Pride and Prejudice, a book where women dominate the story, as Judith Lowder Newton would have us believe a statement on the unimportance women seem to share in their overall prospects. Newton begins her analysis by stating our author, Miss Jane Austen’s, personal circumstances. Newton points out that though Austen has since become a famous author during her life she lived with her mother and her sister and they as single women of the time were not allowed the opportunities the Austen boys reveled in themselves. Though Jane, as far as we know never complained, Newton believes the novel was a way for Jane to express these feelings. Newton uses the famous first passage of the novel to put across her point, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters” (Pride and Prejudice). In this way Newton says Austen depicts the women’s family as controlling the man, but the man with the means outweighs the woman in any circumstance; therefore, giving him the ultimate control over the matter. Newton backs the fact that Austen goes through the rest of the novel portraying the men as bumbling because she thinks that though they might possess “power” they are not powerful in romantic areas. On the flip side Newton’s depiction of Austen makes it no surprise that Elizabeth is portrayed as the most powerful figure in the entire novel. However, it was some of Newton’s final perceptions that struck me as the most interesting and persuading. Austen portrays men, throughout her novel as very independent often coming and going and doing what they please. This is quite accurate to the real life circumstances; nonetheless, Newton points out the failure of many of the novel’s male population to properly use their autosomy, and in doing so relinquish their “power” to their seemingly powerless counterparts. Newton manages to carry on this argument through many more pages, but the ultimate point she makes that I truly believe Austen was trying to portray comes near the end. Darcy possesses nearly anything he’d ever need, but his life is incomplete without Elizabeth. Though Elizabeth’s independence and powerful aura seems to diminish the closer we come to the end of the novel, we observe that it was truly Elizabeth (which Newton thinks Austen relates to all women) that held the power over Darcy (which Newton thinks Austen relates to all well-off men or anyman with any type of future ahead of him).
Referenced Critique: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177624?seq=15
Power, Fantasy, and Subversion in Jane Austen (by Judith Lowder Newton)
