Letters to Alice and Pride and Prejudice Comparative Study

Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen offers a new, alternate and provocative lens for viewing Pride and Prejudice. Discuss the validity of this statement with reference to the set texts and the extract.

Fay Weldon’s Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen provides the reader with a more informed approach to Pride and Prejudice through the engagement with Weldon’s provocative interpretation of Austen’s context. These texts look at the similar thematic concerns and discuss how they are represented through the author’s respective contexts. Although both novels have epistolary characteristics, Letters to Alice is more overtly didactic than Pride and Prejudice. Together, these texts look at the necessity of marriage and the changing societal roles of women. This provides the audience with a different perspective and further highlights their binary opposition of contextual structure.

Relationships in the texts explore the alterations in contexts between Weldon’s post-feminist and Austen’s Georgian England. Enid and Edward’s relationship in Letters to Alice is strained. They live in a very patriarchal household, which is indicative of Austen and her contextual period. Edward is described as oppressive and sexist and believes that “feminists (as non-feminists regard me) are dangerous to the structure of society in general and marriage in particular.” Edward is conservative in order to maintain the patriarchalism. This is shown when Aunt Fay states “no doubt she will start writing about your and Edward’s intimate marital relationship for all the world to see and then Edward will ban her from the house.” Weldon’s use of “then Edward will ban her from the house” implies that, indicative of Austen, Enid will have no say in the familial structure and decisions made in the household. Weldon creates such characters in order to evoke a response from the audience based on their personal views of the representation of the text. Enid and Edward’s relationship is...