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novel third year

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أستاذ المادة حيدر غازي جاسم الموسوي       5/23/2011 7:39:48 PM

Third Year Novel

 

Lecturer. Haider Al-Musawi

 

 

·        Delving into the zeitgeist of romantic and the Victorian era.

 

·        Delving into the period Styles .

 

Bestowing upon the students an Impetus to dissect a text under the lens of Narrative Discourse

 

.

 

 

 

·        The Scarlet Letter

 

·        Hard Times

 

·       

 

·        Pride and Prejudice     

 

 

SIDELIGHT REMARKS:

 

 

 

 

 

Thereby, the chapters tackled under the lens of psychoanalytic approaches and then it is to pave the way to Realism in Hard Times:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Novel

 

Lecture one

 

Once can trace three major influences on the changes in attitude and technique in the modern novel. The first is the novelist’s realization that the general background of belief which united him with his public in a common sense of what was significant in experience had disappeared. The public values of the Victorian novel, in which major crises of plot could be shown through changes in the social or financial or martial statue of the chief characters, gave way ti more personally conceived notions of  value dependent on the novelist’s intuition’s and sensibilities rather than on public agreement. “To believe that your impressions hold for others” Virginia Woolf once wrote (discussing Jane Austen) ‘is to be released from the cramp and confinement of personality’. The modern novelist could no longer believe this: he had to fall back   on personality, drawing his criterion of significance in human affairs (and thus his principle of selection) from his own intuitions, so that he needed to find ways of convincing the reader that his own private sense of what was significant in experience was truly valid. A new technical burden was thus imposed on the novelist’s prose, for it had now to build to a world of values in stead of drawing on an existing world of. Virginia Woolf tries to solve the problem by using some of the devices of poetry in order to suggest the novelist’s own sense of value and vision of the world, Joyce on the other hand, made no attempt to convey a single personal attitude but reacted to the breakdown of public values by employing a kind of writing so multiple in its implications that it conveyed numerous point of view simultaneously, the author being totally objective and committed to none of them- a mode which required remarkable technical virtuosity.

 

The second influence on the change in attitude and technique in the modern novel was a new view of time, time was not a series of chronological moments to be presented by the novelist in sequence with an occasional deliberate retrospect (‘this reminded him of’ he recalled that) but as a continuous flow in the consciousness of the individual, with the already continuously merging unto the “not yet” and retrospect merging into anticipation. This influence is closely bound up with a third: the new notions of the nature of consciousnesses which derived in a general way from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung but were also part of the spirit of the age and discernible even in those novelists who had not read either psychologist. Consciousness is multiple, the past is always presenting it at some level and is continually coloring one’s present reaction, Marcel Proust in France, in his great novel sequence Remembrance of Things past (1912-28) had explored the ways in which  the past impinges on the present and consciousness is determined by memory. The view that a main is his memories that his present is the sum of his past, that if we dig into a man’s consciousness we can tell the whole truth about him without waiting for a chronological sequences of time to tale him through a series of testing circumstances, inevitable led to a technical revolution in the novel. For now, by exploring in depth into consciousness and memory rather than presiding lengthwise along the dimension of time a novelist could write a novel concerned ostensibly with only one day of the hero’s life (Joyce’s Ulysses and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway). This view of multiple levels of consciousness existing simultaneously. Couple with the view of time as a constant flow rather than a series of separate moments, meant that a novelist preferred to plunge into the consciousness of his characters in order to tell his story rather than to provide an external framework of chronological narrative. The “stream of consciousness” techniques, where the author tried to render directly the very fabric of his character’s consciousness without reporting it in formal quoted remarks was developed in the 1920’s as an important new technique of t he English novel. It made for more difficult reading, at least for those accustomed only to the methods of the order English novel. No “porch” was constructed at the front novel to put the reader in possession of necessary preliminary information: such information emerged as the novel progressed the consciousness of each character as it responded to the present with echoes of its past. No conventional signposts were put to tell the reader where he was, for that was felt to interfere with the immediacy of the impression. But once the reader learns how to find way in this unsignposted territory, he is rewarded by new delicacies of perception and new subtleties of presentation.

 

Consecration on the “stream of consciousness” and on the association of ideas within the individual consciousness led inevitably to stress on the essential loneliness of the individual. For all consciousnesses are unique and isolated, and if this unique, private world is the real in which men live, if the public values to which they must pay lip service in the social world in which they move are not the real values which give meaning to their personality, then each man is condemned to live in the prison of his own incommunicable consciousness. How is true communication possible in such a world? The public gestures imposed upon us by society never correspond to out real inward needs. They are conventional in the bad sense, mechanical, imposing a crude standardization on the infinite subtlety of experience. If we do try to give out a sign from our real selves that sign is bound to be misunderstood when read by some other self in the light of that self’s quite other personality. The theme of such modern fiction is thus the possibility of love, the establishment of emotional communication, in a community of private consciousness. This, is in different ways, the theme of Joyce, Lawrence, of Virginia Woolf, and of Forster, and (on a rather different scale and not always so directly) of Conrad. The search for communion and-the inevitable isolation of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses is symbolic of the human condition as seen by the modern novelist, similar investigations of this basic condition are Forster’s explorations of conventions which seem to be helps to living but which in fact prevent true human contracts, and Virginia Woolf’s delicate projections of the relation between the self’ need for genuine communication. The theme of all Lawrence’s novels is human relationships the ideal of which he restlessly explored with shifting emphases throughout his career; such relationship can be all too easily distorted by the mechanical conventions of society notions of respectability or propriety, by all the shames and frauds of middle class life by the demands of power or money or success. One might almost say that the greatest modern novels are the difficult, and at the same time the inevitability of being human. The dilemma of the condition is never really solved in these novelists; but knowledge that the dilemma is shared-knowledge so brilliantly conveyed in Ulysses and so wryly proffered by Forster- can both illuminate and comfort.

 

Not all the novelists of the period, of course, were concerned with these themes or employed the new techniques appropriate to them. The "documentary" novelists, such as Arnold Bennet and John Galsworthy (and, in  some at least of his novels, H. G. wells) presented, often with great skill, the changing social scene, showing considerable insight the sympathy in recording aspects of it through the behavior of their imagined characters. Virginia Woolf called these writers "materialists" marinating that they were content to deal with externals and not go on to explore those aspects of consciousness of the true inward life of men, in which human reality resides. She was perhaps judging unfairly, by standards that were not applicable to their sort of fiction; but modern criticism has on the whole agreed with her.

 

Poetic drama in England with his Murder in the Cathedral (1935). His  later attempts to combine religious symbolism with the box office  appeal of amusing society comedy (as in The Cocktail Party, 1950) though impressive technical achievements were not wholly successful: the combination of contemporary social chatter with profound religious symbolism produces an unevenness of tone and disturbing shifts in levels of real of realism. Elsewhere in modern drama the conflict between realism and symbolism (first clearly seen in Ibsen) is acted out in a variety of ways.

 

In spite of the achievements of Shaw; Yeats, and Eliot it cannot be said of the drama as it can of poetry and fiction in this period that a technical revolution occurred which changed the course of literary history with respect to that particular literary form. The reformers of the 1890 s invoked the name of the great Norwegian playwright. Henrik Ibsen; like Shaw they saw him as essentially a critic of middle-class society than (as critics tend to see him today) as an essentially poetic dramatist experimenting with symbolic moderns of expression. This may be the reason why the influence of Ibsen soon petered out in run-of-the-mill plays of humanitarian social concern. Harley Granville- Barker actors director and Shakespeare scholar and critic as well as playwright, wrote four interesting and thoughtful plays in 1909 and 1910, but for all their intelligence they never really come alive theatrically. The staple of London west End theater remained social comedy stiffened by occasional irony and sweetened by sentimentality (Noel Coward sis one of the best purveyors of this sort of fare).  The cleverly contrived sentimentalities of J.M Barrie (1860- 1837) were highly popular in their day: Barrie s showed a high theatrical skill and a determined cunning in the exploitation of the audience s reaction. That audience consisted for the most part of tired Philistines. And it was they who determined what to be a box-office success. An original Scottish dramatist, who at one time speared to be  achieving single-handed a new  awakening in the Scottish theater but who   in the end failed to do so, was Janise Bride (pseudonym of Dr. O.H Mavor, 1885-1951) whose witty and inventive plays show an intellectual  liveliness sometimes reminiscent of Shaw.

 

The energy which the Irish movement gave to England drama has not lasted, Sean O Casey later plays, where he is influenced by expressionist techniques suggested by German dramatist as well as by Eugene O Neil, have nether the vitality nor the vivid humor of those earlier plays in which he was able to give tragic meaning to the realities of contemporary Dublin life without denying its comic elements. Arnold Irish playwright, William Denis Johnston, has also experimented with expressionist techniques and has achieved some of his plays a remarkable combination of the grotesque and the ironic but vitality has not been coming into the English theater in the 1950 s and early 1960 s from this direction.

 

In the late 1940 s and early 1950 s it seemed that the verse plays of  Christopher fry were about to bring a new kind of poetic life into English drama. But fry s exuberantly witty use of metaphor soon lost its appeal and by the late 1950 s a very different kind of drama brought vitality to the British theater. John Osborne s Look Back in Anger was produced at the royal count theater in 1956, angrily and in an unadorned and sometimes brutally colloquial dialogue it thrust upon the audience. he

 

The short story I n this period benefit from the new techniques of exploration n depth. A greater consciousness of the symbolic uses to which  object and incidents can be out and a greater subtlety in the ways in  which patterns of suggestiveness are built up below the quietly realistic  surface  can be found in the short stories of writers  so different from each  other as Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, Lawrence and Foster, Katherine Mansfield learned from the Russian short-story writer Anton Chekhov how to use the casual seeming incidents of ordinary life in such a way as  to set up haunting overtones of meaning. The apparently inconsequential  surface masking the carefully organized substructure is found much  modern fiction (perhaps most of all in Ulysses) it is one of the result of  the coming together in the novel and the short story of realism and symbolism of contemporary probability and timeless significance. These things of course come together in great fiction of all ages; but the modern writer contrives their coexistence with greater self-consciousness than his predecessors.

 

 

 

 

Lecture two

 

Chiaroscuro in Hard Times

 

 

     In the meant device, chiaroscuro, come many targets the novelist desires to convey; the class distinction that gnaws the community. The novelist takes his liberty in directing the light and shadow on whatever viewpoints he means .Such an issue prevails in Little Dorrit that deals with the institutions of debtors` prisons, the social safety,  industry, the treatment and the safety of workers, the bureaucracy of the British Treasury as incarnated in the  novel "Circumlocution Office"  and the separation of people based on the lack of intercourse between the classes. In all these isles, the novelist endeavours to depict his ire against the shortcomings of the government and society of the period.

 

     In certain excerpts the novelist tends to have a sense of free association for the sake of self-effacement ,since the little Dorrit approaches being antihero[i] and then ascends to eponymous one:

 

"that I knew him, and I might, I would tell him that he can never, never know I feel his goodness, and how my poor good father would feel it. And what I was going to say, sir, is ,that if I knew him, and I might-but I don not know him and I must not-I know that!-I would tell him and reward him. And if I knew him, and I might ,I would go down on my knees to him, and take his hand and kiss it, and ask not to draw it away, but to leave it-O to leave it for a moment-and let my thankful tears fall on it, for I have no other thanks to give him![ii] "

 

     On the contrary, in the below excerpt Dickens tends to have brevity in term of "shuttle technique":

 

     I was there all those years. I was-ha-universally acknowledged as the head of the place. I-hum-I caused you to be respected there, Amy. I –ha hum- I gave my family a position there. I deserve a return. I claim a return. I say, sweep it off the face of the earth and begin afresh. Is that much? I ask, is that much[iii]?

 

     Although condensed and terse, but such lines make the sense ring true and painful, the father tries to drag his daughter ,since he believes that she derails in time his other sons emulate his steps just like what happed between Gradgrind and Louisa . Now such condensed style, though simple, gives a transparent portrait to a man who toils and now he is whole-hearted to cuddle his family. Shuttle technique comes to highlight two important issues; perceiving the tone in the paragraph and to keep us in touch with the main characters and meant targets, here an elliptical statement serves to inform us how naïve Little Dorrit is:

 

O thank you, thank you! But, O no, O no, O no!" She said this, looking at him with her work-worn hands folded together, and in the same resigned accents as before.

 

I press for no confidence now. I only ask you to repose unhesitating trust in me.

 

Can I do less than that, when you are so good!

 

Then you will trust me fully? Will have no secret unhappiness, or anxiety, concealed from me?

 

Almost none[iv]

 

     Though  such elliptical expressions convey a sense of confidence that creeps between the main characters; Little Dorrit and Clennam, the whole excerpt leaves us with suspension whether Little Dorrit reposes trust in him or not.     

 

     Dickens exerts himself to have his characters sounded true and realistic, that s ,the characters ,by some means or other, tend to juxtapose their milieu, to be a part from their environment; in the case that Stephen manifested more deeply through other characters " waspish , raspisg ,ill-conditioned chap, you are".

 

     In Little Dorrit, he explores the criminal system that prevails in his time, he does not advocate imprisonment as a social control. Although of different entities, they both, the prisoners and the staff accept their destiny. Not only does Dickens seam whole-hearted in reflecting some consequences of the Crimean War 1854,but he mainly depicts some aspects  autobiographical, social and political that surge into view in his Little Dorrit. Throughout the events, he tackles, as it seams, some universal issues whose dimensions are of ubiquity.

 

     Sometimes, the narrator himself resorts into either periphrasis or brevity to achieve such targets:

 

She forgot to be shy at the moment, in honestly warning him away from the sunken wreck he had a dream of raising; and looked at him with eyes which assuredly, in association with her patient face, her fragile figure, her spare dress, and the wind and rain, did not turn him from his purpose of helping her[v].

 

     Here resorts Dickens into brevity to leave the reader with a sense of suspension, and to have more information about a man who is thoroughly benevolent enough to help people as a saviour. The visual image that lurks in "her fragile figure" and "the wind and rain[vi]" is manifested through such a condensed style. Or sometimes, Dickens is to manipulate a " roundabout speech" for the sake of both clarity and satisfaction; that is why Sissy, Stephen, Sleary and Rachael all appear at day ,under the light of sun ,but the other characters appear but in silhouette

 

     So often does Dickens take hold of some periphrastic expressions to sufficiently pinpoint the last moments of their departure from the prison:

 

Bu all these occurrences precede the final day. And now the day arrived when he and his family were to leave the prison for ever, and when the stones of its much trodden pavement were to know them no more[vii].

 

     As to be minded, Dorrit`s family knows no limits or bonds to their intimacy that floats into view in a periphrastic style:

 

Noon was the hour appointed for the departure. As it approached, there was not a collegian within doors, nor a turkey absent. The latter class of gentlemen appeared in their Sunday clothes, and the greater part of the Collegians were brightened up as much as circumstances allowed[viii].

 

     The aforementioned excerpt that manifests great emotion in the ultimate moments of valediction, so here  the sense of periphrasis comes to pinpoint all the accurate details of the reaction of the "Collegians" .As a matter fact ,such lines divulge the state of man who is about to change the course of his life.

 

     In the last resort ,it s to infer that light accompanies only Stephen, Sissy, Louisa, and Rachael, that means shadow prevails throughout the novel ,not only through the dark milkier in school or the factory, but also it comes through the characters

 

 

 

Lecture Three

 

Pride and Prejudice

 

 

           The plot of the novel is driven by a particular situation of the Bennet family: The Longbourn estate where they reside is entailed to one of Mr Bennet s collateral relatives—male only in this case—by the legal terms of fee tail. Mr and Mrs Bennet have no sons: this means that, if Mr Bennet dies soon, his wife and five daughters will be left without home or income. Mrs Bennet worries about this predicament and wishes to find husbands for her five daughters quickly.

 

The narrative opens with Mr Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman and a very eligible bachelor, renting a country estate near the Bennets called Netherfield. He arrives accompanied by his fashionable sisters and his good friend, Mr Darcy. Attending the local assembly (dance) Bingley is well-received in the community, while Darcy begins his acquaintance with smug condescension and proud distaste for all the country locals. After Darcy s haughty rejection of her at the dance, Elizabeth resolves to match his coldness and pride with her own prideful anger—in biting wit and sometimes sarcastic remarks—directed towards him. (Elizabeth s disposition leads her into prejudices regarding Darcy and others, such that she is unable to sketch their characters accurately.)

 

Soon, Bingley and Elizabeth s older sister, Jane, begin to grow close. Elizabeth s best friend, Charlotte, advises that Jane should show her affection to Bingley more openly, as he may not realise that she is indeed interested in him. Elizabeth flippantly dismisses the opinion—replying that Jane is shy and modest, and that if Bingley can t see how she feels, he is a simpleton—and she doesn t tell Jane of Charlotte s warning. Later Elizabeth begins a friendship with Mr Wickham, a militia officer who is of long personal acquaintance with Darcy—they grew up together. Wickham tells her he has been seriously mistreated by the proud man; Elizabeth seizes on this news as further reason to dislike Darcy. Ironically, Darcy begins to find himself drawn to Elizabeth, unbeknownst to her.

 

Jane pays a visit to the Bingley mansion. On her journey to the house she is caught in a downpour and catches ill, forcing her to stay at Netherfield for several days. In order to tend to Jane, Elizabeth hikes through muddy fields and arrives with a spattered dress, much to the disdain of the snobbish Miss Bingley, Charles Bingley’s sister. Miss Bingley’s spite only increases when she notices that Darcy, whom she is pursuing, pays quite a bit of attention to Elizabeth.

 

Mr Collins, the male relative who is to inherit Longbourn, makes an appearance and stays with the Bennets. Recently ordained a clergyman, he is employed as parish rector by the wealthy and patronising Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Kent. Mr Bennet and Elizabeth are amused by his self-important and pedantic behaviour. Though his stated reason for visiting is to reconcile with the Bennets, Collins soon confides to Mrs Bennet that he wishes to find a wife from among the Bennet sisters. He first offers to pursue Jane; however, Mrs Bennet mentions that her eldest daughter is soon likely to be engaged, and redirects his attentions to Elizabeth.

 

At a ball given by Bingley at Netherfield, Elizabeth intends to deepen her acquaintance with Mr Wickham who, however, fails to appear. She is asked to dance by Mr Darcy; here she raises Wickham s fate with him, causing their harmonious dance to fall into a testy discussion. The ball proceeds as spectacle: the arriviste Sir William Lucas shocks Darcy, alluding to Jane and Bingley and a certain desirable event ; Mr. Collins behaves fatuously; now Mrs Bennet talks loudly and indiscreetly of her expectation of marriage between Jane and Bingley, and, in general, cousin Collins and the Bennet family—save Jane and Elizabeth—combine in a public display of poor manners and upbringing that clearly disgusts Darcy and embarrasses Elizabeth.

 

The next morning, Mr Collins proposes marriage to Elizabeth, who refuses him, much to her mother s distress. Collins handily recovers and, within three days, proposes to Elizabeth s close friend, Charlotte Lucas, who immediately accepts. Once marriage arrangements are settled, Charlotte persuades Elizabeth to come for an extended visit to her new bridal home.

 

Though appearing at the point of proposing marriage to Jane, Mr Bingley abruptly quits Netherfield and returns to London, leaving the lady confused and upset. Elizabeth is convinced that Darcy and Bingley s sister have conspired to separate Jane and Bingley.

 

In the spring, Elizabeth joins Charlotte and her cousin in Kent. The parsonage is adjacent to Rosings Park—the grand manor of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Mr Darcy s aunt—where Elizabeth and her hosts are frequently invited to socialize. After Mr Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam arrive to visit Lady Catherine, Elizabeth renews her project of teasing Darcy, while his admiration for her grows in spite of his intentions otherwise. Now Elizabeth learns from Fitzwilliam that Darcy prides himself on having separated Bingley from Jane; and, with the poorest of timing, Darcy chooses this moment to admit his love for Elizabeth, and he proposes to her. Incensed by his high-handed and insulting manner, she abruptly refuses him. When he asks why—so uncivil her reply—Elizabeth confronts him with his sabotage of Jane and Bingley s budding relationship and with Wickham s account of Darcy s mistreatment of him, among other complaints.

 

Deeply shaken by Elizabeth s vehemence and accusations, Darcy writes her a letter which reveals the true history between Wickham and himself. Wickham had renounced his legacy—a clergyman s living in Darcy s patronage—for a cash payment; only to return after gambling away the money to again claim the position. After Darcy refused, Wickham attempted to elope with Darcy s fifteen-year-old sister Georgiana, and thereby secure her part of the Darcy family fortune. He was found out and stopped only a day before the intended elopement. Regarding Bingley and Jane, Darcy justifies his interference: he had observed in Jane no reciprocal interest for Bingley; thus he aimed to separate them to protect his friend from heartache.

 

In the letter Darcy admits his repugnance for the total want of propriety of her (Elizabeth s) family, especially her mother and three younger sisters. After reading the letter, Elizabeth begins to question both her family s behaviour and Wickham s credibility. She also concludes: Wickham is not as trustworthy as his easy manners would indicate; that he had lied to her previously; and that her early impressions of Darcy s character might not have been accurate. Soon, Elizabeth returns home.

 

 

Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy was responsible for uniting Lydia and Wickham. This is one of the two earliest illustrations of Pride and Prejudice.^[3] The clothing styles reflect the time the illustration was engraved (the 1830s), not the time the novel was written or set.

 

Some months later, during a northern tour, Elizabeth and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner visit Pemberley, Darcy s estate, while he s away. The elderly housekeeper has known Darcy since childhood, and presents a flattering and benevolent impression of his character to Elizabeth and the Gardiners. As they tour the grounds Darcy unexpectedly returns home. Though shocked—as is Elizabeth—he makes an obvious effort to be gracious and welcoming, and treats the Gardiners—whom before he would have dismissed as socially inferior—with remarkable politeness. Later he introduces Elizabeth to his sister, a high compliment to Elizabeth. Elizabeth is surprised and hopeful of a possible new beginning with Darcy.

 

Elizabeth and Darcy s renewed acquaintance is cut short by news that Lydia, her youngest (and most frivolous) sister, has run away with Wickham. Initially, the family (wishfully) believe they have eloped, but they soon learn that Wickham has no plans to marry Lydia. Lydia s antics threaten her family—especially the remaining Bennet sisters—with social ruin. Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle hurriedly leave for home; Elizabeth is anguished, and convinced that Darcy will avoid her from now on.

 

Soon, thanks apparently to Elizabeth s uncle, Lydia and Wickham are found and married. Afterwards, they visit Longbourn; while bragging to Elizabeth, Lydia discloses that Darcy was present at the wedding. Surprised, Elizabeth sends an inquiry to her aunt, from whom she learns that Darcy himself was responsible for both finding the couple and arranging their marriage, at great expense to himself.

 

Bingley returns to Longbourn and proposes marriage to Jane who immediately accepts. Now Lady Catherine surprisingly visits Longbourn. She sternly tells Elizabeth she has heard rumours of Darcy proposing to her; she came with determined resolution to confront Elizabeth and to demand that she never accept such a proposal because Darcy is supposed to marry her daughter. Elizabeth refuses to bow to Lady Catherine s demands. Furious, Lady C charges off and tells Darcy of Elizabeth s obstinacy—which convinces him that Elizabeth s opinion of him may have changed. He now visits Longbourn, and once again proposes marriage. Elizabeth accepts, and the two become engaged.

 

The novel s final chapters establish the futures of the characters: Elizabeth and Darcy settle at Pemberley, where Mr Bennet visits often; Mrs Bennet remains frivolous and silly—she often visits the new Mrs Bingley and talks of the new Mrs Darcy; Jane and Bingley eventually move to locate near the Darcys in Derbyshire. Elizabeth and Jane teach Kitty who had always been badly influenced by Lydia better social graces, and Mary who had been the most reclusive learns to mix more with the outside world at Meryton. Lydia and Wickham continue a life of frivolity which keeps them from accumulating any wealth and leads them to have to move often, leaving debts for Jane and Elizabeth to pay. At Pemberley, Elizabeth and Georgiana grow close; Georgiana is surprised by Elizabeth s playful treatment of Darcy, and she grows more comfortable with her brother. Lady Catherine holds out, indignant and abusive, over her nephew s marriage, but eventually Darcy is prevailed upon to reconcile with her sufficiently that she condescends to visit. Elizabeth and Darcy remain close to her Uncle and Aunt Gardiner—the agents of their reconciling and uniting.

 

 

Lecture Four

 

Class Distinction and the main characters

 

 

·         Elizabeth Bennet is the main character and protagonist. The reader sees the unfolding plot and the other characters mostly from her viewpoint.^[4] The second of the Bennet daughters at twenty years old, she is intelligent, lively, attractive, and witty, but with a tendency to judge on first impressions and perhaps to be a little selective of the evidence upon which she bases her judgments. As the plot begins, her closest relationships are with her father, her sister Jane, her aunt Mrs Gardiner, and her best friend Charlotte Lucas.

 

·         Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy is the main male character. Twenty-eight years old and unmarried, Darcy is the wealthy owner of the famous family estate of Pemberley in Derbyshire. Handsome, tall, and intelligent, but not convivial, his aloof decorum and moral rectitude are seen by many as an excessive pride and concern for social status. He makes a poor impression on strangers, such as the landed gentry of Meryton, but is valued by those who know him well.

 

·         Mr Bennet has a wife and five daughters, and seems to have inured himself to his fate. A bookish and intelligent gentleman somewhat withdrawn from society, he dislikes the indecorous behaviours of his wife and three younger daughters; but he offers little beyond mockery by way of correcting them. Rather than guiding these daughters to more sensible understanding, he is instead content to laugh at them. He relates very well with his two elder daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, showing them much more love and respect than his wife and younger daughters.

 

·         Mrs Bennet is the wife of her social superior Mr Bennet, and mother of Elizabeth and her sisters. She is frivolous, excitable, and narrow-minded, and is susceptible to attacks of tremors and palpitations. Her public manners and social climbing are embarrassing to Jane and Elizabeth. Her favourite daughter is the youngest, Lydia.

 

 

 

Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth about Darcy, on the title page of the first illustrated edition. This is the other of the first two illustrations of the novel.

 

·         Jane Bennet is the eldest Bennet sister. Twenty-two years old when the novel begins, she is considered the most beautiful young lady in the neighbourhood. Her character is contrasted with Elizabeth s as sweeter, shyer, and equally sensible, but not as clever; her most notable trait is a desire to see only the good in others. Jane is closest to Elizabeth, and her character is often contrasted with that of Elizabeth.

 

·         Mary Bennet is the only plain Bennet sister, and rather than join in some of the family activities, she reads, although she is often impatient for display. She works hard for knowledge and accomplishment, but has neither genius nor taste. At the ball at Netherfield she shows her lack genius and she embarrasses her family by singing badly.

 

·         Catherine "Kitty" Bennet is the fourth Bennet sister, aged seventeen. She is portrayed as a less headstrong but equally silly shadow of Lydia.

 

·         Lydia Bennet is the youngest Bennet sister, aged fifteen when the novel begins. She is repeatedly described as frivolous and headstrong. Her main activity in life is socialising, especially flirting with the military officers stationed in the nearby town of Meryton. She dominates her older sister Kitty and is supported in the family by her mother. After she elopes with Wickham and he is paid to marry her, she shows no remorse for the embarrassment and possible harm (as this could have hurt the other sister s chances of marrying) that her actions caused for her family, but acts as if she has made a wonderful match of which her sisters should be jealous.

 

·         Charles Bingley is a young gentleman without an estate. His wealth was recent, and he is seeking a permanent home. He rents the Netherfield estate near Longbourn when the novel opens. Twenty-two years old at the start of the novel, handsome, good-natured, and wealthy, he is contrasted with his friend Darcy as being less clever but kinder and more charming and hence more popular in Meryton. He lacks resolve and is easily influenced by others.

 

·         Caroline Bingley is the snobbish sister of Charles Bingley. Clearly harbouring romantic intentions on Darcy herself, she views his growing attachment to Elizabeth Bennet with some jealousy, resulting in disdain and frequent verbal attempts to undermine Elizabeth and her society.

 

·         George Wickham is an old acquaintance of Darcy from childhood, and an officer in the militia unit stationed near Meryton. Superficially charming, he rapidly forms a friendship with Elizabeth Bennet, prompting remarks upon his suitability as a potential husband. He spreads numerous tales about the wrongs Darcy has done to him, colouring the popular perception of the other man in local society. It is eventually revealed that these tales are distortions, and that Darcy was the wronged man in their acquaintance.

 

·         William Collins, aged twenty-five, is Mr Bennet s clergyman cousin and, as Mr Bennet has no son, heir to his estate. Austen described him as "not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society." Collins boasts of his acquaintance with and advantageous patronage from Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Mr Bennet, Jane, and Elizabeth consider him pompous and lacking in common sense. Elizabeth s rejection of Collins marriage proposal is welcomed by her father, regardless of the financial benefit to the family of such a match. Elizabeth is later somewhat distressed, although understanding, when her closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, consents to marry Collins out of her need for a settled position and to avoid the low status and lack of autonomy of an old maid.

 

·         Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who possesses wealth and social standing, is haughty, domineering and condescending. Mr Collins, among others, enables these characteristics by deferring to her opinions and desires. Elizabeth, however, is duly respectful but not intimidated. Darcy, whilst respectful of their shared family connection, is offended by her lack of manners, especially towards Elizabeth, and later, when pressed by her demand that he not marry Elizabeth, is quick to assert his intentions to marry whom he wishes.

 

·         Aunt and Uncle Gardiner: he is Mrs Bennet s brother, and a successful businessman in London—quite sensible and gentleman-like. His wife is close with—a mentor to—both Elizabeth and Jane, and she proves vital in assisting Elizabeth and in interpreting Darcy. Jane stays with the Gardiners in London for a while, and Elizabeth travels with them to Derbyshire, where she again meets Darcy. They both support the Bennets by trying to help Lydia when she elopes with Wickham.

 

·         Georgiana Darcy is Mr Darcy s quiet and amiable younger sister, aged sixteen when the story begins. In a letter to Elizabeth, Darcy describes events of the previous year, when Wickham tried to persuade Georgiana to elope with him, so that he could inherit her £30,000. Later, Elizabeth meets her at Pemberley, where she is amiable and sweet. She is very happy with her brother s choosing of Elizabeth and maintains a close relationship with them both.

 

Interrelationships

 

 

A comprehensive web showing the relationships between the main characters in Pride and Prejudice

 

 

Major themes

 

Many critics take the novel s title as a starting point when analysing the major themes of Pride and Prejudice; however, Robert Fox cautions against reading too much into the title since commercial factors may have played a role in its selection. "After the success of Sense and Sensibility, nothing would have seemed more natural than to bring out another novel of the same author using again the formula of antithesis and alliteration for the title. It should be pointed out that the qualities of the title are not exclusively assigned to one or the other of the protagonists; both Elizabeth and Darcy display pride and prejudice."^[5]

 

A major theme in much of Austen s work is the importance of environment and upbringing on the development of young people s character and morality.^[6] Social standing and wealth are not necessarily advantages in her world, and a further theme common to Jane Austen s work is ineffectual parents. In Pride and Prejudice, the failure of Mr and Mrs Bennet (particularly the latter) as parents is blamed for Lydia s lack of moral judgment; Darcy, on the other hand, has been taught to be principled and scrupulously honourable, but is also proud and overbearing.^[6] Kitty, rescued from Lydia s bad influence and spending more time with her older sisters after they marry, is said to improve greatly in their superior society.^[7]

 

Style

 

Pride and Prejudice, like most of Jane Austen s works, employs the narrative technique of free indirect speech. This has been defined as "the free representation of a character s speech, by which one means, not words actually spoken by a character, but the words that typify the character s thoughts, or the way the character would think or speak, if she thought or spoke".^[4] By using narrative which adopts the tone and vocabulary of a particular character (in this case, that of Elizabeth), Austen invites the reader to follow events from Elizabeth s viewpoint, sharing her prejudices and misapprehensions. "The learning curve, while undergone by both protagonists, is disclosed to us solely through Elizabeth s point of view and her free indirect speech is essential ... for it is through it that we remain caught, if not stuck, within Elizabeth s misprisions."^[4]

 

·       Dear Students, You will be examined next week,25-04-2011,take a note of that all the three novels included, The Scarlet Letter ,Hard Times  and Pride and Prejudice  ,be brief and never tackle something irrelevant to the meant questions" Least written, Soonest mended.

 

 

 

 

 

 

التوقيع:                                                                                                          رئيس القسم

 

مدرس المادة: م. حيدر غازي الموسوي                                                         أ. م. د. فريد حميد الهنداوي

 

التأريخ:      / 5 /2011                                                                             التأريخ:      / 5 /2011