LadyJane16
New Member
- Joined
- May 1, 2012
- Messages
- 5
- Gender
- Female
- HSC
- 2013
I have an assessment where we have to find the connections between Weldon's LTA and Austen's P&P.
I have Marriage as one connection but in the assessment we were given two passages, one from each text, and in them we have to find the connection and expand on that and explain how the connections enrich our understanding. I've sorta found the connection. It's got something to do wth reflection and the moral but I have not idea what. I don't really understand the connection. Is there possibly more than one connection? Could someone please help and explain it to me with maybe enough info that I can put into one or two paragraphs? Thanks heaps.
Passage 1: From P&P
"She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. --Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.
'How despicably have I acted!' she cried. --"I, who have prided myself on my discernment! --I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust. --How humiliating is this discovery! --Yet, how just a humiliation! --Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. --Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.'"
Passage 2: From LTA
"Jane Austen concerned herself with what to us are observable truths, because we agree with them. They were not so observable at the time. We believe that Elizabeth should marry for love, that Charlotte was extremely lucky to find happiness with Mr Collins, whom she married so as not, in a phrase dating from that time, to be left 'on the shelf'. She believed it was better not to marry at all, than to marry without love. Such notions were quite new at the time. It surprises us that in her writing she appears to fail to take the pleasure of sex into account, but that was the convention at the time: we disapprove, where her society most approves. She is not a gentle writer. Do not be misled: she is not ignorant, merely discreet: not innocent, merely graceful. She lived in a society which assumes- as ours does- that its values were right. It had God on its side, and God had ordained the ranks of His people; moreover, He had made men men and women women, and how could a thing like that be changed? It is idle to complain that Jane Austen lacked a crusading zeal. With hindsight, it is easy to look at the world she lived in and say she should have. What she did seems to me more valuable. She struggled to perceive, and describe the flow of beliefs that typified her time, and more, to suggest for the first time that the personal, the emotional is in fact the moral- nowadays, of course, for good or bad, we argue that it is political. She left a legacy for the future to build on."
I have Marriage as one connection but in the assessment we were given two passages, one from each text, and in them we have to find the connection and expand on that and explain how the connections enrich our understanding. I've sorta found the connection. It's got something to do wth reflection and the moral but I have not idea what. I don't really understand the connection. Is there possibly more than one connection? Could someone please help and explain it to me with maybe enough info that I can put into one or two paragraphs? Thanks heaps.
Passage 1: From P&P
"She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. --Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.
'How despicably have I acted!' she cried. --"I, who have prided myself on my discernment! --I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust. --How humiliating is this discovery! --Yet, how just a humiliation! --Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. --Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.'"
Passage 2: From LTA
"Jane Austen concerned herself with what to us are observable truths, because we agree with them. They were not so observable at the time. We believe that Elizabeth should marry for love, that Charlotte was extremely lucky to find happiness with Mr Collins, whom she married so as not, in a phrase dating from that time, to be left 'on the shelf'. She believed it was better not to marry at all, than to marry without love. Such notions were quite new at the time. It surprises us that in her writing she appears to fail to take the pleasure of sex into account, but that was the convention at the time: we disapprove, where her society most approves. She is not a gentle writer. Do not be misled: she is not ignorant, merely discreet: not innocent, merely graceful. She lived in a society which assumes- as ours does- that its values were right. It had God on its side, and God had ordained the ranks of His people; moreover, He had made men men and women women, and how could a thing like that be changed? It is idle to complain that Jane Austen lacked a crusading zeal. With hindsight, it is easy to look at the world she lived in and say she should have. What she did seems to me more valuable. She struggled to perceive, and describe the flow of beliefs that typified her time, and more, to suggest for the first time that the personal, the emotional is in fact the moral- nowadays, of course, for good or bad, we argue that it is political. She left a legacy for the future to build on."