Puppet Woman Vs New Woman: Quest for Identity In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Abstract

Although Pride and Prejudice begins with the anonymous figure of a rich, single man, the novel is actually concerned with the middle-class, single woman. Most of the women were as the Bennet’s sisters and Charlotte Lucas are caught in a bind. These girls are too high class to get jobs, but not high class enough to inherit wealth to support themselves. Basically these women have two options: wedding bells or penny-pinching old maid hood. Pride and Prejudice offers us a look into this rather intensely feminine world of courting, marriage decisions, and social realities. Elizabeth is held up as an alternative role model for females. By providing a female character who is bold, independent, honest, and forthright, Jane Austen is making a radical critique of the social construction of female identity in early nineteenth-century England.