What role does social class play in pride and prejudice?
Posted on November 13th, 2008 in Social Classes Pride And Prejudice, Realtionship, Social Class
Drew asked:
I have a paper due soon on pride and prejudice and topic states:
“Discuss the importance of social class in the novel, especially as it impacts the realtionship between Darcy and Elizabeth. Use specific examples.”
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March 30th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Social class is probably among the most important things in the novel. Bingley’s sisters don’t want him to marry Jane because the Bennet’s are of such a lower class in society than they are. The same goes for Darcy and Elizabeth. The Bennets have very little money, especially compared to Bingley and Darcy. The upper levels of society frowned upon those with less money because they saw them as less cultured and important.
Hope this helps!!
March 31st, 2008 at 2:59 am
Pride and Prejudice: great book!
Ok… social class played an important role because the apparent differences between Darcy and Elizabeth would have caused problems in that day and age. (Simply the history of England during this time, which backed Jane Austen’s writing, explains the class issue.) Darcy was very, very rich and belonged to the upper class, whereas Elizabeth was poorer and in the middle, if not lower class…This posed problems for them because the differences in wealth and class were a great source for gossip, and just conflict in general: (people of 2 different classes just didn’t get married then) often times, people couldn’t tell whether they were being married for love, or just their money…
In the beginning, Elizabeth equated Darcy’s smugness and hoity-toity behavior to his rank in society; this made Elizabeth resent Darcy in almost every way…until she realized his real story. The character Lady Catherine DeBourge also shows the extreme differences in social class because she (being very rich also, and the aunt of Darcy) noted to Elizabeth a couple times how the
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