Class, reputation, and love are a few of the themes that are seen continuously throughout the book. I thought adding the idea of pride vs. prejudice in the themes proved complicated.
Society's class system shows the pride of one class over the other and all classes can hold prejudices against the others. Miss Bingley for example was prideful over the Bennets. I think prejudice is complicated in this book dealing with class. It is like the prejudices of the Bennets reinforces the prejudices Miss Bingley holds against them. It is just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, reputation often tied in with the characters class. Once the younger sister ran off with Wickham the people in that society could have held prejudices against her reputation and people can also express pride through their reputation.
Again, with love some characters seemed prideful and have prejudices against the idea of love.
Adding these themes to the debate of is it better to be prideful or have prejudices makes it a lot harder to decide which characters way of living is better. It is harder to see the drawbacks when the choices are between just the two, but adding the complications of the subcategories seen in the book makes it impossible.
I wish I could explain this better, but I hope you guys see what I'm trying to say.
Danielle, As always, your analysis is penetrating and insightful. I always look forward to reading your posts. Indeed, there are more gray areas than there are black and white in Austen's work. Everything is in flux, and it is difficult to pin anything down.There are no fixed truths.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Charles- I love your posts and your comments in class...you know how to get inside and analyze subtexts with amazing clarity. I agree with what you are saying and have to add that I still see this flux today. We struggle now on some levels with class prejudice but now it is even more complicated with race and orientation. As in Austen's time, we are so busy "seeing" what we thing is important we don't see anything at all. If we could stop categorizing and cataloging and worry more about the substance within people life certainly would be a lot easier.
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