Jane Austen Satirises the Social Standards of her Time in Pride & Prejudice

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Explore how Jane Austen Satirises the social standards of her time in Pride & Prejudice. Jane Austen uses satire to show up the arrogance or vanity of her characters and she shows the shallow nature of the social standards of her time. It all depended on how wealthy and what rank you were in. If you had lots of money through inheritance you were in the high rank and were considered more superior to anyone else and these higher ranked people looked down on people of the lower ranks. Austen satirises wealth and rank by showing how stupid the higher rank people were. Women had to be wealthy, so wealthy men would marry them. The more money you had the higher you were considered in society. Austen satirises virtues by showing how conscious the higher rank people in society are, and how they even had to marry a woman or man with lots of money which implies that love wasn't that important to some people. Austen satirises all these areas of life back then to show how pathetic people could be just to look better than everyone else. Jane Austen gently satirises Mrs Bennet, by showing the constant mention of her nerves and her attempt to get all her daughters married. Mrs Bennet is a miraculously tiresome character in the story. Mrs Bennet got married to Mr Bennet because of her looks not because of her brains. Mr Bennet is quite sarcastic to her; in the story when Mrs Bennet is excited about the new occupants of Netherfield estate, Mr Bennet doesn't really seem interested. For example "You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it." This implies that Mr Bennet isn't very interested in what his wife has to say, and isn't bothered about who occupies Longbourn. Mrs Bennet is a very dramatic woman... ... middle of paper ... ...nion is also seriously satirises as the people at Meryton decide automatically on an opinion of someone, but it is more likely to be wrong which is called prejudging someone. You can't really judge and person until you have actually spoken to them and got to know them properly. But at Meryton first impressions decided whether you are a good or bad person. This novel shows how strong love can be but Charlotte Lucas who marries the ridiculous, shallow Mr Collins for his money demonstrates that the heart doesn't always lead to marriage. Austen shows that true love is much more powerful than rank and power in society, and that it can overcome the most difficult and trying circumstances. It also demonstrates how class-consciousness people acted in Austen's era, this novel also shows us how feeble people were to try and be better than everyone else back then.

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