The Awareness of Qualifying Exam and Its Effects on Students

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

Title: Pride and Prejudice

The society that Jane Austen presents in “Pride and Prejudice” is concerned with the status and the appearance. The theme of judgment is evident throughout the novel as assessing people is apparently a preferred pastime.

Guilty of pride and prejudice, the two main characters must realize that they have made a mistake before they can live in happiness. Even though they both suffer from the faults of pride and prejudice, they surrender to self-respect and intelligence. Minor characters also reflect the theme.

The title “Pride and Prejudice” suitably points to the theme of the novel. The novel goes beyond the simple statement of first impressions and explores in complexity how pride and prejudice grows and how they can be overcome.

Author: Jane Austen

Jane Austen is often regarded as the greatest of English novelists because of her six completed novels. They are still as widely read today as they have ever been, particularly for their sparkling social comedy and accurate vision of human relationships.

According to R.W. Chapman, 1926, Jane Austen’s self-contained life often seems reflected in her novels, which, peopled as they are from impoverished clerical families, eligible country squires, foolish snobs and husband-hunting women, seem to portray the world in miniature.

Sir Walter Scott praised Jane Austen for “that exquisite touch which renders ordinary, commonplace, things and characters interesting”, while Sommerset Maugham claimed that she had at her command “the most precious gift a novelist can possess”, that of keeping the reader’s interest.

Discussion

Chapter 1

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Illustrated by the statement of the novel, prejudging is unmistakably obvious. The opening establishes that in the social world of English gentlemen, the pursuit of marriage is dominant. In...