You have a very small park here, returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence. Essay Example

  You have a very small park here, returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence. Essay Tanner, in his essay on Pride and Prejudice, wrote: during a decade in which Napoleon was effectively engaging, if not transforming Europe, Jane Austen composed a novel in which the most important events are the fact that a man changes his manners and a young lady changes her mind. This quotation reduces one of the most enduringly popular classic works of English literature, Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice, to an intensely personal tale of an individual relationship, utterly detached from the political context of the time. For many readers, particularly Austens contemporaries, there is a tendency to emphasise this romantic, even mythical element to the plot. Isobel Armstrong, in her essay Politics, Pride, Prejudice and the Picturesque comments upon the fairy-tale gratifications of Pride and Prejudice, implying a view of Elizabeth as a Cinderella-like figure who, following a magical moral transformation (in herself and Darcy) marries her very own handsome and rich Prince Charming and lives happily ever after. This fantastical reading of the storyline implies a timelessness to the action, a sense in which romantic plot can be completely detached from the historical and social context of eighteenth century England and transposed onto another context, such as the twentieth century setting of the Pride and Prejudice update, Bridget Jones Diary. D.W. Harding, in Regulated Hatred: An Aspect in the Work of Jane Austen, also suggests this escapist element to reading Austens novels, in the sense that she provided a refuge for the sensitive when the contemporary world grew too much for them. Moreover, this sense of detachment within the novel is perhaps bound up with the myth or common perception of Austens life, of her as a kind of darkly seen shape (according to her biographer, Clare Tomalin in Jane Austen: A Life) or secret scribbler: isolated from high society and politics in the middle of the English countryside, in the villages of Steventon and later, Chawton. We will write a custom essay sample on   You have a very small park here, returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence. specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on   You have a very small park here, returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence. specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on   You have a very small park here, returned Lady Catherine, after a short silence. specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer There can be little doubt that Pride and Prejudice is a novel in which there is a strong sense of limitation, if not of complete withdrawal and isolation. The smallness of the Bennets park translates into the all too evident financial restraints imposed by having five daughters in Lady Catherines view at least, the literal size of the park symbolises the limitations of Elizabeths potential choices of husband. Equally, the dimensions of the novel itself are strikingly small: Austen places the action within the limited time frame of a few months, all of it taking place within a few miles between Hertfordshire and London in (a partially fictionalised version of) southern England. We learn with little surprise that Mrs Bennets blinkered perception is so intensely focused upon Meryton that she has not heard even heard of Newcastle. Although the consciousness of Elizabeth Bennet, through which much of the narrative is related, is neither so narrow nor so slow to comprehend new concepts as that of her mother; there is a sense in which both the readers and the characters are trapped within the limited, middle class world of Meryton. Moreover, the characters are located within a very small, interconnected and often claustrophobic social sphere, as Darcy insultingly observes: you move in a very confined and unvarying society. Even the literary space of the novel is defined in terms of its smallness and limitation by Austen herself who, in a letter dated 16 December, 1816, referred to the two little bits of ivory on which I work. We may therefore initially characterise Pride and Prejudice as a small and static world of moral and political fixity, a world that fits closely to a micro scale of personal and social experience. The world that Austen depicts is immediately striking as a kind of microcosm of a very slim sec tion of society. However, I want to argue that Austen simultaneously enforces and draws attention to the limiting effects of the literal, moral, social and political boundaries that surround all of the characters. Within this highly limited world and the limited literary space of two small pieces of ivory Austen creates an intensely intimate personal world, which nevertheless gives rise to questions of a far wider political significance. Even in the ultimate uniting at the end of the book (significantly, the penultimate word of the entire text), there are fundamental political implications. This view is supported by the critic Claudia Johnson: re-examining the perception of Pride and Prejudice as a straightforward fairy tale narrative, she writes: the fantasies it satisfies are not merely private a poor but deserving girl catches a rich husband. They are pervasively political as well. (Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness). On one level, it seems that the readers encounter not one but a series of different microcosms in Pride and Prejudice. The first, and perhaps most intimate, is the insight into the Bennet household. In this context, we encounter a series of different types and a blurring of expected roles, ranging from the comically (and almost childishly) hysterical Mrs Bennet, to the affectionate, motherly Jane or the shrewd and satirical perspective shared by Elizabeth and her father. The fundamentally different outlook of the sisters is exemplified in a single scene in which each of the sisters in turn reacts to the letter from Mr Collins. This scene not only demonstrates the absolute centrality of letters as a narrative vehicle within the text (some critics maintain that the first and now lost version of Pride and Prejudice could even have been written in an epistolary form) but also the differing abilities of the sisters to read the implications of the letter. Jane, the first to comment, respon ds with a predictable generosity of spirit and hopeful optimism: the wish [of Mr Collins to visit] is certainly to his credit. Equally, Lydia and Catherines indifference neither the letter nor its writer were to any degree interesting is undoubtedly a manifestation of their childish self-absorption. Mrs Bennets reaction is suitably overblown, just as Marys, at the other end of the scale, is characteristically sombre and formal: in point of compositionhis letter does not seem defective. Differing levels of character, (as well as maturity) seem to be exposed; the extreme caricatures of Mrs Bennet and her three silliest daughters, serves to highlight the intricacy of Elizabeth herself (a distinction made by D.W. Harding). Elizabeth responds with an immediate textual sensitivity there is something very pompous in his stylecan he be a sensible man? that re-asserts her role as both viewer and, to some extent, interpreter within the text. Moreover, the timing of the letter, revealed rather cruelly only to the girls on the morning of the day of Mr Collins arrival despite the fact that Mr Bennet received it a mon th before, illustrates his frequent unwillingness to play his role as a father, guardian and necessary social mediator. Just as he mocks his wife and daughters with the threat of his refusal to play the role of good neighbour and gentleman and so call on Mr Bingley at the beginning, Mr Bennet withholds information about their closest male relative until the last moment. Mr Bennet is therefore allowed a certain space within the text to step back and take a detached, satirical perspective upon the politics of family life; yet Austen subtly reveals how, in neglecting his role, he disrupts the smooth running of events. Indeed, we may perhaps look to him to identify an early hint about where Elizabeth learns her habit of amused prejudice or judging on first impressions (the original title for the entire novel). We therefore encounter a closely observed and highly detailed account of the interconnectedness of the household. The letter hints on one level at an almost Lockean view of the potential for many different perceptions (of a single line of Mr Collins letter, for example) but at the same time assert s the need for each of these characters to fulfil their fixed social roles to ensure the running of the household.