Term Paper on "Pride and Prejudice the Communist Manifesto"

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The Great Enchantress is in the main a defense of the Gothic novelist as a woman of her time, fully cognizant of living in an age of transition and both accepting and denying the customs of her time. She could not be the Romantic revolutionary because the cultural pressures on women at the end of the eighteenth century were too great to overcome. Her radicalism, her alien vision, is, says Miles, to be discovered in her subtext. On the surface she is always the gentlewoman; beneath the surface she is something quite other.

Ryals 934)

Elizabeth Bennet is a clear example of the set stage of the situation that Romantic ideals of the changing set of characters, rising to the top of the traditional setting of the wealthy. She had developed a keen sense of shame with regard to the manner in which her family conducted itself, so much so that the development of an occasion for Mr. Darcy to meet her uncle, was welcome to her, as he was one of the only members of her family which she did not consider a vulgar and reprehensible soul. "Elizabeth could not but be pleased, could not but triumph. It was consoling, that he should know she had some relations for whom there was no need to blush."

Austen 193)

Elizabeth Bennet is one of Austin's most beloved characters and yet she is also the most demonstrative of the fact that "new money" and vulgarity were intermingled and created a sense of uncertainty for those in "legitimate" social standing. The main message of the novel is that one can overcome class to become one of the "greater" as apposed to continuing to be one of the "lesser," an insightful message of the romantic period. According to the introduction to the novel one of the most important scenes in the novel expresses through a series of chance meetings of Mr. Darcy a member of a higher class than Elizabeth that the lesser can indeed transgress the social boundaries of the day, though they must do so by playing by the rules. "The ease with which Elizabeth Bennet can be assimilated into high rank, accommodating herself to its demands, has enabled some critics to read this as an essentially conservative and 'anti-Jacobin' novel."

Austen vii) it is not to say that Austen does not create difficulties for the protagonists, that overshadow the most mundane and elaborate of social situations. Elizabeth is criticized heavily throughout the novel and especially by the man she eventually chooses to align herself with and marry, Mr. Darcy.

It is always surprising to remember that Elizabeth Bennet, perhaps Austen's most beloved heroine, is also one of the most criticized heroines in all literature, due in large part to her most embarrassing family. She "blushe[s] and blushe[s] again with shame and vexation" (100) and is perpetually in "agonies" (100) at the vulgar and inappropriate behavior of her mother and sisters, in whose company she must suffer "the silent contempt of the gentlemen... [and] the insolent smiles of the ladies" (102). Throughout the novel, she is forced to endure "the ridicule and censure of the ladies both of Netherfield and Rosings" (263)....her novels, and especially Pride and Prejudice, center on the relationship between those who judge and those who are judged.

Gilman 218-219)

Mr. Darcy is another character that fits the mold of the period, as he embodies the "old" money of the era, demonstrating that he cannot even fathom how he came to be tricked into loving Elizabeth, even to the best of his ability to resist, and despite her initial opinion and reproach of him.

Austen 291)

Mr. Darcy can please where he chuses. He does not want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth his while. Among those who are at all his equals in consequence, he is a very different man from what he is to the less prosperous. His pride never deserts him; but with the rich, he is liberal-minded, just, sincere, rational, honourable, and perhaps agreeable, -- allowing something for fortune and figure.'

Austen 62-63)

According to Jan Fergus a foremost expert on romantic literature Pride and Prejudice is a "didactic comedy of judgment." Expressing that Pride and Prejudice represents a sense of making the reader aware of the judgments they make in association with others and at the same time making the reader laugh at how critically they judge others. "In the course of the novel, bodies, faces, manners, conversations, musical performances, letters, and characters are all evaluated and judged."

Gilman 219)

When reading Romantic era literature the reader's mind cannot help but be drawn to the ideals of the romantic period, including many that demonstrate the validity of a society when all are judged based upon appearances. Another thing that strikes the reader is how significantly the development of propriety resembles the manifestation of a new set of social and economic roles, based almost entirely on money. "In the earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank."

Marx 321) Upon reading the Communist Manifesto in conjunction with romantic literature, one cannot help but be aware of the brilliance of the document, to so easily pinpoint the shift between one classis state, and another, through the romantic period. "The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society, has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones."

The document seems to be speaking almost directly to the "new moneyed" and the "old moneyed" as they duke out the role of leader and lord. Through personal power and greed one can see the reassertion of the haves and the have nots and as can be seen in Pride and Prejudice in order for one to transgress the other they must play by the old rules, almost to an extreme.

The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are… READ MORE