Stephanie Peralez
English 301
Gurkinel
Paper #3
6 December 2014
A Woman’s Role in Society: A Feminist Critical Reading of Pride and Prejudice
Throughout history women have been fighting for equal rights, recognition and respect.
Even women writers have a hard time straying from the general, stigmatized female characters in
their novels. Jane Austen, the author of a popular novel of the 18th century, and even still today,
Pride and Prejudice, wrote the novel from the primary perspective of a woman. While it can be
argued that Austen writes based on the stigmas generated around selfless, undermined,
dependent women, it can also be said that she writes against them. Pride and Prejudice is a
prominent example of how women were considered as inferior and held back by society, while
also exposing the very basic lives of women and the minute expectations that society had for
them and through feminist literature criticism this piece of literature can be analyzed.
Feminist literary criticism focuses on uncovering any patriarchal stances, analyzing and
identifying with female characters, and analyzing the relationships between male and female
characters in works of literature. We can first look at the roles portrayed by women in Pride and
Prejudice and decipher that while few are boisterous and outspoken, most are obedient and soft,
if you will. First we have Mrs. Bennet, who has raised five girls and it appears that her only goal
or aspiration is to see them all become married to respectable, educated, and wealthy men. “If I
can see but one of my daughter s happily settled at Netherfield,” said Mrs. Bennet to her
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husband, “and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for” (Austen 15).
While it is not unusual for parents to want the best for their children, this happens to be Mrs.
Bennet’s only hobby and therefor brings cause for concern. In today’s society, there is a push for
women to strive for more; education, career, and an individual social status. Without proper
attribute or acceptance into society in regards to education and career, women were subject to
rely solely on raising their children to be acceptable to the public.
Next we have Miss Bingley, a sophisticated and harsh young lady who although has the
means through family fortune and formal education, is introduced in the novel as the sister to Mr.
Bingley and will be staying with him to keep house. Even through her many accomplishments
and connections through prominent and esteemed members of society, Miss Bingley is reliant on
her brother for social gatherings and introductions. During a discussion at Netherfield Park Miss
Bingley expresses what it means to her to be an accomplished woman:
No one can really be esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is
usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing,
drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all
this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the
tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but halfdeserved. (Austen 50)
In A Feminist Perspective by Johanna M. Smith, she states that, “The myth of perfectibility is
central to the politics of Mary Shelley’s parents, and while she was skeptical of such optimism
her work throughout is deeply engaged with the problematic of education” (Smith 318). To be
such an accomplished woman meant that you were the epitome of perfection and both Mr. Darcy
and Elizabeth Bennet express the rarity in knowing such women. Women in the time of Pride
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and Prejudice were not entitled to institutional education and to be so accomplished in many arts
meant that she came from a wealthy family and even then, it did not mean she was to spend her
time doing such things. These women were to stay home, rear children, and entertain guests as
they chose to stop by and these were the types of traits men looked for in a woman that he
desired to make his wife.
“The arts of pleasing men, in other words, are not only angelic characteristics, in more
worldly terms, they are proper acts of a lady. (Gilbert and Gubar 816)” In Austen’s novel, it is
hard to say that any of the women show any of these angelic features and that in fact may be
what she was striving for. That none of the characters fit the mold of the perfect, pleasing
housewife may have been the job at society that Austen was trying to make in the name of
feminism. Mrs. Bennet is noisy, desperate, and tiresome and Elizabeth Bennet is prideful,
stubborn, and outspoken. The closest angelic figures in the novel are Jane Bennet for being
gentle, reserved, and good spirited even while heart broken and Charlotte Lucas for being
agreeable, modest, and practical although she seems to be simple and a bore.
According to Gilbert and Gubar, “assertiveness, agreesiveness—all characteristics of a
male life of ‘significant action’ – are ‘monstrous’ in women precisely because ‘unfeminine’ and
therefore unsuited to a gentle life of ‘’contemplative purity’” (819). These are traits given to
Lady Catherine de Bourgh who is bossy, snobby, and overbearing.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh as a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked features,
which might once have been handsome. Her air was not conciliating, nor was her
manner of receiving them such as to make her visitors forget their inferior rank.
She was not rendered formidable by silence’ but whatever she said was spoken in
so authoritative a tone, as marked her self-importance… (Austen 188)
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While men were able to hunt, work, go to institutions, hold balls, and marry who they
choose, women were far less fortunate. Men throughout the novel are shown with far more
independence and privacy than any women. Mr. Bennet himself is rarely seen outside of his
personal study and other men throughout the novel are rarely seen in their private or intimate
settings. In such circumstances, these men were also never confronted about their privacy or the
time they spent with other men. However, women were not as inclined to such privacy or
intimate lives.
Elizabeth Bennet turned down not one, but two marriage proposals as she vowed to only
marry for love and not for the sake of wealth or convenience. While her reasoning may seem
fitting for those of us in the twenty first century, it was not so in the time of Pride and Prejudice.
Not only does Elizabeth break tradition by declining potentially successful marriage proprosals
to both Mr. Collins and Mr. Darcy, she is then insulted by Lady Catherine du Bourgh, a member
of her own gender, for not being qualified to marry the latter of the two men. “You will be
censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him…They (Mr.Darcy and Miss
de Bourgh) are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses;
and what is to divide them? The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family,
connections, or fortune” (395). Through all the turmoil and distress Elizabeth has caused, she
does not back down. Lady de Bourgh is very harsh on her own sex and even down right cruel to
suggest that due to her social standing and family relations that Elizabeth is not worthy of her
nephew. I believe that this was Austen’s jab at society. Not only is she using such a controversial
scene to portray the inequalities of being able to accept a marriage proposal but the downright
ridiculousness of social standings or good breeding being the sole purpose of getting married.
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“A life of feminine submission, of ‘contemplative purity,’ is a life of silence, a life that
has no pen and no story, while a life of female rebellion, or ‘significant action,’ is a life that must
be silenced, a life who monstrous pen tells a horrible story” (Gilbert and Gubar 824). Elizabeth
Bennet, our pivotal character throughout the analysis holds a high standard of decision making
and following one’s heart, which are both traits unknown to women at that particular time
period. While eventually Elizabeth does become a housewife, she becomes a housewife for love,
for her values, and against society’s intentions.
While Jane Austen nearly plays into the stigmas of lowly, non-opinionated, obedient
women, she actually plays against them by mocking and even breaking the standards. With Lady
Catherine du Bourgh we see a woman in society who is held in high regards to her fellow patrons
but displays masculine-like traits and Mrs. Bennett who is a typical housewife but is outspoken
and regarded as annoying and embarrassing. Then there is Miss Elizabeth Bennet who decides to
marry for herself and not for her family and defies a large number of social standards by
speaking her mind, refusing marriage, and breaking the societal standards.
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Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. The Project Gutenberg. 2008. eBook.
Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. “The Madwoman in the Attic.” Literary Theory: An
Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.418
430. Print.
Smith, Johanna M.. “A Feminist Perspective.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. Ed. J.Paul
Hunter. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995. 313-333. Print.