Document Type
Thesis
Publication Date
1997
Disciplines
English Language and Literature
Advisor
Cynthia Malone
Copyright Statement
Available by permission of the author. Reproduction or retransmission of this material in any form is prohibited without expressed written permission of the author.
Recommended Citation
Willenbring, Colleen, "Such a Quantity of Merit": The Construction of the Ideal Woman in Pride and Prejudice" (1997). Honors Theses, 1963-2015. 640.
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/honors_theses/640
Comments
I believe that in PP, characterization in regard to an ideal woman functions as light in a prism. As the prism 'refracts' invisible white light into 'fractions' of the spectrum, I believe that characterization creates essential fractions of an illusory ideal. These fractions appear for us as different women embody qualities that would have been consecrated by conduct books of Austen's time. I believe these fractions appear in this way for the simple reason that logically it would be as impossible to create a character who had no valuable qualities as it would be to create one who had all. When I then focused on these qualities, the fictional journey of Pride and Prejudice ceased to appear as any kind of gradual education of its heroines, and allowed a critique of a situation in which the qualities of the ideal woman would have been inflected--modulated--by social class rank.