The novel that I learnt is Pride And Prejudice written by Jane Austen on 1813.

In this
novel, the heroin is Elizabeth Bennet and the hero is Mr Darcy. Elizabeth is one of Mr
Bennet’s daughters. She is a young, wise and brave woman among her siblings. She
has different perspective on marriage and how she looks at things. Her father has
five daughters, but his property cannot be inherited to them because they are women
and can only be passed to a male heir which they do not has one. This encourages
them to find husbands which are financially stable to support their life. This novel
highlights on the importance of marrying for love, no matter how the world is against
the love. In this piece of writing, there are two elements of literary criticism that will be
discussed which is feminism and reader response.

According to Mitchell (2015), Feminism can be understood as the awareness

spread to improve and uplift women in all aspect. This can be the legal right, social
opportunities and not to forget their roles in public. From this novel, there are few
feminism element that we can determine. Wang and Liu (2011) had stated that Jane
Austen used feminist narrative techniques in her novel. This technique is where she
let the female to be the centre of the novel. We can see that from the novel, it is
almost everything about female. Austen showed us on how the female see their
world, what they do in their daily life and how they survive during that era. Through
her novel, she challenges gender inequality through the heroine character which
confirm the element of feminism brought up by her (Chang, 2014). This is totally
different and not common among the novelist because it is against the patriarchal
society at that era.

Firstly, Elizabeth is portrayed as a brave and outspoken woman. This can be

proven when she bravely reject Collin’s proposal. From the novel, in Chapter 19,
page 103 line 13-15, she mentioned that Collin could not make her happy and she
would be the last woman in the world to make him happy. At that moment, Elizabeth
was not afraid of rejecting the man that she did not love for the sake of her
happiness. This attitude acknowledge Elizabeth as the representative of the
unconventional marriage. If she is to follow the sceptical woman during that era, she
will not reject Collin. According to Blom (2015), the bravery of Elizabeth shows the
contrast between her and other characters which is Mr. Collins, Mrs. Bennet and
Charlotte Lucas between unconventional marriage and traditional marriage. This is
where the element of feminism come in, Jane portrayed Elizabeth as the feminist
character.

Other than that, the next element of feminism that can be seen is the domination
of Elizabeth towards men in the story which uplift women’s position. We can see that
in the novel, woman was considered as living possession for the man. All of the
women except Elizabeth are ready to get married in order to make them valuable.
Women are considered as passive and powerless in the novel (Hui, 2015). Through
Elizabeth, she challenges this perception towards woman being powerless when she
dominated Mr. Darcy. She affects Mr. Darcy’s moral character and extending the way
he views the world to match her own qualification for a good husband. In this part,
Elizabeth can be compared with Beatrice, which is a strong female character in the
play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’. In the novel, Beatrice dominated Benedick, who
used to be his partner but he led them to an end. This similarity as discussed by
Pilkington (2011), make them as a twin character that both are strong and feminist.

When I read the novel, I feel so pity towards the women in the novel. Basically
they have no right towards themselves. They are also considered as weak and not
capable to do anything. This is because they are not educated other than the system
at that moment. According to Dabundo (2011), Jane tried to spread the importance of
education. We can see that Elizabeth is a very wise woman and she loves to read
instead of thinking about gown and clothes to wear. Not only that, we can see that
Mrs Mrs. Bennet tried all she can to ensure that her daughters managed to marry
man from good background. One of her trick is, she asks Elizabeth to visit Jane
without using a carriage since it is going to rain. This will create higher chances for
her to stay there and builds relationship with Mr. Darcy. Not only that, she also
presented the desperate woman that their ticket to be happy is by marrying to
someone. This is what I can see from the novel where Elizabeth is a total contrast
compared to her mother.

From my opinion, this novel symbolises the real meaning of love. In this novel, I
can see that the relationship between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy explains a lot of
things. Firstly, we can see that that they managed to overcome the challenges of
pride and prejudice matter. Both of them judged each other in the beginning until they
found the meaning of real love (Ashton-James & Tracy, 2012). Next, I can see how
love change someone to fit with each other. Like what I had stated earlier, Elizabeth
is good enough to change Mr. Darcy to fit her standard. Last but not least, I can see
that the different of characters and characterisation is not important when it comes to
love. As what had been stated by Setiyawati (2013), Jane described that differences
in characterization does not matter and it even brings good luck to the couple.

In conclusion, there are a lot of feminism element from the novel and I can say
that Jane Austen is very good in delivering messages which need to be analytically
analysed in order to understand the underlying meaning. She exposed on the
oppression and how women are treated during that era. This is also to uplift women’s
position especially when they are considered as weak and not capable of doing
things just because they are women.
REFERENCES
Ashton-James, C. E., & Tracy, J. L. (2012). Pride and prejudice: How feelings about
the self influence judgements of others. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 38(4), 466-476.

Blom, E. (2015). Contrasting Attitudes Toward Marriage in Pride and Prejudice:

Elizabeth Bennet's Disregard for the Contemporary Marital Conventions.

Chang, H. C. (2014). The impact of the feminist heroine: Elizabeth in Pride and
Prejudice. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English
Literature, 3(3), 76-82.

Dabundo, L. (2011). The Feminist Critique and Five Styles of Women's Roles in
Pride
and Prejudice.

Hui, J. (2015). A story without love: On pride and prejudice from the Feminism
Perspective. Cross-Cultural Communication, 11(2), 88-90.

Mitchell, S. (2015). Feminism. The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, 1-10.

Pilkington, A. G. (2011). Much Ado and Pride and Prejudice: Twin Characters and
Parallel Plots. Quidditas, 32.

Setiyawati, V. (2013). Power Of Love In Pride And Prejudice By Jane Austen (1813):

A Psychoanalytic Approach (Doctoral dissertation, Universitas Muhammadiyah
Surakarta).
Steinem, G. (2012). Revolution from within: A book of self-esteem. Open Road
Media.

Wang, X., & Liu, Y. (2011). Analysis of the Feminism in Pride and Prejudice. Theory
& Practice in Language Studies, 1(12).