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Pride and Prejudice

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Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice In the novel of Pride and Prejudice written by Jane Austen, the title of the novel itself bears significance to the themes pride and prejudice. Pride is defined as a feeling of honour and self-respect, satisfaction or pleasure taken in one 's own or another 's success or achievements (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), while, prejudice is defined as the act or state of holding unreasonable inflexible judgments or convictions especially towards other people (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000). In the novel of Pride and Prejudice, both themes are clearly signified through the character traits of the characters .For example, in the beginning of the novel, after a ball, Mr. Darcy said ‘she is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me’ to Mr. Bingley when they talking about Elizabeth Bennet. This situation gives the readers an imagery of Mr. Darcy feeling arrogance as he comes from a family of high status. The introduction of the story already indicates the idea of pride which is a theme in this novel. The theme of pride which defined as feeling of honour and self-respect surely exemplified through the plot of the novel. As said in the words of Mary Bennet at the beginning of the novel, ‘human nature is particularly prone to pride’ (volume 1, chapter 5) (Austen, Jane, 1775–1817). In my opinion, the words of Mary Bennet can be the keywords of the theme pride in the novel. This is because the word pride was mentioned by her during her conversation with the miss Lucases. The theme of pride is related with the keywords as shown through the conversation because the conflicts between Darcy and Elizabeth contributes them to prevents them from seeing the reality of a condition and leads them to be apart from achieving joy in their relationship as their pride makes them to be prejudice to each other. Moreover, the theme pride can be expressed through the relationship of the characters. In the novel, when Darcy started to fall in love with Elizabeth,


Bibliography: Austen, J. (2008). Pride and Prejudice. Great Britain: Oxford. Company, H. M. (2011). The Free Dictionary. Retrieved August 20, 2011, from Farlex. Inc: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prejudice GradeSaver. (1999-2011). Retrieved August 25, 2011, from http://www.gradesaver.com/pride-and-prejudice/study-guide/major-themes/ Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners CD-ROM 2nd Edition. (2007). France. Pearson. (1995-2010). social pyschology. Retrieved August 29, 2011, from Pearson Education : http://wps.prenhall.com/hss_aronson_socpsych_6/64/16429/4205981.cw/-/4206029/index.html Sadish. (2008, January 20). Jane Austen 's World. Retrieved August 20, 2011, from WordPress.com.: http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/social-classes-in-england-1814/ Shmoop University, I. (2011). shoomp. Retrieved August 20, 2011, from http://www.shmoop.com/pride-and-prejudice/setting.html Yahoo! (2011). Yahoo! Answer. Retrieved August 24, 2011, from Yahoo! Inc: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090211123219AAhDt3l

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