 Any story reflects the
mood of its period. The marriages of Darcy and Bingley are
symptomatic of the mood of the period. The French aristocrats lost
their heads not only because they were aristocrats but because of
the assertion of their superiority. Darcy lost his arrogance and
saved his head.
Pride and Prejudice was written at the time of the French
revolution. The old aristocracy refused to acknowledge or accomodate
the growing aspirations and power of an emerging brougeois class.
Because of this stiff resistance to change, the pressure exploded as
a revolution that physically destroyd the old French aristocracy.
While France resorted to violent revolution, English society chose
the evolutionary path. The story depicts the social response to
those events in England. The process of social transformation in the
lives of the English gentility is summarized in Elizabeth's
accusations against Darcy, accusing him of arrogance, pride, conceit
and selfish disdain for others. Darcy's conscious individual
response epitomizes the collective subconscious response of the
English upper classes. He accepts the truth of her accusations and
endeavours and transforms himself for the explicit purpose of
pleasing and winning her.
Read more about the charming story of romance where marriage
becomes both a vehicle for and a product of social evolution.
The implicit theme of this story is that what the less civilized
achieve physically, the more mature nation attains by a
psychological change. |
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