Pride And Prejudice And A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women

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1) The first novel that I chose is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, and it is set in on domestic concerns over property, money and social status that focus the changing social society of the late 18th and early 19th century England. As we see in the novel, estates and heirloom are closely intertwined with romance, dating, and marriage. In the late 18th century, the English notion of family and the woman’s position began to shift, as the British culture began to concentrate on the growth and on the wealth of the family.

The second novel that I chose is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft. It was published in 1792, and it is often referred to as the founding text or manifesto …show more content…

I think that Pride and Prejudice shares similarities to A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Both authors wanted marriages to be based on love and not wealth or the need that a woman should find a rich husband and fit in society, and that women should be treated the same as men. An important quality of the character in Pride and Prejudice is that Elizabeth shows off as being well-educated. Lizzy is humorous and can have a conversation with Mr. Darcy very well just as the other men in the novel. At times, Lizzy gives the impression that she surpasses Mr. Darcy educationally. During the 18th century, woman were educated only if they had the money to pay for their education or had family that could educate them. Both authors share the same idea that women should be educated and treated equally. The difference between the two texts is that Pride and Prejudice is a sarcastic, humorous, witty, romantic novel and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a serious political text discussing women’s right to be …show more content…

She discusses that women should have an education equivalent to their position in society, stating that women are crucial to society because they educate their children and woman can be "companions" to their husbands, instead of just being the housewife. Rather than viewing women as an accessory to society or a property that can be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft argues that woman are human beings just as men, and they deserve the same primary rights as men. Of course, her message was more persuasive, she was writing about women having equal rights like men and she championed women’s emancipation and critiqued conventional femininity. She argued that women are not naturally inferior; they only lack education comparable to men. “It is time to effect a revolution in female manners—time to restore to them their lost dignity—and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world”

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