Characterisation_in_Pride_and_Prejudice

One of the great things about Jane Austen's work that has been recognized and acknowledged from their first publication dates through to the analysis of contemporary critics is that Jane Austen's body of work, beginning with the beloved Pride and Prejudice, does reflect the society that Jane Austen herself was a part of. She was herself a gentleman's daughter, making her part of the gentility, and she moved in social circles that included individuals in higher social ranks. Sir Walter Scott was one of her greatest admirers and one comment he made was that she drew the picture of the individuals in her sphere of society so perfectly that he recognized many of them as identical to his own personal acquaintances. One thing Austen herself said was that she painted her world with a fine brush on a small piece of ivory, signifying that her writing represents a small but accurately described part of English society. Jane Austen's art of characterization includes brief, often omitted, physical description; vocabulary; silence; tempo of talk; narrated dialogue; narratorial comment that touches on things like personality quirks such as sarcasm ("Is that his design in settling here'"), physical associations with things like aliments ("Ah! You don't know what I suffer!"), emotional denotations ("...cried his wife impatiently"); characters' attitudes, ideas, habits, feelings and mannerisms. This art applies to Mr. Collins in a number of regards. First, since Jane Austen introduces him through a letter he has written, her first tool for characterization is vocabulary. You will find that Collins is full of fine phrases that themselves are excessively full of adjectives ("honoured father"), adverbs ("earnest endeavor") and elaborate nouns ("bounty and beneficence"). Austen next employs narratorial comment: "Elizabeth was chiefly struck with his extraordinary deference for Lady Catherine, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, and burying his parishioners whenever it were required." In addition to narratorial comment, Austen also employs characters' comments on their own thoughts, feelings, attitudes: "He must be an oddity, I think,'' said [Elizabeth]. ``I cannot make him out." Austen also employs characters to comment on other characters' traits: [Mr. Benett] "There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his letter." Austen also arranges for characters to comment on themselves through their behavior and habits: "Mr. Collins was punctual to his time,...He had not been long seated before he complimented Mrs. Bennet...he continued to apologise for about a quarter of an hour." Austen's characterization of Mr. Gardiner employs narratorial comment (but not physical description): "Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly superior to his sister," "[Elizabeth] listened most attentively to all...and gloried in every expression, every sentence of her uncle, which marked his intelligence, his taste, or his good manners") and expression of his attitudes, habits, feelings and manners: Attitude: "Mr. Gardiner declared his willingness," "Mr. Gardiner, highly amused by the...family prejudice." Habit: "Mr. Gardiner, though seldom able to indulge the taste, was very fond of fishing." Feelings: "Mr. Gardiner expressed a wish of going round the whole Park, but feared it might be beyond a walk." Manners: "Mr. Gardiner, whose manners were easy and pleasant." this examination of Mr. Collins and Mr. Gardiner points out that a fine point of Jane Austen's art of characterization is that she spreads characterization out large extents of text. No part of characterization is laid out on a platter, so to speak, all at once, rather points of characterization are sprinkled hither, thither and yon. Both are more or less what E. M. Forster termed flat characters used to incarnate and criticize a social condition. Mrs. Bennet is clearly not an exemplary female role model. Because of her station in the leisure class, she is preoccupied with money, marriage, and all other factors in climbing an ostensibly stable social ladder that has actually been made rather rickety by changing sexual politics in post French-Revolution England. Her machinations are made all the more difficult and frantic by the notions of feminine propriety that Elizabeth so unbecomingly holds. Faced with all these stimuli, Mrs. Bennet becomes very distressed and confused that a simple social phenomenon like marriage could become so compolicated by love and politics and what not. In Mrs. Bennet, Austen draws up the most obvious caricature of traditional values and the quiet turbulence of the world of Pride and Prejudice