Pride and Prejudice Intro.

1. Pride and Prejudice Intro.

2. How do you form judgments about strangers? How do you “read” people you’ve never met before when you see them for the first time?

3. Chs. 1-4: To consider… • How do various characters think about/define marriage? • Why do people marry in this society? • What is the Bennett family like? • How do people in this novel form judgments?

4. Briefly… • Published in 1813 • Social class and money • Austen grew up in a clergy family • Novel takes place among the landed gentry: inherited money • Characters’ worth is discussed in terms of inheritance and yearly income…so a person with 10,000 a year is worth twice as much as a person with 5,000 a year

5. Working classes • The poor • Few could read • The farmers • The servants • Marriage: the one way for a woman to possibly move up a class

6. Marriage • Cost money • Dowry • Only 30 % of women married • Your parents’ property went to your brothers • Women inherited only through husbands • To marry was a great prize and a woman’s aim • Austen never married. • At 30 she became a spinster (began wearing a cap)

7. Austen Herself • Born in December 1775, Died July 1817 at 41 • England at war with France (Napoleon invades Europe in 1798) • Napoleonic wars are also a background to this novel • Family • 6th child in a family of 7 children • http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/series/owc/audio/austen/ • Wrote her first book at 14 • Wrote first version of P and P in 1796: called it FirstImpressions • Took 16 years to get published as was not fashionable • Gothic novels were fashionable

8. More About Austen • Father died leaving them unprovided for • She and sister Cassandra lived at the courtesy of relatives • Made only 700 pounds during lifetime from her writing • Wrote 6 novels • Considered the Shakespeare of the novel • http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/series/owc/audio/austen/

9. Some Characteristics of her fiction: • Omniscient narrator (third person) • Latin omnis (all) and scire (to know). An omniscient narrator knows all about the characters. • Mr. Bennetwas so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

10. Pioneered Free indirect speech • Remains in past tense and third person, yet the words belong to the character rather than the narrator. • Indirect means no quotation marks and no “she thought” explicitly marking the thought process as the character’s • Has an ironic effect because we end up knowing more than the character does • Example: “She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her because he disliked her was still more strange.” P and P Ch. 10,p. 45

11. Characterization: How it is done • By other characters, and in relation to how we feel about them • Through their “own” words • Through the omniscient narrator • Example: Ch. 1 P and P

12. Types of characters • Flat: Mrs. Bennet • Round: Elizabeth begins flat, but soon becomes round • Use these terms cautiously…not all characters fit perfectly into one or the other category

13. Ch. 1: Analysis • By the end of Chapter 1, Austen has defined some of the primary themes of the novel and set up some of the basic relationships between characters. • Work as a group to: • List the themes that you see in Chapter 1, and… • Explain what you learn about the characters and how you learn it