Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen - Joseph Litvak (essay date fall-winter 1992)


Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen - Joseph Litvak (essay date fall-winter 1992)

Joseph Litvak (essay date fall-winter 1992)

SOURCE: Litvak, Joseph. “Delicacy and Disgust, Mourning and Melancholia, Privilege and Perversity: Pride and Prejudice.” Qui Parle 6, no. 1 (fall-winter 1992): 35-51.

[In the following essay, Litvak explores the ideas of disgust and pleasure in the various contexts in which they are presented in Pride and Prejudice.]

Let it be understood in all senses that what the word disgusting de-nominates is what one cannot resign oneself to mourn.

—Jacques Derrida

In a well-known passage from one of her letters to her sister Cassandra, Jane Austen records her own response to Pride and Prejudice (1813):

I had some fits of disgust. … The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn...

[The entire page is 6740 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass