Social commentary/criticism in Pride & Prejudice - Essay Example

As the events in her story are taken from her own experience, her novels can be called autobiographical. A woman was seen as a domesticated animal in her days, and she depicts this reality truly in her novels. Therefore, her novels are sometimes called domestic novels. In fact, it is her truthfulness to her petticoat experience which gave her a place among the greatest writers. Simple and ordinary life is the subject matter of Austen’s novels. The pages of her novels are filled with small tea parties, ball dances, and a few family visits.

War, or political turmoil, or earthquakes have no place in her novels. In spite of this, her novels have occupied permanent place in English literature. This paper is a critical analysis of the social commentary and criticism which can be seen in the novel. A brief look at the summary of Pride and Prejudice is essential in order to appreciate the criticism of the social life in Jane Austen’s work. The story is about the middle class family of Mr. Bennet who has five daughters. Mrs. Bennet is impatient when she finds that all her daughters have reached the marriageable age.

She knows that, according to the prevailing convention, the parents must create all chances for their daughters to come into contact with wealthy gentlemen seeking girls as their life-partners. The social customs of the time for achieving this were visits, parties, and balls. She urges her lazy but sensible husband to visit the neighbor who has recently come and settled there. From now on the story moves fast as the eldest daughter, Elizabeth, comes into contact with Mr. Darcy belonging to an upper class family.

Austen posits pride in Darcy and the prejudiced Elizabeth finds it difficult to be his beloved. Her sister, Jane falls in love with Mr. Bingley, a friend of Darcy, and the pride and prejudice of these characters complicate all relationships. A villain in the name of Wickam, an army officer, also gets entangled with the third daughter of Bennet to make the plot of the marriage market highly complicated. As if to expose the wicked practices in Austen’s society, Mr. Collins, a dull and foolish man, enters the scene ready to take any girl, without pride or prejudice.

The story moves not only by bringing all the pairs to the happy nuptial knot but also by exposing the false social habits, class snobbery, and the artificial manners of the time. The novel thus serves as a social commentary, filled with satire and irony. The opening sentence in Pride and Prejudice explains Jane Austin’s attitude to marriage: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife” (Prejudice, Ch. 1). This was the prevailing attitude in the period in which she lived.

There was none to refute this attitude in eighteenth century. However, she makes her characters to develop a sense of small resistance to this kind of attitude to marriage. This resistance becomes clearer as Austen moved to her final novels. This is one of the reasons why her novels are to be seen as reflecting the social attitude of the time. Everyone is persuading someone in her novels either to marry or not to marry a particular person. Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice not only resists this practice, but also gathers enough courage to air her views.

The whole attention of the readers turns to see the possibility of a young female character succeeding whenever a