Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is a protofeminist critique of contemporary education and marriage that aligns Austen less with sentimental novelists like Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth and more with feminist thinkers like Mary Wollstonecraft. Austen’s humour is deceptive; beneath the surface lays a deep dissatisfaction with the type of life the term “gentility” forces on women.