Gender Inequality in Pride and Prejudice (Essay Sample)

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GENDER IMBALANCE IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Social and gender imbalance have been widely explored and illustrated in Austen’s novel, "Pride and Prejudice”. The author demonstrates a sparkling comedy of feeling, love, wit and marriage to attain a certain balance between pride and prejudice. The authorship demonstrates numerous features of a marriage which can essentially influence so that they are able to make the most of their life despite the different situations and circumstances that they may be facing. A wide social, political and economic imbalance is eminent throughout the narrative. These two traits, pride and prejudice, are described to bear desirable merits going by the fact that they depict that a human being can be widely influenced by the kind and the nature of the society they subscribe to. This paper will explore various angles of the imbalance as presented in Austen’s authorship.
Austen carefully uses a disconcerting language and diction which is paramount in distinguishing between the motivations and authorities/powers which depict a man’s living and those that shape women’s lives. Her inferences imply that it is the men who are the active agents tasked with the formation of social events and the physical relationships. Basically, men desire, decide and define. She however associates opposite traits to women. She solely refers to women in terms of their potential and or their spousal role. She exclusively talks about a wife and not a woman.
Early in the novel, two intimate friends Charlotte Lucas and Elizabeth Bennet hold a conversation typifying one of the most renowned novels in the English language CITATION She10 \p 73 \l 1033 (Hubbard 73). Charlotte insists that the first priority for every sensible woman should be to find and attract the love of a prosperous woman. Her convictions as well as her emotions are anything but idealistic, as she correctly conceives that the situation unmarried women encounter in the 19th century bear all the characteristics of a Darwinian Survivalist struggle.
Charlotte goes on to realize that the world and the civilization that she and the friend must exist is one in which women and men are virtually different species. In this case, single women live and survive under the psychological and financial lenience of the men counterparts. In this society, the unmarried women are forbidden from accessing their own talents and capacities. Essentially, this means that they cannot support themselves economically. They are equally denied any sovereign position in a polite society. Certainly, they have been denied and deprived of almost all the independent structures of purpose, identity and self-knowledge. This society holds that the most relevant role of any single woman is to make a marriage. Basically, a woman can only be able to claim her small measure of freedom by bonding herself to any male who will have her.
Charlotte supposes that an unmarried woman should and must realize this reality, accommodate it and assimilate it by entering into the best marriage that she can possibly make. Otherwise, she will end up as a victim of desolation, pitifulness, solitude and irrelevance CITATION She10 \p 43 \l 1033 (Hubbard 43). She further concludes that an unwed woman must conceive of life as a chase and of men as the quarry. However, Elizabeth seemingly holds a different opinion. She believes that women should enjoy some degree of freedom despite the prevalent imbalance.
The author, Austen, goes on to cultivate the theme by illustrating the position of a man in the society mainly as the key determinants of every woman’s success. Austen associates men with the power and the authority to intend/decide and the ability to determine. Furthermore, she affiliates men with the power to own. Essentially, possessing is the primary behavioral and political masculine characteristic. Basically, proprietorship actualizes a man’s most significant purpose. The acquisition of goods and the exhibition of their related physical and social status make up a man’s fundament and discharge his primary passion.
In her work, Austen does not however mention the role of a wife as she expects that every reader is able to perceive what these roles are. She instead expects that every reader will figure out that a woman is a fundamental and a complementary aspect to a single man in the possession of good fortunes. This is so since the woman is seen to possess a range of attributes that the man desires: a general compliancy of temperament, a satisfactory measure of attractiveness, a desirable set of social skills. This "possession" is her trading tool in exchange for her keeping. Allegedly, she sells it so as to obtain a share of a man’s civil establishments.
Essentially, marriage is described as a transaction. In addition, nothing concerning love, compatibility, caring whatsoever. In "this" association, the male property acquires by purchase the commodity of the female propriety and all its allowances while the female property acquires by sale the commodity of the male financial backing and support alongside a social sanction. Certainly, the inference is that marriage is a tort in which entitlement; rank, validation and planned or accidental happiness are contracted and bought. In these contexts, she does not however ascertain that men consciously conceive, logically interpret and actively seek their domineering roles. Similarly, women are equally not fully aware to clearly identify themselves as passive, subordinate beings and a type of merchandise. Despite the fact that this myth is supposed to be recognized and accepted universally, it does not translate that it has to be thoroughly accepted CITATION Kat09 \p 79 \l 1033 (Darrow 79). Women are described to take hold the lower position in the marriage.
The author has presented a series of marriages to define and present the reality of these beliefs. Through the novel, we realize that the formally deprived women are in determinedly and often maliciously directorial. In the narrative, we encounter a scene of universal shamefulness whereby willful and manipulative mothers conspire to capture for their daughters husbands or imagined significance. The daughters conspiratorially tease and embarrass the men for whom they feel no emotion. Almost every woman in the narrative regards every passably presented man as the rightful property of someone or other unmarried female. The women of all intelligence standards routinely regard all bachelors and widowers as if they were some sort of possible possession , sources of potential entitlement and the beasts of privileging prey.
Elizabeth, the main character is subjected to a forceful marriage by her mother whereby she is supposed to get married to Mr. Collins. However, she is a strong woman who does not hold the view that she is supposed to have her future determined by her mother. She does not subscribe to the thought that most members in this society do. Luckily, she enjoys her father’s backing and therefore she eventually gets her way out. Unlike her case, many women have ended up in marriages they did not intend but just because they were forced into them. They have been denied the freedom to choose those they would like to get married to which depicts the social imbalance in this society.
Women have been granted an assorted set of responsibilities in this society CITATION Sim07 \p 21 \l 1033 (Morgan 21). Similarly, they have been granted a given dressing code which is determined by the men. The society has a set of expectations which guides their activities especially given that men are the decision makers and they are they are supposed to take what has been designed and developed by these men irrespective of their intellectual possession. Women would not own properties as the role was only left to the men. However, these aspects have changed drastically.
Comparatively, there has been a massive transformation in the way women ar...