Essay
on Pride and Prejudice
Jane’s
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is considered a timeless novel ever since it was
published up the modern day. This is because Austen’s use of dialogue and the
heroine resonates to readers of all ages and periods in time. Austen’s use of
“images” of voices and views is closely interconnected with Bakhtin’s theory of
representation of images and dialogue (in other words use of language).
Bahktin’s theory on object of representation and representation of language
allows the audience to truly see Austen’s style of writing as timeless to this
day. Bahktin examines the people in novels but objects as well as the author’s
own thoughts and opinions being spoken through a character. During Austen’s
time, a woman speaking out her true opinions, emotions, and being honest was
seen as unwomanly and against the society’s beliefs at that time. However,
Austen uses Bakhtin’s idea of having an author’s opinions being resonated
through characters in a novel is what makes this novel timeless. She echoes her
modernistic views on how social norms, class norms, and marriage requirements
be by using Bahktin’s theory of representation of language and object
flawlessly. Austen proves to the audience and society that sometimes speaking
honestly regardless of man or woman is the way solution to arguments and life.
Austen clearly creates a character
that “illuminates” the world, as Bakhtin would say by having Elizabeth refusing
to marry unless it was for true love, which collides with the views of other
characters in the novel. As Bakhtin states, “the author represents this language, carries a conversation with it,
and the conversation penetrates into the interior of this language-image and dialogizes
it from within” (46). This means that the author symbolizes this
language, this is the author’s distinctive voice alone and no one else, and it
is only being conveyed through a character. This is shown in Austen’s style of
writing very often and especially in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth and Mr.
Darcy views collide when Mr. Darcy confesses his feelings to her and she
rejects him. Elizabeth said, “I have
never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most
unwillingly” (125). Her language would
have been considered unacceptable during the Romantic era and Austen dares to
that making the character more loveable and inspiring. That it is okay to speak
your own thoughts and opinions as a woman during the time.
The
thought of being able to speak honestly to the opposite gender has always been
an enormous offense in the Romantic era. Austen pushes her characters to speak
out and reject that rule in the novel:
“From the very beginning— from the first moment, I may almost
say— of my acquaintance with you, your manners, impressing me with the fullest
belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the
feelings of others, were such as to form the groundwork of disapprobation on
which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known
you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could
ever be prevailed on to marry” (127-128).
Elizabeth Bennett for the
first time expresses herself honestly and directly without the usual private
nature of a Romantic era woman of her class. She is loud, direct, sharp verbs,
witty choice of words that makes Elizabeth the modernistic woman in the wrong
time period. The idea from Bahktin that the representation of language is that
the author is the language itself and the author is having a conversation with
it. Austen symbolizes the language and the language is having a conversation,
this could be seen as the author having a conversation with no only the
opposing audience but also with herself to this sort of behavior Elizabeth
portrays. Austen is arguing with herself
against her own beliefs, values and those of society through a character on
what the difference and effect is of speaking honestly for once in public.
In Austen’s novels, there is always the journey of
self-awareness, coming to be aware of something the heroine themselves done
wrong or their point of evolution. Austen’s style of writing has always
contained a mass amount of the heroine’s stream of consciousness of what the
heroine believes is righteous versus the opposing voices of other characters.
There is one powerful line in the novel that exhibits this: “Till this moment I
never knew myself” (137). This quote exhibits Austen’s heroine is coming to a
state of awareness of how wrong they’ve been in their actions. Women during the Romantic period believe what
they are taught is right and what they think is correct, but Austen challenges
that absolute certainness in her characters. As Bahktin states, “literary
language is represented precisely as a living mix of varied and opposing
voices” (49). This meant that the language is a never-ending conversation of
different voices in opposition with each other. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are the
perfect examples of this because their oppositional voices of society and
marriage norms. This idea of Bakhtin’s also explains Austen’s use of stream of
consciousness with Elizabeth where Elizabeth goes off on her opinions and views
of others, and Mr. Darcy and Mr. Darcy opposes everything she believes in. The
representation of language is a living and breathing thing that has a variety
of opposing voices whether they are articulated or stream of consciousness.
There is so much animation in Pride and Prejudice with
the characters and their dialogue that paints such a fantasized world of how
Austen wanted her era to be. The character’s witty dialogue and the strong
willed heroine show how well Austen mastered the use of language to captivate
the readers. Mr. Darcy states, “Could you have expect me to rejoice in the
inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of
relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own” (127)?
Elizabeth replies, “You’re mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose the mode of your
declaration affected me in any other way…”(127). These two dialogues illustrate the animation
of characters through exchanged words. Their dialogue proves to the audience
that they are as alive as any living being is. Bahktin states, “the language of
novel is system of languages that mutually and ideologically interaminate each
other” (47). The language of a novel is brought to life the dialogue interacting with each other and when one
speaks there must be a reply for animation like between Mr. Darcy and
Elizabeth.
Bahktin’s theory helped
the reader understand better and read between the lines of Pride and Prejudice.
He
uses the idea of representation of objects and language to examine Pride and
Prejudice and why Austen’s style of writing is the way it is. His theory allows
the readers to see how Austen’s choice of words and dialogue has timelessness
about them. Any novel alike should have opposing voices, Bahktin states this is
what is required and what language is and Austen does an amazing job of doing
that with her different characters and the way they speak. The language in a
novel is very important with animation, opposing views and voices, and seeing
how the author symbolizes language. Bhaktin believes that without these aspects
a novel is not a novel no matter what the era in time is.
