October 9 Blog

1a) "To be a character in Austen is to get continually contrasted, juxtaposed, related to others..." (Woloch,43).

1b) "Elizabeth feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances" (Austen, 355).

2.  How does the quote from Pride relate to Woloch's quote/why is it important to the overall theme of the novel?

3.  I find these two quotes to be essential to a deeper understanding of the driving force behind Pride and Prejudice.  Woloch makes the claim that the interactions between characters are essential to any Jane Austen work.  Pride is no exception.  In this work, every character seems to have another character that drives their actions and personality traits.  In the case of the second quote, the interactions between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy illustrate this point.

Over the course of the novel, Darcy and Elizabeth dance around a relationship with each other.  It is this interaction between the two characeter that fuels the majority of the story's action.  Elizabeth initially dislikes Darcy and is prejudiced against him.  Darcy also feels that Elizabeth is from an inferior social class and this makes him wary of getting involved with her.  He stays interested in her because of her sharp wit and sometimes outspoken-ness, whereas his charm keeps her interested.  However she rejects his advances repeatedly.  These traits spark interactions and events throughout the novel, however without such differing characters Austen would have nothing of interest to write about.  This is simply a general overview of how the relations between characters fuel the novel's actions.  I felt this quote is appropriate to this idea because after dancing around a relationship for chapter after chapter, it shows the culmination of all this inter-character comparison when Elizabeth finally accepts Darcy's proposal and they become a couple, providing the novel with a falling action and close.