1. Attempt A Marxist Reading of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice.
Ans. :- Marxism is basically the idea that society is driven by money and the economy. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice for example, Mrs. Bennett is the height of Marxism since her singular goal is to marry off all her daughters to wealthy men. Another example is that almost every character except Elizabeth and Darcy is preoccupied with the income of their potential partner. Since the Bennetts are brought up within an upper class society, the illusion of power is found within their characters. They have the freedom to do what they want and make their own decisions because they are not controlled by a higher power. Of course, the Bingleys and the Darcys have a much
In that article, Orwell talks about the power of language. Since certain words conjure up certain thoughts in readers, the writer can somewhat control their thoughts by carefully picking and choosing the words he writes down. I definitely think language should be one of the main focuses for feminists or, for that matter, any form of criticism. Noticing the paired, opposite terms such as masculine/feminine in the feminist criticism section at the top of page 452 reminds me of deconstruction. It makes me think about how the different categories of criticism aren’t completely separate from each other. It even says later in the section, “Categories obscure similarities even as they help us make distinctions” (Brontë 458). We should try to keep in the back of our minds that categories, while useful in showing differences between things, sometimes overlap and share similarities.
I found Lyn Pykett’s feminist criticism to be very persuasive. I liked her part at the beginning about older Catherine’s different names and that “Catherine Heathcliff remains an unfulfilled possibility, a route not taken, although some would argue that this unoccupied term in fact names Catherine’s true identity, and that she acquires this name-role beyond the narrative when her spirit joins with Heathcliff’s to wander the moors eternally” (Brontë 469). That argument reminded me of a humorous comment one of our classmates, Jessica Guthrie, commented on in her