Romanticism In Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice

During Jane Austen’s work on “Pride and Prejudice,” Romanticism started to reach its complex, and had strong influence on people’s life, but Austen chose to reject the tenets of that movement. Romanticism emphasized on the power of feeling, but Austen supported rationalism instead. She substantiated traditional principles and the established rules; her novels also display an ambiguity about emotion and an appreciation for intelligence and natural beauty that aligns them with Romanticism. Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” is one of her most well-known works and even though the text is hard to understand, I would recommend it for high students because to me, it is the most characteristic and the most eminently quintessential work of Jane Austen.

The title, “Pride and Prejudice,” is the most attractive object to me, as explained in the book - “Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” Thus, the book focuses on the personalities of the characters.

In the book, Charles Bingley, a wealthy young gentleman, has rented

Collins’s patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who is also Darcy’s aunt. Darcy calls on Lady Catherine and encounters Elizabeth, whose presence leads him to make a number of visits to the Collins’s home, where she is staying. One day, he makes a proposal “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” but Elizabeth refuses. She tells Darcy that she considers him arrogant, and admits that “I have not the pleasure of understanding you,” then scolds him for steering Bingley away from Jane and disinheriting Wickham. Darcy leaves her but delivers a letter to her—he admits that he urged Bingley to distance himself from Jane, but claims he did so only because he thought their romance was not