Morality, Religion and Capitalism in Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’

2020 ◽  
Vol 05 (01) ◽  
pp. 4-6
Author(s):  
Ashok Kumar Priydarshi ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Individual Development ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
English Novel ◽  
Class A ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Individual

The rise and development of English novel, like any other phenomenon in literature, can be seen as a part of a history or the process of the individual development. Romantic novels are non-realistic and considered as the aristocratic literature of feudalism. They are non-realistic in sense that their underlying intention is not to help people cope in a positive way. These novels, express and recommend the attitudes of the aristocratic class to which it was ideally supposed to sustain. The genre, developed, however, as a reaction to the aristocratic romance, and grows with the middle class a new art form that centres on a new middle class values, rather than aristocratic patronage. Thus the period after the Restoration of the 16th to 17th century opened up other discourses, thereby breaking the frontier by allowing social mobility and making female writing possible. This allowed Jane Austen to write on realistic and naturalistic themes as morality, religion, captalism, etc. and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is its fine example.

Egypt and the Myth of the New Middle Class: A Comparative Analysis

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amos Perlmutter
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Organizational Skills ◽  
Class A ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Primary Responsibility ◽  
Phases Of Development

Authors in recent literature on developing polities have been searching for a middle class that could and, some even argue, should assume primary responsibility for all phases of development: social, economic, and political. This middle class has been identified as the New Middle Class (NMC). In contrast to the “old” middle class, the authors maintain, the NMC will create leaders; is more numerous; possesses organizational skills; is honest; develops forward-looking “new men”; in short, is shouldering, and should shoulder, social and political change.

Mass Observers’ Attitudes to Class, 1990

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Class A ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Upward Social Mobility ◽  
Cultural Homelessness ◽  
Post War

This chapter uses responses to Mass Observation’s 1990 directive on ‘social divisions’ to examine what the Mass Observers thought about class. It concludes that earlier accounts have overstated these (largely middle-class) writers’ comfortableness with technical, sociological class language. Rather, many were hostile to or ambivalent about using such terms, and drew on popular culture, especially humour, when talking about class. A rejection of ‘class’ and snobbishness, and an emphasis on ordinariness and authenticity, were again central to many Mass Observers’ writings about class. In their testimonies, we can also see that new ethnic diversity and new, more diverse norms of gender in post-war Britain had disrupted the old class categories. Upwardly mobile people were particularly over-represented among the Mass Observers and their writing shows that upward social mobility—which expanded in the post-war decades—could lead to a cultural ‘homelessness’ and critiques of both traditional working-class and traditional middle-class cultures.

Military Scotland in the Age of Proto-globalisation, c. 1690 to c. 1815

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Mackillop
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Military Service ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Class A ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

This chapter considers the way in which military service acted as an agent of mobility and a means of extending global networks. In the long eighteenth century. The so-called military economy allowed Scots, who were over-represented in the British officer corps, to use existing regional and kinship connections to extend a form of ‘gentlemanly capitalism’. Service in the armies of the East India Company provided Scots from the emerging middle class a means for social mobility. The creation of these networks allowed Scottish localities to connect directly to the remotest areas of the British empire.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document