How does the incipit of Pride and Prejudice legitimate the moral criticism of women's place in the Georgian society that it foreshadows as being the matter of the forthcoming narrative?

Thèmes abordés

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, criticism of women's place in the Georgian society, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, social code, woman's speech, man's speech, feminism movement, womanhood

Résumé du document

Jane Austen's works occupy a central place in the early-19th century literature as it contributed to the link between the Enlightenment period, Romanticism, and Realism, to which she added feminism.

In the incipit of Pride and Prejudice, a work which was published in 1813, the narrator relates a conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Mrs. Bennet informs that Mr. Bingley, a young and wealthy man, is soon to settle in a nearby house. She immediately thinks of marrying one of their daughters to this man but she faces her husband's sarcasm and mockery. Indeed, Mr. Bennet seems ironically not to feel very preoccupied by his daughter's future.

Extraits

[...] Here, the couple is torn between two antithetical conceptions of married love and the future of their daughter. The narrator uses both direct and indirect showing to introduce her characters, but in a particular order. The narrator first characterises them by using indirect showing through the dialogue, particularly for Mrs. Bennet's personality, which is apprehended by the reader through her speech: she is very excited and uses a lot of expressions. For example, the reader feels the thrill of Mrs. [...]

[...] I find discordance in sentences such as is more than I engage (l. 36) in response to must indeed go and see Mr. Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood“ (l. 35). Moreover, Mrs. Bennet does not believe Lizzy is bit better than the others“ (l. 42) : by using this comparison, Mrs. Bennet shows that her daughters are all equal to her eyes, with what her husband disagrees : “they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters“ (l. [...]

[...] The use of a dialogue, without the narrator's subjectivity, and opened by a true conception of married love such as it was believed during the era of the writing, are pieces of evidence that the text is aimed at being objective. This prudence with which the objectivity seems to have been elaborated does not prevent the author to use realism to depict how the heart can challenge moral codes of an era. On the contrary, by showing two characters who are described with the same precaution, the reader is able to choose which one he prefers, which ones he likes, and which one he feels he can identify himself to. [...]

[...] However, he appears to be different in his conception of marriage. Different analyses can be made of his behaviour. For example, when he asks so? how can it affect (l. I wonder if it is whether to show that he is not really preoccupied by marrying his daughters, or to kind of check if her wife knows what could be considered as a lesson: a woman has to marry a wealthy man. This ambiguity is also made thanks to the absence of a broad flow of words. [...]

[...] Young ladies did not have the right to complain concerning the man their parents had chosen for their union. This is what is explicitly showed in this incipit, and it also is what Austen fights against. On the one hand, the first sentence, as I have already explained, is here to give authority to what is defended by the parents, such as it was believed during the 19th century in England. On the other hand, the narrator gives such a pathetic view of how decisions affecting whole lives are made: Mrs. [...]