. Darcy, meanwhile, has fallen in love with Elizabeth and proposes to her. She rejects him angrily.

Darcy’sRentedHouse:

NetherfieldPark

Pemberley House Darcy’s home (Chatsworth House)

PemberleyHouse

Darcy’s home(Chatsworth

House)

Rosings, Lady Catherine de Bourgh

MarriageThe opening line of the novel famously announces: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." This sets marriage as a central subject—and really, a central problem—for the novel generally. Readers are poised to question whether or not these single men are, in fact, in want of a wife, or if such desires are dictated by the "neighborhood" families and their daughters who require a "good fortune". Marriage is a complex social activity that takes political economy, and economy more generally, into account. marrying when one is in love is introduced. Elizabeth only accepts Darcy's proposal when she is certain she loves him and her feelings are reciprocated. Austen's complex sketching of different marriages ultimately allows readers to question what forms of alliance are desirable.

MAJOR THEME LOVE AND MARRIAGE

LESSON: Do not accept a loveless marriage.

FINAL ILLNESSAusten made light of her

condition, describing it as "bile" and rheumatism. As her illness progressed, she experienced difficulty walking and lacked energy; by mid-April she was

confined to bed. In May Cassandra and Henry brought

her to Winchester for treatment, by which time she suffered

agonizing pain,

FINAL ILLNESS Austen died in Winchester on 18

July 1817, at the age of 41. Henry, through his clerical connections,

arranged for his sister to be buried in the north aisle of the nave of

Winchester Cathedral. The epitaph composed by her brother James

praises Austen's personal qualities, expresses hope for her salvation and mentions the "extraordinary

endowments of her mind."

Jane Austen1775- July 18, 1817