Hey pretty sure I have 30 posts haha, was wondering if you had the time to look over my Module A essay again. All of my other essays bumped up in trials except this one
Stayed the same at 16/20. Any and all help appreciated
thank you!!
MODULE A: ESSAY
Question: The challenge of living your own life is an idea that connects Pride and Prejudice and Letter to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen. How is this idea shaped and reshaped in these texts from different contexts?Traditional opinions in regards to the ways individuals should live have developed and changed across contexts. Thus, composes will continue to consider what it means to “live” in different ways, as to remain relevant to their context, audience and universal responders. This is evident through a comparison of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, and Fay Weldon’s epistolary work Letter’s to Alice. Despite their different contexts, both challenge the status quo of marriage, and how it impacts individual freedoms, through reshaping the themes of class, gender and the rebellion. Austen challenges her society through the actions and attitudes of her characters, while Weldon re-contextualizes Austen’s critique in order to validate their shared desire for social change.
The social cues dictated by a strict class structure has remained a relevant thematic concern across contexts. In comparing the work of Austen and Weldon, it is evident that Weldon has appropriated the issues related to this challenge to suit her contemporary world. Austen was writing during the Regency period, a time of strict social codes and structures, whereby an individual’s class greatly affected their ability to live freely, demonstrated through Austen’s use of characterization, whereby the simplicity of the gentry class (the Bennets) is juxtaposed against the extravagant arrogance and narcissism of the aristocratic Lady Catherine De Bough, in order to textually keep “the distinction of rank preserved.” Austen’s use of imagery also alludes to this theme, as she vividly describes the luxury of Mr. Darcy’s Pemberley estate in comparison with the modesty of the Bennet’s dwelling.
Through marriage the strict social hierarchy was maintained, however also subverted, through providing the opportunity for social mobility. This intrinsic link between marriage and class remains a critical theme which Weldon explores further, through re-contextualizing Austen’s perception of her society’s social stratification, enabling contemporary readers a more enlightened understanding of the novel. This is achieved through her discussion of the options for women outside marriage and its purpose of providing financial security, utilizing satire and juxtaposition to emphasis this further, stating that marriage “is the stuff of our [contemporary] women’s magazines, but it was the stuff of their life [during the Regency period], their very existence.”
Weldon also uses explicit inter-textual reference to what she perceives to be subversive elements of Austen’s work to deal with Austen’s criticisms more directly. According to Weldon, Mr. Darcy “Marry[ing] where he loved, not where he ought,” demonstrates Austen seditiousness, suggesting the superiority of a marriage based in love rather than socio-economic necessity. Fiction, according to Weldon, enables readers with insight into the freedoms and rights they desire, but may not be afforded to them in reality. Through Literature Austen suggests to the reader they deserve more, and that it can be attained through the search for knowledge. Through Weldon’s reshaping of key themes within Pride and Prejudice, the reader is able to better recognize Austen’s aims, to expose the flawed nature of class divisions, and the triumph of personal traits such as intelligence over established social conventions.
The role of women and how it creates challenges within individual’s lives is a key theme with inter-contextual relevance, as evident through both Pride and Prejudice and Letters to Alice. In order to understand the hyperbolic attitude of Mrs. Bennet, one “must understand... the world in which Jane Austen was born,” writings within a patriarchal society, her books “studded with [examples of] male whims taking priority … over female happiness.”
During Austen’s time it was almost impossible for women to live independently, almost always at the mercy of male relatives for financial and social stability. Marriage enabled many families, to maintain social security put into jeopardy due to misogynistic inheritance laws. Austen represents this through the desperation of the Bennets’ situation, demonstrated through her characterization of Mrs. Bennet making it “the business of her life to get her daughters married,” before Mr Bennet dies.
Through the re-contextualization of Austen though Letters to Alice, Weldon enables her contemporary audience to better understand the plight of women at the time. Weldon was writing within a society experiencing the impact of second-wave feminism. Women could now vote and take up work previously reserved for men, and though the domestic expectations of women were still prevalent, it was now facing major opposition. Society had made significant progress since Austen’s time in regards to the abilities and rights of women to live independently. For her post-feminism audience to better understand the desperation of the women in Pride and Prejudice, Weldon utilizes contextual detail and statistics to clarify the characters’ motives, reinforcing the struggles of the past that today are no longer an issue. For example, when, according to Weldon, only 30% of women were married, and one of the most popular alternatives was prostitution, Mrs. Bennet’s desperation appears justified.
Through “linking the past of that society with its future,” and bridging the generational gap between two contexts, Weldon instils empathy within her contemporary audience, and substantiates Austen’s writings as a subversive text, maintaining the role of “Literature with a capital L” as key in challenging the values and attitudes of society.
The use of a rebellious character is a key technique employed by subversive texts, enabling the author an outlet in which to comment upon society from within the story in order to promote a similar sense of “rebellion”. Both Pride and Prejudice and Letters to Alice are connected through their use of rebellious characters, challenging the beliefs of those around them. Within Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, whom Austen utilizes as her authorial voice, does not accept the established conventions of her period, desiring for herself the freedom to decide her own life-path. This is evident through Austen’s use of the narrator point of view, in which the reader gains access to Elizabeth’s thoughts and emotions in regards to various major plot moments – such as Mr. Collins proposal. Thus, as the reader is gaining Elizabeth’s perspective upon the events that unfold, along with the comments from other characters that affirm this perception, Elizabeth’s subversiveness is praised rather than discouraged. Through Elizabeth’s action, attitudes and triumphs, Austen implores her readership to rebel also, as it will lead to greater happiness. Weldon utilizes the rebellious character Alice to teach her readership the importance of individual freedom. Despite Aunt Fay’s inflexible advice on how to achieve success as a writer, Alice rebels against her Aunt’s guidance, and achieves overwhelming success on her own. To be a subversive writer, one must also be a subversive reader, and through Alice’s success, Weldon informs her readers that though they have just read her beliefs, it is critical that they form their own. Therefore, it is evident that through the use of rebellious characters, Pride and Prejudice and Letters to Alice implore their readership to form their own values independent from societal influence.
Therefore, through their critiques of the role of class and women in regards to marriage and use of rebellious character, it is clear that both Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Weldon’s Letters to Alice, despite their socio-historical differences, are connected through their exploration of the challenges of living your own life within a society that continually suppresses your freedom, as they both serve to reshape not only our understand of each other, but of our contemporary society.
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Topic: English Advanced Essay Marking (Modules Only) (Read 688829 times)