Comparative+Study

This page is for the module Comparative Study.


 * Pride and Prejudice and Letters to Alice**

Through conflicting and similar values which can be seen in the context. Connections between texts are recognised through a variety of approaches i.e. the consideration of direct or indirect references, values, ideas and the use of language features and forms. What these connections have to establish is the notion that the meaning and understanding of a text is not static but is rather shaped and reshaped through its relationship with other texts in this case Pride and Prejudice and Letters to Alice.
 * Re: How do you compare letters to Alice and pride and prejudice?**

So if you analyse, compare the texts and construct an extended response it's:

1.Thesis 2.Examples of contexts leading to values to justify thesis and establish connections 3.Quotes to support connections 4.Techniques in quotes to relay connections 5.Link to thesis and how it causes a shaping or reforming of meaning in BOTH texts. 6.Repeat 2-5 many times 7.Conclusion

Comparative Study • Focuses on relationships between texts-possible links being overt or subtle and relating to thematic, contextual and stylistic features • Comparative study can develop a greater understanding/appreciation of the times in which both texts were created • Meaning of text is interpretive, can change over time and is dependent on responder’s personal attitudes and values as well as relationships that might exist with other texts, past and present • Attitudes, values, composer’s purpose and individual achievements can be better understood by consideration of connections Historical Context-Austen Victorian Age • Period unparalleled power for British Empire • Industrial revolution- leaps in technology, industrialisation, engineering, development of electric lights and rail system • Time of peace, prosperity and colonisation- underpinned by economic changes brought by the Industrial Revolution • Time of political turmoil and conflict, both overseas with colonies and at home • Time of great achievement in architecture, literature and the arts and science • Focus on role of women and limited legal rights of women only began to be addressed at end of period • Victorian England- women seen as pure and untainted- lead to concept of the “ideal woman” • - stereotypically seen as a strict and formal society. Sex was not spoken or written about, and women were second-class citizens Women in Victorian England • Married women had similar rights to those of children. The law regarded a married couple as one person. The husband was responsible for his wife and bound by law to protect her. She was supposed to obey. Personal property that the wife brought into the marriage became the property of the husband, even in the event of divorce • Custody of children rested solely with the father • Some reforms to laws regarding custody and divorce during the course of 19th century • 1857 Act- women given limited access to divorce. Husband only had to prove wife’s adultery; women had to prove adultery as well as incest, bigamy, cruelty or desertion. • Double standard existed with regard to sex outside marriage. Husband could use prostitutes and this wasn’t considered infidelity • Generally, women’s role was to run the household and entertain the husband’s guests, to look after children and her own education; be ‘sick nurse’ if anyone was ill and watch over her ageing parents.

Pride and Prejudice • Setting restricted-typical of Austen’s novels-uses this as a microcosm of the world generally. She uses the experiences of a select few people in a small setting to make more universal comments Marriage • Number of factors affects the quality of marriage. Austen reflects the values of the church and her time-not acceptable to have a relationship without being wed. The world of her novels demanded marriage • Austen comments that some marriages weren’t good matches. She makes clear that marriages should involve affection but they also need to be financially sensible. She also suggests that partners should balance each other-one can help remedy deficits in the other. Through different marriages in the text Austen demonstrates her ideas. • Marriage as the economic basis of life and the means of attaining social status or financial security is parodied in the novel. It remains clear, however, that for young ladies of limited fortune or beauty, marriage was really the only option for a secure future. Mrs Bennet is on a constant quest to marry off her five daughters for “the business of her life was to get her daughters married.” • Women were forced by social conventions to attract a potential mate through becoming “accomplished” in singing, playing the piano, drawing and dancing. • We are directly informed of Charlotte Lucas’ pragmatism “without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune…” • She bluntly tells Elizabeth, “I am not a romantic, you know. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr Collins’ character, connections and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.” • Mrs Bennet is equally blunt with Elizabeth when learning of her refusal of Mr Collins’ proposal, “If you go on refusing every offer of marriage, you will never get a husband-and I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father is dead.” • Charlotte readily admits she is, “accepting him solely from the pure disinterested desire for an establishment.” Since she is already 27 years old and from a large family with little funds, she feels that, “Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance” and as such it is her best chance of having a reasonable standard of living. If she fails to marry, she would have to remain with her family as a “dependent” or having to take up employment as a “lady’s companion” or a governess. Marriage, even to the odious Mr Collins seems a better option. Money • Matches made with no money on either side are shown to be imprudent. In an era where the gentry had narrow opportunities for making money, it’s important that an income was ensured. While Austen believes love should be involved, it shouldn’t be substituted for sensible behaviour. Yet the idea that money would be pursued without affection is criticised. • There must be love. Charlotte’s marriage to Collins repulses Elizabeth. Charlotte believes “Happiness in marriage is purely a matter of chance” and “I am not a romantic…I ask only a comfortable home”. Austen cannot agree. The reader sees how Charlotte’s choices are logical, helped by Weldon’s explanation, and we find it hard to criticise. Yet we can’t enjoy the relationship. We pity her for what she must endure because the alternative for her are much worse. • Love is shown as different to lust or passion. Lydia and Wickham whose ‘passions were stronger than their virtue” are shown as a poor love match. • Elizabeth’s slow-developing affection for Darcy is presented positively “It has been coming on so gradually, and I hardly know when it began.” Darcy and Elizabeth last through Lydia’s shame. This links to Weldon’s comments to her niece about character building aspects of relationships.

Weldon • One of Weldon’s chief aims is to give an appraisal of Jane Austen’s times and work. • Weldon argues Austen’s value today-she shows through her discussion that there’s much to learn from Austen stylistically and thematically. Universal concerns about relationships and social responsibility are still relevant. She may be sceptical about the notion of “just deserts” and thinks Austen was bending her messages to the demands of her times • Weldon recognised as a feminist and is interested in the experiences of women. She explores the realities of childbirth and the very real fears associated with reproduction. She looks at the desirability for marriage in Victorian England and the alternatives of not marrying. Her version of history has a clear feminist bias. It’s a slant that leads her to make some rather unique judgements on characters in P&P. she tolerates Mrs Bennet’s desperation and really understands Charlotte’s choices. She is more charitable than Austen • Weldon concerned with women supporting women. She recommends Alice support the Professor’s wife “My advice to you is, consider the nature of Unlovable. You may be wrong about her”. Interestingly, Alice is friends with the professor’s wife by the final letters. • The reader, as the surrogate Alice, glean important details about the author’s Georgian context and opens up a contextual window into the novelist’s world • Gender divide between men and women is made clear as is the overarching oppressiveness of patriarchal society “Jane Austen’s books are studded with fathers indifferent to their families’ (in particular their daughters’) welfare.” • Weldon tells Alice that Austen “lived in a society which assumed-as ours does-that its values were right.”We learn that “only 30% of women married” so that the obsession with marriage that is found in P&P suddenly takes on new meaning. Austen’s status as a spinster still forced to live with her family would obviously impact on her depiction of the social expectation and practical difficulty of marrying well. • Weldon encourages her niece to appreciate the importance of this- contemplate a social environment different to her own. “To marry was a great prize. It was a woman’s aim. No wonder Jane Austen’s heroines were so absorbed by the matter. It is the stuff of our women’s magazines but it was the stuff of their life, their very existence.” • Weldon’s interest in feminist issues seen in other revelations to Alice about female lifestyle, quickly dispelling any “vision of Georgian England as a rural idyll”. She asserts that “Women survived, in Jane Austen’s day, by pleasing and charming if they were middle classes, and by having a good, strong back if they were the peasantry.” Weldon tells her niece, “Alice, by your standards, it was a horrible time to be alive.” • Weldon also describes Austen’s family as being, “energetic and intelligent people…well-read, lively and far from boring.” Mention is also made that while momentous historical events were happening in the period in which she was writing, Austen chose not to write about them. We are informed that the Austens were not “cut off from world events. Their newspapers were informative and discursive. It is true that the world of politics and power, dissent and revolution, feature almost not at all, in Jane Austen’s novels, but this was surely from choice rather than from ignorance.” • Weldon discusses Austen’s work, including all seven novels. While there is no special emphasis given to P&P over any other novel, we get a real sense of Austen the writer. In the opening letter we are told that Austen “gave herself, through her writing, another life that outran her own; a literary life”. • Austen’s literature snubbed the conventions of the popular sentimental romances and gothic novels of her time because of their emotional excesses and melodramatic elements. Instead, she chose to write about her own lifestyle and social context. • Her characters moved within a narrow social framework, where specific rules of conduct were strictly promoted along with values of order, reason and good sense. • Her style is highly controlled, full of satiric humour and dialogue. Her language does not exhibit excessive rhetoric or prolixity(tedious language) except when she chooses to deliberately use the narrative style to caricature figures such as Mr Collins • Plots tend to be concerned with problems, complications and misunderstandings that beset young lovers. These typically relate to matters such as family, property, wills, wealth or breeding. • P&P explores social attitudes, values and relationships. The novel challenges us-it causes us to re-examine the values we take for granted and the values we have let die • Austen’ essentially conservative position on the role of women in her era is seen in the novel’s ending. She does, however, advocate greater independence for women through her strong-minded, female protagonist. Elizabeth’s personality represents a clear deviation from social expectations “an awareness of the stupidity and unfairness of a patriarchal, capitalist society permeates every aspect of Austen’s fiction” (Claudia Johnson). The novel can serve as a social commentary to which a “feminist lens” can be applied. • Austen’s literary achievements are reinforced throughout the letters “but no-one would burn Emma. No-one would dare…It’s literature with a capital L”. details about Austen’s novels are encapsulated within the general didactic advice that is given from aunt to niece. Austen the writer is brought to life for readers because she is humanised and put within a context that is also made easier to comprehend. Rather than present the well-grounded research on Austen’s life and work in a typical critical format, Weldon presents information in the same epistolary forms that was popular in Georgian times. She uses literary aspects of the times to comment on the times. • In a barbed observation of the social hypocrisy and pretentiousness of the Georgian era, Weldon comments that, Austen likes to see the division between nobility and gentry broken down-or perhaps she merely wishes to ennoble the rather dreadful habit the nobility had, of using the gentry as their breeding ground-choosing suitable mothers for their children as they chose mates for their farm animals.” • In a sense we see issues presented in novels such as P&P through new eyes, given what is learned through Weldon’s epistolary style. • It’s clear that Weldon is stressing the quality of literature such as that written by Austen as being of inestimable value, “as opposed to just books”. There is value in such texts that has a longevity denied to the texts found in the seedier streets of the “City of Invention”. In the opening letter Weldon tells Alice that Austen is an observer of life “She observes it: she does not condemn”. • This so-called “City of Invention” is vividly evoked, created mental landscape of buildings, thoroughfares, complete with transport, bustling crowds. This is multi-dimensional metaphor that allows Weldon to differentiate the different styles and qualities of “bestsellers” as against other literary texts that have longer lasting qualities. This use of metaphor gives depth and resonance to the power of Literature to communicate ideas, values and attitudes that remain timeless and universal long after their era of composition. • Weldon asserts that in this city, the more popular texts are inferior to Austen. They lack the substance of real literature because they have nothing but fleeting entertainment value, “because they don’t enlighten, they are unimportant.” • Weldon’s use of first person omniscient narrator, authoritative, confident tone as well as the assumed persona of experienced, older family mentor, makes the reader more prone to accept the assumptions that are presented. Love • Notions of love examined via the various relationships that are revealed within the novel • Attachments based on materialistic or mercenary considerations rather than romantic inclinations such as that between Charlotte Lucas and Mr Collins, abound in Austen’ world. They have little to recommend them but neither do those triggered by passion and mere physical attraction such as Mrs Bennet and Lydia and Wickham. • The ideal relationship by contrast is one ruled by reason rather than emotion, a connection that is “rationally founded” and based on compatibility. This is characterised by both parties having a “similarity of feeling and taste” as well as an “excellent understanding” of the other. Attuned intelligence, interests, outlook must underpin a successful romance as well as the ability to rationalise and readjust perceptions. Darcy’s First Proposal (Ch 11) • Comes as a shock to Elizabeth. He is clearly nervous and finds it difficult to express his feelings “he came towards her in an agitated manner.” • He declares to her “I admire and love you”…”In vain have I struggled” but reference to the inferiority of her family and the “degradation” it would mean to be connected to them destroys any chance of a positive reception. His first proposal is not delivered with great sensitivity. He is completely honest about his attempts to deny his interest because of her lowly connections. • Despite his fleeting sympathy, “He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed…His sense of inferiority-of its being a degradation-of the family obstacles…”. She lashes out in return; she is so angry that she is not even polite in her refusal. Her rejection causing surprise and shock. “His complexion became pale with anger and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature”. She is completely honest, telling him of his rude comments and despicable behaviour. She accuses him of not being “gentleman-like”. She goes on to declare “I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whomI could ever be prevailed to marry.” • He is incredulous that she could refuse him. His selfishness and pride is shown through his failure to consider the match deeply beyond himself. His “forced calmness” largely expresses the vehemence of his response “And this, is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me!” • She reviews whether her rebukes were warranted and can’t overlook the criticisms of her family as well as “his pride”. Such mixed feelings alert the reader to her misjudgement of the situation • Transition in her affections for Darcy is shown in her internal monologues where she reveals that “she respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself…” • His second proposal is couched in more humble, considerate terms. “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were in April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.” • Elizabeth accepts his offer “he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to be.”