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Wit, Humor and Irony in Pride and Prejudice

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Wit, Humor and Irony in Pride and Prejudice
“Wit, Humor and Irony in Pride and Prejudice"

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to analyze the wit, the irony and the humor present in the novel made by Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, written between 1796 and 1797. This novel is basically a love story that deals with the theme of marriage, social classes, and their differences and prejudices. The heroine Elizabeth Bennet is a 20-year-old girl, described as an intelligent and witty person, living in the late of 18th century in an estate called Longbourn with her family. Although it is a very old book, Pride and Prejudice contains a lot of themes in it that are up to date and very interesting to modern readers. Included it has inspired movies and TV series. The latest adaptation of the book to the movies was made in 2005 and it is the one we are going to analyze in order to compare the book and the movie.

Jane Austen is one of the best known and most read novelist in English literature.She has a specially talent to describe characters and relationships, as well as her irony and social humour/comedy. Jane Austen’s novels tell love stories, but always with something more in mind than romance, especially since she was against intensely passionate romance herself. In addition to the theme of love, she also writes about friendship, honor, self-respect and money. She died in 1817 with 41-year-old and never got marriage, the importance gave to this matter is always reflected in her work, especially the fact that finding a suitable husband was one of the main goals in the women’s lives.

Jane Austen and her family had their place in the “gentry” within the social class system in England. The gentry were the growing middle class which included the lower nobility and the “bourgeoisie” (land owning middle class). The “gentry” was a wide class with people with different fortunes in it. There were some very rich and others not much. It had influenced her novels.



References: Austen, Jane (1996). Pride and Prejudice, Penguin Classics Pride and Prejudice (2005) at the Netflix Internet Movie http://voices.yahoo.com/jane-austens-pride-prejudice-role-comedy-328446.html http://www.janeausten.co.uk/the-influence-of-jane-austens-social-background-on-two-of-her-novels/ http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/austen/lqcw.html http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/austen/lqae.html http://www.einahpets.de/pp.pdf

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