What do pride and prejudice end with

Bennet different? What is entailment, and what role does it play in the novel? Who is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and how does she influence the plot? Why does Wickham lie to Elizabeth? What role does prejudice play in the novel? Essays What Does the Ending Mean? Previous section Suggested Essay Topics. Popular pages: Pride and Prejudice. Now, we're not talking about conservatism as in right-wing American politicians.

Here, we mean more basically the idea of conserving and preserving the status quo. Things are good now, and they were even better a little while ago, so let's all go back to that time, shall we? This line of thought reads Austen as very conservative.

After all, the end of the novel, everyone is married and settled and happy ever after. No loose ends, everything packed away into neat little boxes and squared away. Men are still superior to women, women aren't agitating for rights and whatnot, and everything is hunky-dory. Then again, there's a way to see the ending as progressive. After all, Darcy and Bingley are totally upper class, what with the estate-owning and the not-having-to-work-for-a-living.

The Bennets are strictly middle class, with uncles who work and daughters who won't inherit the house they live in. Still, despite this huge class barrier, the Bennet girls end up married to Darcy and Bingley. No one is scandalized by this! Aside from Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Then coy Miss Bingley attempts to converse with Darcy while he is engaged in reading. What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr.

Later, after Elizabeth has shed her initial false impressions about Darcy, she recollects the evolution of her feelings toward him. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley. Not to mention the fact that he built me my own library, and its shelves are overflowing.

Romance Is Not Enough Mr. Bennet married, we learn later, out of youthful imprudence and passion. This same error is repeated by their daughter Lydia who is all romance, no prudence when she elopes with the conniving Wickham who is all prudence with no romance. Austen would not likely be surprised at recent findings reported here at The Atlantic that for the middle class today which is approximately the class of the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice the difference between a happy marriage and a miserable one is something decidedly unromantic: chores.

You Really Do Marry a Family, Not Just a Person A survey in the November issue of Glamour found that the majority of men polled by the magazine said that they judge a woman by her family. This truth universally acknowledged forms one of the great obstacles between Elizabeth and Darcy, a point revealed in the explanatory letter Darcy writes to Elizabeth following her refusal of one of the most infamous marriage proposals in all of literature.

Bennet], by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father. Pardon me. It pains me to offend you. These familial objections are, of course, overcome in time for the happily ever after. But Darcy has recognized, wisely, that he is marrying into a family and he does so with open eyes and readiness—as much as that is possible—to accept that fact of life.