Notes on Pride and Prejudice

• Collins misreads Elizabeth, Bingley misreads Jane, Lydia misread Wickham and Mrs Bennet misread everyone
• Heidegger claims emotion influences what we see
• Elizabeth has emotional and rational intelligence
• We see emotions that comic character miss
• 'Darcy is masculine becuase he is emotional' p131
• the worst character are those that speak most forcibly for contemporary mores' p135
• Mrs Bennet always takes on the position of conflict with Mr Bennet and Elizabeth

Keith M. Opdahl, Emotion as Meaning: The literary case for how we imagine

Charlotte Bronte on Jane Austen

she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that strong Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress.

Virginia Woolf on Jane Austen

Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears on the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader's mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial.

Critical viewpoints on Pride and Prejudice

'There are always reasons for loving in Pride and Prejudice, and Elizabeth loves for the best reasons'

'There is a heroine, there is a hero and there is an obstacle. The obstacle is money.'

'The novel rushes to a happy ending'

'And when Austen wasn’t slicing up the men, she was defining women into tribes (long before the Spice Girls): the pretty, the funny, the clever, the bookish, the bold.'

'Austen descripts how money rules society.'                                                    Victoria Lambert

'Pride and Prejudice shows the reader the results of poor parenting'

'In Pride and Prejudice, Austen's satire is always tinged with cruelty'

'Although the manners of the society depicted in Pride and Prejudice are highly formal, we still learn plenty about the character's emotional lives'

‘We learn most about the characters in Pride and Prejudice when they meet on social occasions.’

‘The restraints that society imposes are felt as sharply by the male as the female characters'

It 'is too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade'

‘Laughter in Pride and Prejudice takes different forms and provides a variety of functions'

'Although much of what happens could have disturbing, even tragic consequences, disasters are successfully averted'