Literature Paper on Austen

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.