Pride_and_Prejudice_Essay

Intro: In comparing these two texts, connections can be established in regards to context and questions of value, whether indirect or direct. Comparing these texts and exploring connections between them helps to add depth to our appreciation and ultimately shape and reshape our understanding of them. Paragraphs: Firstly, both these texts are connected with the underlying truths of the society they are a part of and both are critical of conventional values and beliefs. In reading Weldon’s LTA, which explains the conventions of Austen’s contexts, the reader’s appreciation of the subversive nature of PP is shaped. On first reading PP, awareness of the power the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet is portrayed to possess over her male acquaintances, as her witty intellect, a key characterisation by Austen, gives her control over determining her male relationships. In particular, this is seen when she refuses marriage proposals from both Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy for personal reasons. When she refuses Mr. Collins she says, “I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but is impossible for me to do otherwise than decline them...you could not make me happy.” Similarly she says to Darcy, “You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.” In Weldon’s LTA, in a chapter titled ‘A terrible time to be alive’ highlighting the oppressive and rigid nature of Austen’s context, Weldon states that in Austen’s time women “lived well only by their husband’s favour.” And so “to marry was a great prize...a women’s aim” and any other notions were “quite new at the time” thus drawing attention to the fact that by refusing these marriage proposals simply because at the time, neither potential husbands would make her “happy”, Elizabeth Bennett was opposing the social convention of Austen’s time to marry simply for economic survival. This exposes the subversive nature of Pride as Austen’s values appear to have differed from those of the time, as seen through her novel, its plot and characters, “Elizabeth Bennett, that wayward, capricious girl, listening to the beat of feeling, rather than the pulsing urge for survival, paying attention to the subtle demands of human dignity rather than the crude ones of established convention.” (Weldon). Weldon’s underscore of the subversive nature of PP, however only draws attention to her own subversiveness. Just as PP had a character that transcended social norms, defying accepted principles of her time (Elizabeth), Weldon presents “Aunt''' Fay” who’s conservativeness, revealed by her preoccupation with Pride and her attempt to persuade her niece Alice that Austen is not ‘petty and irrelevant” highlights her subversive nature within the post-modernist society shaped by popular media she lives in. Finally, in going back to LTA from reading PP again, it is evident how characters like Elizabeth and indeed Austen herself set a precedents and opening for writers like Weldon, influencing generations with her model of subversive and independent thoughts against convention. Both PP and LTA use textual form as a vehicle for their purpose and values and both convey a belief in the civilising power of literature. Weldon uses epistolary from to encourage the reader to question bestsellers and explore the English language and capital ‘L’ literature through a colloquial and informal approach that allows her to make generalisations which she otherwise wouldn’t have been afforded. This didactic form also allows Weldon to constantly revise her thoughts throughout her letters, thus furthering her purpose to acknowledge the relativity of values and rights of opinions as she attempts to educate her readers. “Any theory will do until the next one replaces it. Being a writer, I like the better novels theory, which I hereby give you.” Moreover this form allows the reader to be both an internal and external observer of the novel as they read the letters “in first draft” as if they were the intended receiver but also subsequently read replies to letters they didn’t write and thus the reader gains empathy not only with Weldon but with her novel’s content, namely Austen, but both within their own contexts. Most importantly, however this didactic form allows Weldon to utilise the device of verisimilitude. A bridge between the real world and the world she created which allows the reader to question the values of Weldon and question them such as the importance of capital ‘L’ literature and the reader. This seemingly clear didactic form of LTA also then draws attention to the more subtle didactic purpose of PP as Austen too wrote to educate her readers. This can be seen through her preoccupation with the class structure of the society she lives in and her consequent exploration of the true nature of the gentility. In this case, she uses irony to expose truth. She says of Miss Bingly and Mrs Hurst, “They were in fact very fine ladies...in the habits of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others.” This ironic contradiction of ‘fine ladies’ and the following negative characteristics reveal Austen’s didactic purpose to expose those within society that required correction, especially in comparison to her other characters such as Sir Fitzwilliam, “not handsome, but in person and address most truly gentleman...with the readiness and ease of a well bread man.” The subtleness of PP’s didacticism only re-emphasises Weldon’s didactic purpose in her post-modernist and her need to be clear. Conclusion: