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Themes In Jane Austen's 'Pride And Prejudice'

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Pride and Prejudice Essay (question 5)
By: Kasper O. IB14B || 3/2/2015
Pride and Prejudice is a novel written by a British author Jane Austen and it was first published in 1813. Austen’s novel is about five sisters Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia Bennet who live in the Georgian England. Right in the beginning of the novel a handsome young man Mr. Bingley arrives in the town and the mother of the five sisters, Mrs. Bennet, tries to get one of her daughters marry him. Some of the main themes of the novel are the social norms that were very important and crucial at the time of the Georgian era, marriage, and conspricacy between characters. Austen uses narrator’s point of view to introduce the main themes to the reader, imagery to emphasise the sections of the novel where social norms are being broken, and symbolism to …show more content…

Firstly, Austen uses the narrator’s point of view to introduce some of the main themes of the novel to the reader. In the novel the narrator mostly follows Elizabeth and describes everything that Elizabeth sees and experiences (third person narrator). However, sometimes the narrator exits Elizabeth’s awareness and describes something that Elizabeth doesn’t have any knowledge of. For example the first sentence in the book is the following: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in posession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" (Austen, p. 5). Here Austen starts the novel from a perspective with what Elizabeth has nothing to do with. This sentence introduces one of the main themes, marriage, to the reader. Therefore the reader instantly knows that marriage has a very important role in the novel. Also,

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