Pride and Prejudice Group

Question:

puppylover
puppylover
Student
High School - 11th Grade

what is the relationship which Austen is trying to draw between novel reading and education in Pride and Prejudice?

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Posted by puppylover on Saturday August 15, 2009 at 2:19 PM and tagged with pride and prejudice, reference.

Answers:


  1. acousticnic

    Education meant something different for girls and boys during Jane Austen's time. For a boy to be educated, he actually attended school for some time and learned a discipline (law, medicine, etc.). For a girl to be considered educated, she probably was middle class and her family could afford either to send her to a school or to have a governess in their home. Her education consisted of learning to speak French or German (or other languages), sewing, reading, playing piano, and other such skills. So if Austen is trying to draw a relationship between reading and education, she is suggesting that reading = education. To expand one's mind is to be educated. And for a woman to know how to read = education. Many poor, lower class women were illiterate. If you read many of Austen's books, you will notice that most of her characters are middle class (or at least not impoverished...the exception of Fanny Price's family in Mansfield Park).

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    Posted by acousticnic on Thursday August 20, 2009 at 9:39 AM