INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE - IJIRK

International Journal of Innovative Research and Knowledge Volume-3 Issue-4, April-2018

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF

INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE ISSN-2213-1356 www.ijirk.com

The Concept of Selfishness in Jane Austen's

Pride and Prejudice

Dr. Ali Albashir Mohammed Al-Haj

Zahran Aljanoub. College of Science & Arts,

Department of English /King Khalid University,

Abha, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The current paper aims at studying critically the concept of Selfishness in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen who has been called '' the pure novelist'' occupies a high place in English novel. She imparted

realism to English novel in an age of Romanticism. She pioneered the comedy of manners successfully and

introduced dramatic element. Her comedy is the comedy of manners in which commonsense shatters the

absurdities and pretensions, shams and affectations of the comic personages.

The writer uses the two female fools – Mrs. Bennet and Lydia- as a medium for chastising, rebuking

and criticizing her own society. The two female fools are not meant for mere laugher and entertainment but

through them the writer treats various themes in the novel: dogmatism pride, human folly ,prejudice, love and

marriage. Furthermore, Jane Austen is seldom satirical but her satire is always gentle, seldom, severe and

never savage. She brilliantly uses irony in social comedies. Her gentle strokes of irony are charming.

To conclude, these two female fools with Selfishness begin and end as doomed fools and caricatures of folly.

The writer grafts on them various ideas to serve her purpose in portraying family and social relations.

Keywords: Pure novelist, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, fools, , characters, female, folly, satire, humor,

irony. Selfishness

1. Introduction

Jane Austen exists in the readers' consciousness in a limited historical span of time between the eighteenth

and nineteenth century. Although she lived into the nineteenth century, she is considered an eighteenth

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International Journal of Innovative Research and Knowledge ISSN-2213-1356


century novelists because her art has the qualities of the eighteenth century novels. Jane Austen brought the

novel of family life to its zenith. Her works were not affected by the ugliness of the outside world. She kept

the action to scenes familiar to her through her own experience. As Wilsons (1999,p.25) opines:

Austen's novels are hybrids, romance and comedy, satire and sentiment , fairy tale and realism.

Despite verisimilitude in conversion and characters, the conclusions of the novels remain romantic

marriage of the correct couple against odds or opposition and the resulting betterment of the

community.

Jane Austen is the first novelist whose central characters now live for modern readers as men and women

with whom they can identify and about whom they might fantasize(Odmark,1992,p.56).. Austen's power of

inventing characters, seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited .She drew from nature; but, whatever

may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals.

During the mid-eighteenth century Jonson was the greatest man of letters. Cowper was the most eminent

poet in the last quarter of it. The two of them dominated Jane Austen youthful horizon, Johnson died when she

was eight years old and Cowper when she was twenty four. Johson was the prose writer she most admired

and Cowper her favorite poet.(Gillie, 1990,p.39). Henry (1980) has rightly pointed out:

Her reading was very extensive in history and belles letters; and her memory extremely tenacious. Her

favorite moral writers were Johnson in prose, and Cowper in verse. It is to say at what age she was not

intimately acquainted with the merits and defects of the essays and novels in the English

language(p.45)

According to Jane Austen's brother. ''Henry Austen'' .Cowper was Jane' favorite poet, The contemporizes

whom she admired among poets were conservative poets: Scot with his ballad and Romances, Crabble with

his eighteenth century couplet(Gillie, 1990,p.98).

Jane Austen modeled her characters upon Johnson's. Her style is like his in the way that it has definition,

balance and assurance, which reflects faith in clarity, judgment, and good sense. Their style include a clear

sightedness about the incongruity between pretence and reality which makes irony a more prevalent tone in

the eighteenth century writing.

Jane Austen was not only conservative in her poetic taste, but she was also isolated from contemporary

writers. This isolation from the intellectual of her day makes any study of her work, which is little concerned

with sciences and philosophy of her day, and more concerned with the usual cultural interest of her

contemporaries and readers, widened only by her choice of literary or cultural influences Henry (1980) has

rightly pointed out:

The style of her familiar correspondence was in all respects the same as that of her novels. Everything

came finished from her pen; for on all subjects she had ideas as clear as her expressions were well

chosen. It is not hazarding too much to say that she never dispatched a note or letter unworthy of

publication. (p.78).

Compared to Fanny Burney, Jane Austen had a wider field. Fanny satirized the meanly born and respected

the great. Jane Austen was not so respectful of the great. She found promising materials in the simple and the

great.

Jane Austen's clear-eyed, realistic appraisal of life and its possibilities, her understanding that humans must

make the best of unsatisfactory fates, that having made foolish decisions they must endure what cannot cured

, gives her novels a very different feel from the prevalent tone of the Romantic poets, with their all-or-nothing,

bliss-or-suicide assumptions. Not surprisingly she had in her day only a small, select circle of admirers, which




included Scott and the Prince Regent, and through the nineteenth century she aroused devotion in a coterie

rather than wide spread enthusiasm. Only in our own time has she become a popular classic , admired for her

wit, her common-sense, her insight into character and social relationships. (Barnard, 1990, p.107).

Jane Austen represents in her novels the world that she knew and the influences that she saw at work .Her

acquaintance included country families, clergyman and naval officers.. The chief business of these people, as

Austen saw them, was attention to social duties. Their chief interest was matrimony. She represents this world

in her novels. She never steps outside of it. Moody (1991,p.6) has rightly pointed out :'' And even in this petty

world she takes account chiefly of its pettiness''. Great human passions and purposes of life were beyond her

range. Themes of personal relationships fascinated her. There is scarcely any feeling for external nature in her

novels in general and Pride and Prejudice in particular.

As Richett(2003) opines:

The secret of Jaen Austen's power bases on the complete mastery she has as an artist over her work

.She was finely alive to her limitations, never touched a character or scene she did not thoroughly

know, and never invented a story or personage which she did not subject to such minutely intimate

treatment that the reader feels as if it were all a fragment of autobiography(p.89).

To conclude, Jane Austen's subject was the country gentry of England: she occasionally went up into the

fringes of aristocracy, almost never lower than the middle- class tradesman .Even servants are seldom

individualized in her work. Her novels centre on girls or young women, and always end with their

engagement or marriage.

2. Jane Austen’s Literary Career , Fame and Writing Quality

2.1 Jane Austen’s Life: Family and Social Background

Jane Austen, the daughter of a well off, cultivated Hampshire clergyman, the Rev. George Austen was born in

1775 at Steventon in Hampshire. She was educated on sound lines at home. She lived out her uneventful life,

observing, feeling and recording, at first surreptitiously, The young Lady', said Richett,(2003):

has a talent for describing the involvement of feeling and characters of ordinary life which is to be the

most wonderful I have met with. Nor can the charge be sustained that she was oblivious of the world

events which taking place around her.(P.76)

Jane Austen's life was unexciting and unadventurous. She passed her very quickly, cheerfully, in the doing of

small domestic duties. With the exception of an occasional visit to the watering place of Bath, her whole life

was spent in small country parishes, whose simple country people became the characters of her novels. Her

father mainly educated her and she had very good library at home. She was well read and was fascinated by

novelists such as Fielding, Sterne, Richardson, and Fanny Burney; poets like Scott, Cowper and her favorite

was Crabbe. Later she came under the influence of post-revolutionary radical women thinkers.

Jane Austen began her literary career by writing parodies and sketches for the amusement of her family. Some

of these were later worked up into the major novels of her literary career. Her life is notable for its lack of

events; although she had several suitors, she did not marry. In 1801, the family moved to Bath, in 1806, after

Mr. Asuten's death, to Southampton, and in 1809 to Chawton, Winchester, and again in Hampshire, where she

lived till her death in 1817 in middle age.

Jane Austen wrote of the provincial life she had seen( she never visited London) and there are no peasants

but few noblemen among her characters. But her sense of comedy was aroused by the absurdities of the

sentimental and gothic novels that she encountered, and her sharp mind enabled her to write ironically




dissected snobbery, bourgeois , morality and hypocrisy in an understated manner that comes as a relief from

the excesses of many of her contemporaries.

Though her life was uneventful, placid, and a circumscribed , Jane Austen was highly sensitive to what went

on around her. Her observation on the manners of her time and of her class are reflected in her novels. Pride

and Prejudice( 1813) deals with men and women's manners, and it is a fine example of domestic comedy.

Sense and Sensibility(1813) is another fine example of the domestic comedy. Northern Abbey( 1818) is a

burlesque of the Radecliffian horror novel. Her three novels Mansfield Park(1814), Emma(1816) and

Persuasion(1818q) appeared in quick succession. Her novels are all much the same, yet subtly and artistically

difficult. On July 1817, at Winchester, Hampshire, Jane Austen died, as quietly and serenely as she had lived.

2.2 Jane Austen’s Literary Career, Fame and Writing Quality

Jane Austen has been called '' the pure novelist'' who presents an authentic criticism of the country society she

knew so well within the limits of art. Her novels have as their subject country landed gentry, with a social

range that touches the aristocracy ( or at least the aristocracy of the country side) at its topmost range, and

never falls significantly below upper middle class. It is a small sector of society, and her subject matter-

more often than not a young girl who is about to marry , or at least ready for it- makes her novels even more

restricted . World events do not impinge on Jane Austen's world, and an invitation to a ball is more important

than the doings of Bonaparte in Europe (Stephen, 1990, p.11).

Jane Austen was aware herself of the narrow range of her novels, and took the line that it was better for her to

do what she did well rather than try her hand at areas in which she might have less success. Her novels do

indeed succeed because of their excellence, and because her characters are universally human, their

particular social class being a thin veneer over features that are of universal significance .Manners matter

greatly in Jane Austen's code of morality: behavior must be and has to be controlled, even if feelings cannot

be so regulated. The character who wears his or her heart on a sleeve, the person who cannot exercise

restraint, these are the people condemned in her novels. Jane Austen strives for a civilized standard of

behavior. If this means control of feeling, it also means the application of common sense: Jane Austen does

not argue with people who marry for love-as long as there is at least some money there as well. She is neither

heartless, nor callous, nor mercenary; prudence and caution are perhaps more suitable words. Her novels

have a precise structure, an extremely vividly. She may not question as much as many of her contemporaries,

but she reveals and comments with great sharpness, wit, and accuracy.( Stephen, ibid, p.30';).

Like her contemporary Fanny Burny, Jane Austen succeeded in paining superior characters, but they failed in

giving individuality to weaker ones. But the unique merit of Jane Austen gives a faithful representation of

real life and this is what we meet with in Pride and Prejudice.

Instead of describing her characters Jane Austen uses the device of'' dramatic presentation''. She presents her

characters and they reveal themselves through what they say. That gives life to her characters and makes

them move via the pages of fiction as they move in real life. This can be witnessed in Pride and Prejudice,

Emma, and Mansfield Park .

Jane Austen's female characters are more adroitly drawn her female characters. Her presentation of the

masculine mind is confined to the picturing of men as they appear to women, and not as they appear to men.

In her novels, therefore, we find ourselves in an intensely feminine atmosphere. Her chief theme is love in the

life of women. Her female characters are almost unexceptionable in perfection of finish. This can also be

witnessed in Pride and Prejudice.

Though in Pride and Prejudice there is a kind of confinement to one circle-one complexity of life, there is an

intensification of action, which is a vital attribute of this dramatic novel. Character to Jane Austen is not

only something to delight in, but it has its consequences. It influences events and creates difficulties to be




dissolved later. In Pride and Prejudice, there is no external framework or mechanical plot. Character and

action are all in all. As ( Nash,1999,p.100) opines:

In Pride and Prejudice the plot is the chief interest, simple but pervasive; controlling every incident,

but itself depending for its outcome upon the development or revelation of the principle

characters….All her stories are faultlessly constructed, every character and every incident is necessary

for the development of plot. The incidents happens so naturally, the characters have so independent a

reality, that we do not feel that they are parts of a design or scheme.

Jane Austen's quality of writing and literary career have not been excelled by any writer. Her special charm as

a novelist lies, not in any greater insight into character, but in the impracticality with which she

individualizes and differentiates them. Her minute observation of men and women whom she knew

imparted life likeness to her characters. She deftly reproduced those men and women whom she found

crowding about her tea parties, her church gatherings, her balls and she reproduced them for us with an

unemotional fidelity, sometimes a little cruel, but never unfair. (Nash, 1999, p.110).

To conclude, Jane Austen as the pure novelist writes as the readers have seen, from the feminine point of

view. She, thus, feminized the English novel. Readers admire her works for her influence in bringing the

English novel back to their true place as an expression of human life.

3. Jane Austen's concepts of Selfishness in Female Fools in Pride and Prejudice

3.1 Themes of the Novel

The idea that Jane Austen's subject matter is limited and cannot be justified, because the class of the gentry

resembles the backbone of England. Characters of that class were well portrayed in Jane Austen's novels in

general and Pride and Prejudice in particular in a way that made her work timeless. Jane Austen paid due

attention to the question of choosing a marriage partner , which is vitally important to anyone's life. It is true

that she was keen not to move out of areas which she knew through and through. She applied her irony to

these well-known areas and so what she wrote was realistic and fascinating.

Love and marriage form and dogmatism an important theme in her novels in general and Pride and Prejudice

in particular. Hers was a practical idealism. She was preoccupied with the subject of love and marriage. In

Pride and Prejudice, for example, she made marriage a serious vocation for women. She realized that husband

and wife should be spiritual counterparts of each other. A perfect marriage is fundamentally a perfect

friendship.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice also portrays individuals negotiating personal needs with external social

demands and internalized moral code: using manners to control or mask inevitable egoism, they manipulate

talk to gratify themselves. Here, however, the negotiation is less painful and more absurd as well as more

rewarding and wry. The love plot becomes the movement towards marriage, it is also a progress towards

civility , not the superficial sort which acted as a bulwark against pain in Pride and Prejudice but something

more socially and personally valuable, based on understanding another's feelings and consequently one's

own.( Nash, 1999,p.67)

3.2 Jane Austen and Idea of Selfishness

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen shows an admirable decimation in the characters of fools as of people of

sense; a merit which is far from common. To invent , indeed, a conversation full of wisdom or of wit, requires

that the writer should himself/herself possess ability; but the converse does not hold good; it is no fool that can

describe fools well; and many who have succeeded pretty well in painting superior characters, have failed in

giving individuality to those weaker ones, which it is necessary to introduce in order to give a faithful

representation of real life: they exhibit to us mere folly in the abstract, forgetting that to the eye of a skillful




naturalist the insects on a leaf present as wide as exist between the elephant and the lion.(Watt

1997,p.5).Mrs. Bennet and Lydia, as Jane Austen has painted them, though equally fools, resemble one

another no more than Mrs. Palmer ,in Sense and Sensibility and Miss Bates in Emma, are no more alike than

Mrs. Norris in Mansfield Park,.

Jane Austen is a humorist whose subject matter is human folly. She considered folly to consist in two

separate qualities .As Simpson( 1997) has rightly opines:

Jane Austen seems to have considered folly to consist in two separate qualities: first, a thorough

weakness either of will or intellect an emptiness or irrelevancy of thought, such as to render it

impossible to know what the person would think of any given subject, or he would act under it; and

often ,secondly, in addition to this, fixed ideas on a few subjects, giving the whole tone to the person's

thoughts so far as he thinks at all, and constituting the ground of the new positive judgment arrived at,

even in subject-matter to which the ideas in questions are scarcely related.(p.3).

Jane Austen's novels do not give a single instance of the fool in all the purity of its idea. If, for example, we

consider the portraiture of Mrs. Bennet, we will find that the fool simple is soon exhausted; but when a

collection of ideas is grafted upon him, he becomes a theme for endless variations.( Omer,2002,p.98).

To conclude, Jane Austen has no passion and is said to preach no gospel and grind no axe. She stands aloof

from the world. It seems to her, on the whole , as silly. Actually she has no animosity for it, but equally she

has affection for it. She doesn't want to better fools or to abuse them because they begin and end as doomed

fools. She only sets herself to glean pleasure from their folly.

3.3 Selfishness in Two Female Fools: Mrs. Bennet, and Lydia

Mrs. Bennet: Mrs. Bennet is the most loved of Jane Austen's heroines, and the most witty and independent –

minded. Being the child of parents both, in their ways and, irresponsible, she takes much of the moral burden

of the family on her own shoulder .She is fully integrated into the upper-class society of her own time, and

accepts its values by and large, but she often shocks the more shallow characters by her readiness to utter her

own opinion: to the more foolish members of polite society strong opinions were themselves ungenteel. With

such a view of polite behavior Jane Austen will have nothing to do.( Barnard, 1990, p.107).

In Jane Austen's words Mrs. Bennet is:

She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was

discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married;

its solace was visiting and news.(Pride and Priduce,p.3).

With these words the writer gives a concise and comprehensive summary about the character of Mrs. Bennet.

As we read Pride and Prejudice, we find that everything attributed to her is justified in a subtle way. To quote

Omer( 2002):

Mrs. Bennet is always jealous for her neighbor when she cannot triumph over them. She is obsessed

with marrying off her

Daughters, but in a selfish way. She was once beautiful and she relives her vanity via her daughters or

at least through Lydia and Jane. Her obsession with marrying off her daughters is not a normal,

common womanly desire but an exaggerated one.( Pride and Prejudice,p.233)

Mrs. Bennet is petty, badly materialistic and shallow-mind. All these negative attributes add to he being a rich

object of Austen's comedy and criticism. Her character cannot be reformed and the readers cannot help




laughing at her ridiculous behavior since her clever husband cannot avoid that. The relationship between her

and her husband is a failure. It is well described in narrator's words (Omer, 2002, p.60):

' her husband, captivated by young and beauty and that appearance of humor, which youth and beauty

generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and liberal mind, had very early in

their marriage put an end to all real affection to her…. To his he was very little otherwise indebted ,

than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement'(.Pride and Prejudice,p.233)

One of Jane Austen 's most successful methods is to offer her readers every excuse for regarding as rather

exaggerated figures of fun of people whom she herself detects and fears. Mrs. Bennet, according to the

Austen tradition , is one of 'our' richly comic characters about whom we can feel superior, condescending,

perhaps a trifle sympathetic, and above all heartily amused and free from care. Everything conspires to make

this the natural interpretation once you are willing to overlook Jane Austen' bald and brief statement of her

attitude to her:

Her mind was less to develop .She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and

uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life

was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news. ( Pride and Prejuduce,p.3)

How many women amongst Jane Austen' acquaintance and amongst her most complacent readers to the

present day that phrase must describe !How gladly they enjoy the funny side of the situations Mrs. Bennet's

unpleasant nature creates, and how easy it is made for them to forget or never observe that Jane Austen,

none the less for seeing how funny she is, goes on detesting her. The thesis that the ruling standards of our

social group leave a perfectly comfortable niche for detestable people and give them sufficient sanction to

persist, would, if it were argued seriously, arouse the most violent opposition, the most determined

apologetics for things, as they are the most reproachable pleas for a sense of proportion. ( Watt.1997.p.17).

Mrs. Bennet does not understand the character of her husband after an experience of three twenty years. there

is no warm relationship between the two to the extent that Mrs. Bennet escapes to his library to rid himself of

his despised wife and her nonsensical nonsense. As Odmark opines(1992) :

The narrator's comments provide a structural frame for the scene between Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet.

These subdued remarks are in striking contrast to Mrs. Bennet's. Further they reflect the narrator's

partisanship in favor of the husband. The last of the narrator's comments confirms what is already

implicit in Mrs. Bennet's response to his wife, that she is be humored but not taken seriously.(p.70)

It is noticeable that Mrs. Bennet's comments are comprised of nonsense, which include assertions ,

questions, and hearsay Her clever husband can easily comprehend her point long before she has made it. On

the other hand, Mrs. Bennet remains ignorant to the end of the true meaning of her clever husband's remarks.

Mr. Bennet doesn't take her relations and assertions of hearsay at face value. Mrs. Bennet cannot anticipate

her husband's responses. Her remarks have no communicate value., because Mr. Bennet usually refuses to

interpret the message as his wife intended.

Lane(1986) also notices that. Mrs. Bennet is:

a woman who lacks intelligence and taste. She is obsessed by a desire to marry off her five

daughters, and she attempts this in a crude and obvious way, as, for instance, when she is trying to

achieve a match between Jane and Bingley. She is a gossip, given to spiteful comment, and when

things do not go her way she complains of her nerves. She is a scheming difficult , tiresome, rather

stupid woman(p.67)




Mrs. Bennet is comic in conception. She is too stupid to understand that her husband baits her

contemptuously, that successful marriage is something other than pin money or jewels , and that her rudeness

and opinionated vulgarity torture Elizabeth with embarrassment. Mrs. Bennet lacks moral awareness .She is

childish, self-centered, hypochondriac and uncharitable in her judgment of everybody outside her family. Her

efforts to match-make are melodramatic and grotesque- She is a caricature of the match –making mother.

Her wish for her husband for her daughters colors her view of everything and leads her to behave badly.

Mrs. Bennet is an example of those who confuse appearance with reality because of their inner bias. She

sees the world in terms of the wealth and charm of potential husbands .She cannot see Collin's faults, is

deceived by Wickham and cannot see the goodness of Darcy whom she hates very much.

To conclude, Mrs. Bennet is a doomed fool. She does not show any change for good. Jane Austen takes the

trouble to confirm that:

I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in the

establishment of so many of her children produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible,

amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it was lucky for her husband,

who might not have relished domestic felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally

nervous and invariably silly.( Pride and Prejudice, p.289).

Lydia: Lydia is an ignorant, naïve child who does not see beyond her feet. When she comes back to Long

bourn as a married lady, she looks happy and she seems to have fulfilled all that she and her mother have

dreamt of- she is seen giggling and patronizing – her unmarried elder sisters. Marriage or love adds nothing

to her shallow mind or flat characters. Her marriage is not based on true mutual love. She is married to a

mercenary husband who is bribed into marrying .Lack of money adds to lack of affection to make their

relationship doomed to failure. About her Jane Austen writes:

Lydia was Lydia still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless. She turned from sister to sister,

demanding their congratulations; and when at length they all sat down, looked eagerly round the room,

took notice of some little alteration in it, and observed, with a laugh, that it was a great while since she

had been there.( Pride and Prejuduce.p243)

Lydia is not a respectable or likeable character, but she is likely to stimulate our sympathy and pity. She does

not express any kindness for anybody. She is married to a rogue who does not love her and she is likely to

lead a life, which is a Xerox of her mother's.

There is evidence that Lydia lacks filial piety as well as kindness. Before, her departure to Newcastle after

marriage her mother says to her:

Write to me very often, my dear.''(Pride and Prejudhce,p.247)

She answers :

As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for writing. My sisters may

write to me. They will have nothing else to do.''(Pride and Prejuduce.p.247).

Lydia is shockingly unconventional .As a married women., however, shameful the marriage is, she only wants

to take precedence over her unmarried sisters. She gains no insight into any adult's real personality. She gains

independence via marriage. She is shifted from parents to husband but unfortunately for wrong and unwise

reasons. Their marriage is doomed to fail and at last we learn that they beg help from Darcy and Elizabeth:

Their manner of living, even when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in

the extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always


http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/pptopics.html#firstpnarr

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppdrmtis.html#MrBennet

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppdrmtis.html#LydiaBennet

http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/ppdrmtis.html#LydiaBennet



spending more than they ought. His affection for her soon sunk into indifference: hers lasted a little

longer; and in spite of her youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to reputation which her

marriage had given her.( Pride and Prejudce,.p.290).

Lydia is ill-educated and sexually precocious. As Wilson(1999) opines:

She is pushing, vulgarly amiable, physically well developed and sexually precocious. Convention and

propriety mean nothing to her, and she is at the teenage stage where everything seems hilarious.(p.78).

The moral standards of Jane Austen 's day were strict but not always strongly enforced . Lydia is married to

Wickham, despite his bad character, because otherwise she will not be accepted again society. Elizabeth and

Jane are aware that, in such a case their reputations will damaged by their sister's rash behavior.

To conclude, Lydia is a doomed fool. Nothing changes her. Up to the end she is the same Xerox of her

mother.

4. Conclusion

Jane Austen brought the English novel of family life to its highest point of perfection. Her works were

untouched by the ugliness of the outside world; she kept the action to scenes familiar to her through her own

experience. The writer's knowledge , within her own limits, was deep and true; but her performance in writing

these novels in general and Pride and Prejudice in particular was astonishing. She manages her characters

with a master touch.

Through Mrs. Bennt as a female fool, Jane Austen depicts the match-making mother. In Mrs. Bennet

opinion, Elizabeth made an unforgivable mistake by refusing Mr. Collions as a partner .In spite of the

immoral conduct of Wickham, which endangers the reputation of her family, Mrs. Bennet rejoices when she

hears that he is to marry Lydia. Mrs. Bennet herself is an example of failed marriage, based merely on sexual

attraction. She is shallow-minded, gullible and comic in every way. Mrs. Bennet is a doomed fool in who we

do not see the least trace of rotundity.

Lydia ,the second female fool whom Jane Austen portrayed her as a Xerox of her mother.. Lydia according to

the writer is a well-developed and attractive girl who is only interested in clothes, dancing and men. She falls

victim to Wickham and elopes with him. Wickham, the rogue, attracts her and she loves him, but their love is

not mutual. Lydia's mentality is far beneath understanding the wickedness of Wickham .Lydia is ignorant

and sexually precocious . Her conduct ends in a condemned marriage which is doomed to fail. Lydia does

not change throughout .No effect of marriage, love, or age can attributed to her character.




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INNOVATIVE RESEARCH AND KNOWLEDGE - IJIRK

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