Ideas in Pride & Prejudice

The ideas explored in Pride & Prejudice floats to women surviving in the harsh world functioning on the principles of class, rank & money. The novel is set in early 19th century when the traditional notions about gentry has been changing but still a display as radical as shown by the heroine of the novel, Elizabeth Bennet, is far from just being satisfactory. When the market is flooded with conduct literature of all kinds Austen surely setting her heroine as defiant as possible did a great deal to all the women on the verge of matrimony which escaped her notice. Men & women did not enjoy the same freedom to exercise their will in terms of marriage. Where for rich-privileged men like Bingley & Darcy, marriage was just assumed as a new possession they could adorn in their estate houses; for women it is all they could depend on. The only possible way for women to lead a respectable & comfortable life is to marry a gentleman of large fortune. Even the money-ed woman like Lady Catherine is obsessed in acquiring a husband for her daughter with handsome prospects. Because  marriage is a decided lot for women, privileged women are a fortune to be exploited while privileged men a fortune they can exploit. The marriage of Charlotte Lucas shows how brutally women have to suppress their feelings to secure a socially accepted comfortable lifestyle. She being a woman who would be meagerly provided for, marrying Mr.

Collins who for her is a future harbinger of good prospects for her sisters and a comfortable lifestyle for her though not grand is something she would put her emotions at stake for. This shows the inherent transaction that takes place in the layering of a gay marriage ceremony. Lydia's marriage to Wickham was despised at because she eloped with a man of no fortune and moreover this expresses a woman's sexuality to public view which in no way could be explained in a society where conduct literature preaches ladies to be self-sacrificing, obedient, quiet and pliant. 

Even Jane's marriage if we look thoroughly is not something to be rejoiced at because the mental torture she has to endure waiting for a gentleman is very agonizing. When Bingley has to think twice before making Jane a proposal because of her lowly connections no matter manipulated by Darcy and her sisters shows how what we call "love" is nothing but a social construct which has to wait for fulfillment till the requisite conditions enabling an alliance has not been thoroughly thought out. If it is not for Darcy which Austen contemplated to have a comeback, the love have been long lost on shrewd grounds of societal clauses which makes us wonder if there is anything called real love or is it just a matter of transactions? 

The two most famous rejections of literature by the heroine Elizabeth Bennet of Mr

 Collins & later Mr. Darcy are enough examples to show us how rejections by a woman are so decried out by all. Even Mrs. Bennet told, "Lizzy, I don't know if you keep on rejecting hands like this who would provide for you after your father's death." To reject is either to die in poverty or embrace spinsterhood. Marriage is fated and deeply ingrained to women's happiness. Even Elizabeth couldn't escape from this. She being the most witty & practical heroine in the entire novel is vulnerable to men's attention. Wickham was on the verge of winning her favor if not interrupted by Darcy's letter. On a more subtle level, if someone points out "Does women have no intellect to decide on a man's character until they are cleared of it by another man but a man again?" We'd be left to wonder, "Is Austen building on the stereotype of a gullible woman or just making a fantasy which has no connection to reality?" Then if someone would say, "Women are to be controlled because they are so gullible." Are we to concede? These are some of the anomalies which astonish us despite Elizabeth being shown witty and smart. Moreover, few other instances when Elizabeth was asked when did she first start to get affected by Mr. Darcy and her reply "Pemberley" made us contort a little bit and we shout at the top of our voice, Is our favourite Elizabeth too started to get affected by worldly pleasures and left her former ground of being honest to the far excellent virtues of love and equality? Though I would not be so biased as to see one side of the story, I would not altogether say Elizabeth did not bring a single ounce of change in Mr. Darcy because she did transform him. It was not in vain that Mr. Darcy protected her sister Lydia  and made Bingley propose to Jane because he did win the respect and love of Elizabeth by that and their marriage was by far a marriage of equals. But, despite this the very way how the plot progresses to a final happy ending brings dire criticism. How far is it right to conform to the same ideals of men being always a protector and women always a "damsel in distress" as in Lydia's elopement episode? Does the marriage of a radical heroine not bind it to the same notion of patriarchy which it rejects? 

We can't say still Jane Austen achieved less, she by far of her times the most feminist heroine in the line of Mary Wollstonecraft. Though she did not get much acknowledgement during her lifetime but being herself a woman of not so rich fortune as to defy every notion that exploits women openly and still manage to create such a heroine says much of her intellect for Elizabeth fascinates us. She being powerless won someone of power by her wits that makes the prejudices rather fluid and if not a revolution creates spark enough in the society to question itself again. How far the society manages to give a just answer to it is the question that now lingers.