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Pride and Prejudice Questions.Relationships Between Characters.
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1. Consider Mr. Wickham's function in the novel in terms of the geometry of desire. What is the source of Elizabeth's attraction to in Mr. Wickham? What role does he play in her attraction to Mr. Darcy? What is the significance of his own amatory adventures? 2. Consider the importance of reading in the novel. Mr. Darcy says that a real gentleman would never neglect his library in this day and age. And Elizabeth says that she likes to make a study of character. In particular, consider the letter, which Mr. Darcy writes to Elizabeth after he proposes to her. Which of these two is the better reader of the other? Why? 3. Continuing along the same vein, what is the relationship, which Austen is trying to draw between novel reading and education? Give examples to support your answer. 4. How does the visit to Pemberley affect Elizabeth's feelings towards Mr. Darcy? What does she learn about Mr. Darcy as a result of her visit?. 5. At what moment does Elizabeth begin to fall in love with Mr. Darcy" 6. Like Robinson Crusoe, Pride and Prejudice is a novel about the middle class. And just as Crusoe finds himself rich when he returns to England, Elizabeth's marriage to Mr. Darcy raises her station in life from the lower end of the middle class to the landed gentry. Discuss the importance of the gender of the hero and heroine in these respective novels. To what degree does their gender determine the nature of their adventures? 7. How do issues of class get raised in the novel? How does the novel resolve these issues? What role does gender play in how Austen engages issues of class in the novel? 8. Why does Austen call Elizabeth by her first name and Mr. Darcy by his last name throughout the novel? What is the effect of this naming? What are its social implications? 9. Consider the final resolution of the novel. Is the ending a fairy tale one (recall that fairy tales end with "and they lived happily ever after")? How does the novel expand upon and complicate this ending? Does the ending play up the romance, or the social satire? What is the final message, which the novel leaves us with? 10. What is the significance of the pairings and doublings, which Austen gives us: Jane and Elizabeth, Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, Kitty and Lydia, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet? How do those pairings shift through the course of the novel? | |
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