English Literature

  Social Picture in Pride and Prejudice   Pride and prejudice by Austen's is a detail portrayal of the social atmosphere of the late 18 th and early 19 th century England and it is principally concerned with all social aspects of English gentry. It is Austen's great masterpiece, a sharp and witty comedy of manners played out in her time, a world in which men held virtually all the power and women were required to negotiate mine fields of social status. Marriage was then considered as the way of a women's security and also it paved the way for a woman to gain property. Austen contains vivid and realistic pictures of the social life of her time -the conventions, the manners, and the mode of living of that time and which are depicted in the novel in a most graphic manner.   In the novel we see that money, marriage and the security of a woman are very interrelated. In pride and prejudice, we see that money is essential to begin a marr...

Michel Facoult once pointed out how private conversations among women constitute a world which plays a counter subversive role in relation to the male dominated society and prepares the way for securing women's power at least in certain areas. Jane Austen's novels amply illustrate the validity of Facoult's speculation not simply because she was a woman novelist, but because she shows the inner landscape of women's inner social world. In Sense and Sensibility the reader encounters an internal world wholly separated from the knowledge of the man folks. It is, however, not to suggest that this internal world is wholly an independent one, but to suggest that women in Sense and Sensibility create a space for them by being closely associated with one another. Perhaps it was because of her being a woman herself that she succeeded in understanding the close relationship existing among women in a male dominated society, where behind the Romantic talk of love a woman's social...