Strong Feelings And Emotions In 'Pride And Prejudice'

All through ‘Pride and Prejudice’, a wide selection of strong feelings and emotions are displayed ranging from eponymous pride, prejudice, to anger, frustration, despair and humiliation, determination and eventually to love. The novel’s realism, in showing this array of emotions and relationships realistically, would have appealed to readers of the 18th century, especially to women, who lacked the independence that men had. However, novels offered women the ability to travel, to experience romance and even scandal and therefore presented women with opportunities and experiences they did not have. As emotions and feelings are unchanged, Austen’s novel can also appeal to readers of this time. Austen effectively uses many types of emotion and strong feelings, which are all linked by one common theme: personal relationships, which, some, in Austen’s novel defied the constricting social rules that governed many relationships in the 18th century.

Austen’s ironic approach may be satirising the frivolousness of 18th century social rules on marriage and hierarchy, but also parodying 18th century poetry and prose, which was rich in aphoristic statements. Not much later in the novel, we see prejudice between characters, at the first ball, when Elizabeth and Darcy first meet. Elizabeth quickly makes her mind up about Darcy, based on his rude and haughty behaviour and when he proudly remarks that she is ‘tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me’. Austen gives the prejudiced judgement passed by all the characters at the ball, saying that ‘he was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there