Understanding Pride and Prejudice: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents

(Hardback)

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This text combines both analysis of the novel "Pride and Prejudice" and excerpts from significant primary documents of Austen's own time. These materials should help the reader to understand the complexities of both the novel and English society at the beginning of the 19th century, and to compare those issues to contemporary society. Teachman provides commentary and primary materials on inheritance, marriage, and women's roles in society at the time of Austen's life. Excerpts from 18th-and 19th-century etiquette books, moral treatises, histories of women, legal documents and commentary, newspapers, magazines and collections of letters provide evidence of the social and legal differences between Austen's time and our own - enabling the reader to understand the legal, historical, social and cultural context of the novel. Each section of this casebook contains study questions, topics for research papers and class discussions, and lists of further reading for examining the issues raised by the novel. The plot of "Pride and Prejudice" turns on three aspects of early 19th-century English society: marriage as a social institution, inheritance laws and customs, and acceptable roles for women. Following a literary analysis of the novel, the casebook contains documents and commentary on the following topics: inheritance and marriage laws and customs, 18th-century views on marriage, the status of unmarried women, women's education and moral training, and issues in the 1980s and 1990s that can be contrasted with those in the novel. These documents illustrate the social and legal differences between the archaic details of the novel. They also indicate the continuities betwen Austen's time and ours in their emphasis on love, marriage, the importance of property and arguments about the role of women. Among the documents are excerpts from Samuel Johnson, Daniel Defoe, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, advice from a mother to her absent daughters, and a number of letters on the "proper" role of women, their education and moral training. The final chapter of this book brings into focus the relevancies of Austen's function to present day readers and provides discussion of many of the issues of the novel as they are handled by law and the media at the end of the 20th century. This should be a useful companion for teacher use and student research in interdisciplinary, English history and English literature courses.

Reviews

As with other titles in this series, this volume presents a variety of materials that enhance and elucidate the reading of a classic piece of literature. Students will find the writing style engaging and easy to understand...-School Library Journal
This well-documented casebook will be useful for students and teachers who want to extend their knowledge of Austen's novel beyond purely formal analysis.-Nineteenth-Century Literature
"This well-documented casebook will be useful for students and teachers who want to extend their knowledge of Austen's novel beyond purely formal analysis."-Nineteenth-Century Literature
"As with other titles in this series, this volume presents a variety of materials that enhance and elucidate the reading of a classic piece of literature. Students will find the writing style engaging and easy to understand..."-School Library Journal

Author Bio

DEBRA TEACHMAN is a professor and writer who divides her time between Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where she teaches composition and literature, and National Solar Observatory/Sacramento Peak in Sunspot, New Mexico where she writes and works. Her research on Jane Austen began with her doctoral work, and she has since presented papers on Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Edith Wharton.