Critics Flashcards
(16 cards)
Intelligence over appearance
Leeves: The novel stresses the importance of intelligence over appearance
negative mrs bennet
Tandom: [Mrs Bennet is] an excessive, pathological response to genuine social grievance
Jane = angel
Jane is the archetypal Victorian angel
Victorian angel = the epitome of morality. and it was her duty to guard the private sphere with “virtuous. passivity, selflessness, and spiritual purity” while remaining.
Lydia = moral
Byrne = Lydia is very much a modern character
Mr Darcy - negative
Folks: [Mr Darcy] is manipulative, hypocritical, self centred, depressive, aware of some of his faults, but unapologetic
negative Elizabeth
Williams re Elizabeth: It’s a tough call to find a feminist icon in a woman, who hates her sex to please her father
positive Elizabeth
Williams re Elizabeth: There is really no room for Elizabeth Bennet to be anything other then a feminist heroine
Austen and irony
Daiches About Austen: She exposes the economic bases of social behaviour with an ironic smile
negative Elizabeth x Darcy
Geaney on Elizabeth/Darcy “it seems a miracle that they get married at all”
family embarassment
Greaney “exploration of what it means to be embarrassed by your family”
women’s rights and walking alone
Todd “It was regarded as indecorous for a woman to walk alone in a public place.”
indecorous = improper/wrong
Elizabeth = loves her independence
Jones “If Elizabeth is in love, it is with her individuality, not the wrong man”
positive Darcy
Jones on Darcy = “the new aristocratic man”
Elizabeth / Jane relationship
Greaney on Elizabeth/Jane “double-act, thinking and feeling in tandem with one another”
About Austen writing without hate
Woolf: Here was a woman […] writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching
