Social analysis is a common feature of modern literary criticism. The social context and antecedent of authors and their fiction works are invariably examined in order to shed light on the characters and events depicted in the stories. If literary works are influenced by the times in which they were written, it is equally true that the characters and events in fiction reflect on human character and the character of the times which they depict. The storyline of a novel may be fictitious, but the insights it can provide are very real and true to life.
Pride and Prejudice was written during an epoch when France was in the midst of a violent revolutionary upheaval and vividly depicts the social response to those events in England. England had already undergone a major social upheaval with the dethronement and execution of Charles I and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, laying the essential basis for evolution of liberal democracy. In spite of these two major cataclysmic changes, a century later, it was once again threatened with revolutionary change by contagion from across the channel. The whole nation rose to the occasion of the French Revolution and was ready to do everything in her power to avoid a revolution. The French aristocracy had resisted the winds of change with rude vulgar assertion of their superiority, until it was imposed on them by physical force. In the process, about 1600 of them lost their heads. Their English counterparts consented to accommodate the aspirations of the rising middle classes by permitting intermarriage with commoners. Pride and Prejudice depicts this silent process of social transformation in the lives of the English gentility. The whole process is summarized in Elizabeth's accusations against Darcy, accusing him of arrogance, pride, conceit, and selfish disdain for others. Darcy's conscious individual response epitomizes the collective subconscious response of the English upper classes. He accepts the truth of her accusations and endeavors and transforms himself for the explicit purpose of pleasing and winning her. Thus, a charming story of romance and marriage becomes both a vehicle for and a product of social evolution.
Any story reflects the mood of its period. The marriages of Darcy and Bingley are symptomatic of the mood of the period. The French aristocrats lost their heads not only because they were aristocrats but because of the assertion of their superiority. Darcy lost his arrogance and saved his head.
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The implicit theme of this story is that what the less civilised achieve physically, the more mature nation attains by a psychological change. |
Every society has a character that places a unique stamp on the values, attitudes, opinions, customs and conventions of its members, activities and institutions. That character undergoes a process of continuous development or evolution. Events occur in a social context and reflect the character of the society and the character of the times in which they take place. Often the event can be seen as a specific individual expression of the general direction and process of social development. Knowledge of the process of social development reveals the determining character of society on the outcome of action.
Society is not just the sum total of the individuals who participate in it. The characteristics of a society are not merely a sum, average or other mathematical function of the values, opinions, and attitudes of those individuals. A society is a living organism with a life of its own, a living collective which consists of many living individual human beings, just as our physical bodies are living collectives made up of many living individual cells. Both the body and the cell have their own distinct individuality, though obviously the two are related.
Although we commonly think of society as the sum of its individual members, historically the consciousness of the collective evolved before the emergence and development of individuality, which is a much more recent phenomenon. Groups developed collective activities, beliefs, attitudes, habits, customs and values that they imposed on their members, demanding unstinting conformity, often on pain of exile or death.
Every society is undergoing a continuous process of adaptation and adjustment to survive and maintain the status quo or to grow, develop and evolve. Different levels, segments and aspects of the society move simultaneously in different directions, some to resist change and others to foster it. Often an event can be seen as a representative individual expression of the general direction and process of social development. Knowledge of the process of social development reveals the determining character of society on the outcome of action.
Jane Austen composed First Impressions during the period 1796-97, at the height of the French Revolution and just two decades after the American Revolution, but she was unsuccessful in publishing the novel at that time. A revised version was published as Pride & Prejudice in 1813. Thus, the period preceding composition of both the first and second versions of the novel was one populated by radical new social ideas and rapid social transformation. Across the English channel in France, the process was wracked by violence, while in England it took on a less visible and turbulent form. Understanding this social context is essential for a full comprehension of the novel.
We commonly think of social development as a desirable set of outcomes such as greater material prosperity, education, productivity, technology and freedom. But these outcomes are the result of a process and that process is occurring all the time. In essence, society evolves when the collective accumulates surplus energy that is not required for its survival and growth at the current level and when a subconscious collective will, forms for development in a particular direction. That will expresses through the conscious initiatives of individuals who depart from conformity to the status quo and pioneer new forms of behavior, which are then imitated by other individuals and eventually accepted by the social collective and organized in the society by new political, legal, social, economic or cultural activities, institutions, customs and values.
Over the past five hundred years the entire Western world and more recently the world as a whole have been moving along a course of development that has several identifiable characteristics.
The development process can occur in one of two ways - through violent revolution or slow gradual evolution. Society is structured in a manner similar to the earth's crust, which consists of layers of tectonic plates that rest on, interlock and shift constantly in relation to each other. Geological processes build pressure for movement of the plates in different directions. When the pressure mounts, either the plates slide past each other defusing the pressure or the pressure continues to mount until a sudden violent adjustment takes place that we perceive as an earthquake.
Like the earth, society can respond to the mounting pressure either by revolutionary or evolutionary change. Pride & Prejudice was written at a time of violent social revolution in France, where the stiff resistance of the old aristocracy refused to acknowledge or accommodate the growing aspirations and power of an emerging bourgeois middle class. Historian Will Durant characterized pre-revolutionary French society by the true story of a very wealthy, middle class woman who was invited to a meeting of aristocratic woman in recognition of her great wealth, but when it came time to serve luncheon, was asked to eat in the kitchen. Because of the stiff resistance to change, the pressure exploded as a revolution that physically destroyed the old French aristocracy.
While France resorted to violent revolution, English society at the time chose the evolutionary path. England had evolved beyond the static stage of feudal privilege. Society was becoming dynamic. It required men of energy and bold initiative, which were not being generated in sufficient numbers by the landed aristocracy. The evolution involved the necessary destruction of old structures and values, particularly the institutions based on physical values of heredity and land, which gradually gave way to vital values of money, merit and individual initiative. The economy was shifting from agriculture to trade and industry. In an agricultural country, power can reside with large landholders. In a mercantile and industrial country, power goes where the money is, to those in banking, trade and manufacturing. The land can only support so much wealth for a few, but trade can support wealth for the many. The business community, the emerging middle class, became increasingly important and influential. Social power and status shifted from aristocracy to money. This evolutionary movement was reflected in subtle changes affecting the way people think, feel and act as well as how the collective responds to their individual actions.
Revolutions in society become stable when the social organizations, customs, usage, and culture absorb the spirit of the revolution and restructure themselves. In an evolving society, the whole society is in constant motion, shifting like tectonic plates in micro increments, some people breaking barriers above them and moving up, some people falling through the safety rails that protect them at their level and tumbling down. Through it all, the entire society remakes and reshapes itself, evolving through the force of individual aspirations and subconscious collective will, in a direction set by the evolving self-conception of the whole.
The characters and events in Pride & Prejudice depict this evolutionary process in English society. Let us begin by examining the society as it exists at the commencement of the story. Lady Catherine is at the top. She symbolizes the old aristocracy that has lost its vitality and is dying. The fact that she wants only flatterers around her who constantly acknowledge her greatness reflects her declining status. If Lady Catherine depends on the fawning admiration of a Collins to be a great lady, then her position is certainly insecure. Next, there is Darcy, the very wealthy master of Pemberley, son of an untitled father and titled mother. Then we have Bingley, whose money was earned in trade by his father. He has bought his way into aristocracy and his sister wants him to purchase an estate, but he is satisfied with being the son of a man who earned a £100,000 and being a friendents and y_inonstanv admirhicle o every few,ohen weto thet the0,000 ose ofajustmeto doh th.e have B'and his ,f Lro sto, aved rms hiwly hrne2a £100,00idualontinuintnd igre eith. Th88, lndentstions.
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