Letter To Alice And P P
Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and Fay Weldon’s 1984 epistolary text, ‘Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen’ (Letters to Alice) are written regarding their individual contexts. A parallel study of these two didactic texts, composed in different centuries, develops a deeper understanding of the opposing values in relation to their own society. When read as a pair the obvious connection of societies failure to accommodate women’s happiness as a worthwhile moral project highlights the values and contexts of each text. ‘Letters to Alice’ accurately and deliberately exposes Austen’s context explicitly, with each shining light on one another, making each text more successful.
The objective for both Austen and Weldon was to expose the impropriety of the social position of women, including myself, in the most accessible, interesting, and effective way possible, and hence Weldon deciding to write her text in epistolary form. A true representation of the inequity we as women encountered was made known through both Austen’s and Weldon’s texts, to intentionally create realisation and consequential change within society. Comparatively reading both texts reveals the change in context over time and the obvious social transformations regarding women, due to traditional roles being questioned throughout Austen’s and Weldon’s texts.
According to Mr Darcy, a woman had to have a ‘thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages’ to deserve the word accomplished in the Georgian context of ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Austen ridiculed this perception of what constitutes a good education in order to be an accomplished woman through the paradox that my sister, Mary, who copies out extracts from the books she reads, could make no ‘improvement of her mind by extensive reading’ as she still ‘knew not how’ to sensibly contribute to a conversation.
My sister’s inability to think independently illuminates the epistemological problem that
The objective for both Austen and Weldon was to expose the impropriety of the social position of women, including myself, in the most accessible, interesting, and effective way possible, and hence Weldon deciding to write her text in epistolary form. A true representation of the inequity we as women encountered was made known through both Austen’s and Weldon’s texts, to intentionally create realisation and consequential change within society. Comparatively reading both texts reveals the change in context over time and the obvious social transformations regarding women, due to traditional roles being questioned throughout Austen’s and Weldon’s texts.
According to Mr Darcy, a woman had to have a ‘thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages’ to deserve the word accomplished in the Georgian context of ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Austen ridiculed this perception of what constitutes a good education in order to be an accomplished woman through the paradox that my sister, Mary, who copies out extracts from the books she reads, could make no ‘improvement of her mind by extensive reading’ as she still ‘knew not how’ to sensibly contribute to a conversation.
My sister’s inability to think independently illuminates the epistemological problem that