![]() Elizabeth, then, becomes not a symbol of female intellectual empowerment but a symbol of the delusioned and inconsequential nature of intelligence possessed by women. She certainly has a nature to imply that she could extend her logical personality to the world outside of romance, but Austen “condescends” only to represent Elizabeth’s logical nature in romantic situations. Upon this end, Elizabeth is completely flat: she (as a character) possesses no “philosophical” complexities that imply any remarkable degree of enlightened thought outside of ideology in regards to marriage and other romantic topics. The mistaken first impression never really presents itself as a character flaw to be overcome, but rather ends up being justified as a wholly honest, logical, and (therefore) unflawed judgement. ![]() The depth of the complexity of that romance can certainly be argued, but I do not think a girl changing her “first impression” (the original title of the work) of a man to be much to get excited about. The plot - and by extension theme - are straightforward: politics and tradition must be navigated as young people discover romance. By extension, the plot can be labeled with an equal degree of removal and distance, leaving the critical reader with a shallow and wholly unsatisfactory sense of experience. Uncomplex, unchanging in nature, and poorly portrayed, her character creates no real emotional attachment to the reader, leaving the reader just distant enough to never emotionally invest themselves into the novel. Elizabeth’s disposition bores against those of Shakespeare's female characters - I don’t need Elizabeth to kill herself to prove her love, but Austen leaves us with nothing but a walk in a park to the same end. Examples of superior characterization include those in early Gothic literature like Ann Radcliffe’s “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1793) or in American literature like Hannah Webster Foster’s “The Coquette” (1797). The whole of Elizabeth, from whose viewpoint we experience the plot of “Pride and Prejudice”, is dull in comparison to the depth of characters created by Austen’s peers. Like a sitcom of modern television, the delivery of romantic drama depends entirely upon our connection to the characters: no one remembers the plot lines of individual “Friends” episodes so much as the attachments developed with the characters over time. Austen took advantage of the new medium of public print houses to distribute this shallow silliness, and nothing of this base level nature would have become famous previous to this development that made literature accessible to the untested, and therefore low, standards of the general populous of Britain. My impression is that it is a farce written for the pleasure of young women, with just enough politics and class distinctions to make it notable to critics, but represents nothing significant in terms of historical importance.
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