The Insights of Cultural and Class Differences in Sense and Sensibility - Literature review Example

The major argument which is developed through the analysis of this novel is that it portrays the reality of many middle families with a good number of female daughters where mothers are really cautious about the marriages of their girls. Furthermore it represents a middle class culture’s thoughts versus the actual realities through stories of two different couples; Mr and Mrs Bennet and the other Jane and Bingley. Middle class people usually believe that once any couple gets married their feelings automatically start to develop but the relationship of Mr and Mrs Bennet and Jane and Bingley portrays the opposite. Similarly the novel represents the insights of cultural and class differences and the ways economy impacts relations. According to (Hardie & Lucas 2001), economics affects the relationships of young and financial instability and differences lead to separations and divorces. These financial differences exert stresses on the couples leading to increase in the conflicts and disagreements between them. These economic issues increase the regular level of violence between the couple. This novel is a classic work as it represents truth and insights of the life whereas it satisfies its readers as far as the enjoyment factor is concerned. Coming to the drawn argument this novel revolves around the story of Bennet’s family where there are five Bennet sisters and their mother’s major aim is to get her daughters married with advantageous guys as early as possible. Mostly the book revolves around Jane and Elizabeth who are the two elder sisters. Jane was a practical character whereas, Elizabeth was a quick witted one. Mr Bennet was a person with strong personality and intelligence but his wife who was a daughter of lawyer was totally opposite. She was not patient and was an obsessed personality. Other than that she had negative traits of being pushy and forceful all the time. On the other hand she was so desperate for the weddings of her daughter that she used to use embarrassing ways for her family to develop an interaction between her daughters and rich men. Mr Bennet was on the other hand a totally patient person with a calm personality so with time he surrendered himself to his wife but with the passing time became unsatisfied with his marriage. The major reasons behind the dissatisfaction were the personality traits and embarrassing behaviours of his wife. He started feeling irritated by her behaviour all the time but still chose to stay quite in front of her decisions. Now linking to the argument which was drawn earlier that middle class people believe when a couple is pushed in to marriage they automatically get involved while living together. But the cases presented in the novel portrays opposite. Irritating and all time forceful pushy behaviours lead to dissatisfactions amongst people making them unhappy about their marriages (Bautz & Tredell 2009). The argument was drawn in the first paragraph that middle class females believe that forceful marriages are fruitful too in the end but the reality is different. They are not fruitful and people stay dissatisfied from their relations. Linking it to the story of Jane and Bingley it could be evaluated that when couples are brought together again and again they start to develop attraction for each other. Such as Mr Bingley got attracted towards Jane and those initial attractions were the results of Mrs Bennet’s pushy behaviour. But Bingley proposed Jane as a result of their personal communications (Clark 1994). The insights of cultural and class differences are presented through the relationship of Elizabeth and Darcy. A social theory which Pierre Bourdieu explains the impacts of class differences on the relationships of people. It elicits that a huge difference in the social position is one of the biggest obstacles. Human beings in the society acting as the social agents are treated as the things and they suffer through different classifications. These classifications are the differences and people belonging to upper class consider them superior to the ones belonging to lower class. This process makes it difficult for the people to accept a relationship from lower class (Bourdieu 1987). Liking the theory to the story in the novel there was a huge gap in social classes of Elizabeth and Darcy which acted as the biggest obstacle for the acceptance of their relation. During the relationship Elizabeth passed through different stages which a middle class girl usually passes by: she faced discrimination and insulting treatments. While facing these behaviours she developed the sense of pride in herself creating conflicts in her relationship. But later when she went through psychological growth when she realized that she was wrong and she developed a positive attitude towards Darcy. Darcy as well had deep feelings for Elizabeth and he returned to get her at all the costs (Hardy 2011). The Narrator is a third person who is attempting to explain the culture of middle class families, the major role their females play and how class differences serve as huge obstacles between people. Narrator is basically a third person and this story is a Third Person Omniscient which portrays the thoughts of narrator. In the starting of the novel narrator quotes in an irony and humorous way: “It is truth...... in the want of a wife” ( ch 1, vol 1), giving a sense to the readers that she would be criticizing different aspects of people in this novel. Further there are other third person narrations as well such as “my dear Bennet” ( ch 1, vol 1). Apart from that the novel revolves around the story of Elizabeth and she is one of the significant characters. In narrator’s perspective females of middle class families are obsessed no matter in which country they live. Further class differences are always an obstacle. The novel with these perspectives changes the perception of people about the middle class families living in England such as people living in England are not expected or perceived to be obsessed about the marriages of their children and these perceptions are usually formed about the middle class people living in Asia. But this novel changes this perception and it shifts it to the thought that people in England are obsessed too especially females like the females of Asia. Further, narrator through describing class differences in her novel has successfully shaped a perception about elite class people that no matter in which country or state you live, even if it highly developed state like England, still middle class girls have to face discrimination and class differences are obstacles in relations. Hierarchy of Needs The theory of Frederick Herzberg suggests that the physiological needs of the people are the primary needs on which they focus majorly. Once people are able to achieve those needs, other needs are the desires of fulfilment of safety issues such as employment, morality, family and property. Then are the needs of love, friendships and relationships and sexual intimacy. Then after the needs for love and belongings, humans focus on meeting their needs of esteem and self actualization (Giesecke & McNeil 2010). This novel ‘great expectations’ is linked to the motivational theory of Frederick Herzberg. The argument which could be developed through the analysis of this novel is that people always seek to improve their social standing as it is described in the theory and the source of success which seems a good option to many of them with increased awareness is the level of education and literacy. With the increased literacy people believe they find opportunities to improve their surroundings to meet the needs of security so firstly they make efforts to educate themselves or if they are not able to they still find educated people impressive. Another thing which is portrayed clearly is the uneasiness of people towards their class. No one is born unlucky. People who have passion and will power to develop them develop their life and fate. But what the novels portrays is that people even after achieving higher level of success still feel inferior about their poor origin which shows high desires to fulfil the needs of self esteem and their interactions are different with the people from lower class and upper class. Other than that an argument which could be developed is that needs for love, pleasure, security and success are not developed by the modern means of communication used in current era but they exist since so long and people wait for them and their achievement as those needs are at the third level of hierarchy of needs (Tredell 2013). Relating to the story of Pip to the drawn argument, Pip was a guy with desire to improve his social standing and this desire of success and advancement never left him. He was found a guilty of some crime in his village but he managed to escape through there. He lived with his sister and brother in law Joe and he believed to be as successful in his future as his brother in law is. As his fortune supported a lavish benefactor settled an allowance on him and he went to London to develop his career. London was totally a new society to him which was quite challenging but this led him to prosperity and that new prosperity changed him in many ways and his social class improved too. Relating to another argument above Pip had interactions and meetings with the people from upper class and middle class but the origins of his birth were a source of embarrassment to him and he felt inferior about them. Pip as well was in love with a girl known as Estella since his childhood who used to abuse him and use him (Dickens 1861). Further Pip after achieving success focused on the education of the other gentlemen which supports the argument that people belonging to the lower classes have positive attitude towards the education and they find education a step to success so if any of them achieves success they focus on educating others too so that the people can develop themselves better. This story depicts totally different ways of achievement of satisfaction. As it is not a story of today’s century where people have a lot of options to socialize and interact with each other, it portrays that the level of satisfaction is dependant in such cases on the emotional pleasure, security and career achievements (Schlicke 2000). The narrator in this case is a first person “Pip” who is narrating his story at the age of 57. The novel portrays thoughts and views of narrator and how he believes in things like fortune and hard work. Further he is narrating the story of his own successful life and the difficulties he passed through. The Pip’s perspective which could be evaluated through the reading and analysing the novel is that some people who belong to lower classes have very strong passion for success and development as those needs are a part of their psychological satisfaction. Further education seems to them an important source of success but not all of them are able to achieve it due to the circumstances of their surroundings but still there are people who are only few in numbers with good fortune. Other than that another perspective is that people have inferior feelings even when they reach the richness such as he had in himself. They are still ashamed of their inferior origins. The novel with such perspective of narrator shapes positive perception about the poor young boys and fortune. Such as the novel elicits that anyone with passion and luck can achieve success even if he is poor. So it provides motivation to work hard and suggests not be hopeless if you are born poor. This type of narration is exciting and it helps readers to explore about real feelings and impressions of the narrators. Further as people narrate their own stories their feelings and expressions are genuine and more attention gaining. So readers here experience the experiences of Pip with him. Novel portrays a sense of directness and immediacy and the reading could be considered as truthful and authentic. References Bautz, A & Tredell, N 2009, Jane Austen: Sense and sensibility, Pride and prejudice, Emma, Palgrave Macmillan. Bourdieu, P 1987, What Makes a Social Class? On the Theoratical and Practical Existence of Groups, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, vol 32. Clark, R 1994, "Sense and Sensibility" and "Pride and Prejudice": Jane Austen, St. Martins Press. Dickens, C 1861, Great Expectations, James G. Gregory Publisher, New York. Giesecke, J & McNeil, B 2010, Fundamentals of Library Supervision. Hardie, JH & Lucas, A 2001, Economic Factors and Relationship Quality Among Young Couples: Comparing Cohabitation and Marriage, J Marriage Fam, vol 72, no. 5, pp. 1141–1154. Hardy, JP 2011, Jane Austens Heroines: Intimacy in Human Relationships, Routledge , New York. Schlicke, P 2000, Oxford Readers Companion to Dickens, Oxford University Press. Tredell, N 2013, Charles Dickens: David Copperfield/ Great Expectations, Palgrave Macmillan. Read More