Jane+Austen's+Pride+and+Prejudice-+The+Novel+as+Historical+Source

Background
 Austen's reputation rests in large part on her realistic depiction of English society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In important respects this was a transitional period in English history. The industrial revolution had "taken off" in the late eighteenth century, producing far-reaching social and demographic as well as economic changes. The French Revolution caused a conservative backlash, led by Edmund Burke, that was reinforced by France's declaration of war against Britain in 1793. A reform movement was led by Jeremy Bentham, whose // Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation // (1789) assumed the essentially conservative position that reform was better than revolution. While Bentham and his followers focused attention on criminal law and prison conditions, Evangelicals addressed social injustice, including slavery.

A few radicals protested. Thomas Paine, who had returned to England after the American Revolution, published // The Rights of Man // (1791). William Godwin, author of // Political Justice // (1793), argued that reason and education, rather than tradition and ignorance, would bring about human progress.

In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft, Godwin's wife, published //A Vindication of the Rights of Woman//. Often described as the first great feminist treatise, the // Vindication // sought "to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste are almost synonimous [sic] with epithets of weakness." Wollstonecraft's radical claim that women should be judged by their virtue rather than their elegance, their intellect rather than their beauty, caused a furor when it was published. It captured the attention of those, who like Wollstonecraft, rebelled against the social and economic constraints that subjected women to marriages that held no promise of personal fulfillment. The // Vindication //, however, had little immediate impact on the status of English women.

Claire Tomalin, who has written biographies of both Austen and Wollstonecraft, observes, "Wollstonecraft's central arguments for the better education and status of women must at the very least have caught [Austen's] attention….Her formal silence on the position of women is qualified by the way in which her books insist on the moral and intellectual parity of the sexes…" 1

The industrial revolution and the opportunities afforded by business and trade led to the creation of an influential middle class. In the early years of the nineteenth century, actual numbers of those who had achieved the rank of middle class—bankers, merchants, ship-owners, factory owners, mine owners, and some professionals—were remarkably small. Denied a formal voice in the political process (middle-class men would not gain the vote until in 1832), successful business and tradesmen had already achieved considerable economic influence by the time Austen succeeded in publishing her novels.

The traditional class system, based on family connections and inherited wealth, grudgingly made room for the// nouveaux riches //, whose financial standing resulted from ability and hard work. Austen was well aware of the privileges afforded to those at the top of the hierarchy and the burdens placed on those further down the social ladder. Her mother had distant aristocratic relations as well as an uncle who was Master of Balliol College, Oxford, for fifty years. Her father, born into far more modest circumstances, achieved success as a minister and school master through intelligence and industry.

Austen's interest in class may well have been influenced by her own family connections, but it extended well beyond the confines of her immediate relations. Juliet McMaster, a recognized Austen scholar, explains: > The novelist, and especially Jane Austen, always cares [about social class] because it is the business of the novel to represent people - not exclusively, but prominently - in their social roles, and to be precise about the differences between them….Austen… goes in for fine distinctions, whether between degrees of quality of mind in her characters or the fine shades of difference in their social standing. But to say so much is not to contend that she approved of the bastions of privilege in her very hierarchical society, or resisted the changes towards freer movement between the classes that she saw happening around her….Austen was no snob, though she knew all about snobbery. … > In Jane Austen's world, human worth is to be judged by standards better and more enduring than social status; but social status is always relevant. With amused detachment, she registers exactly the social provenance of each of her characters, and judges them for the ways in which they judge each other. The importance assigned to class distinction is the source of much of the comedy and her irony, as of her social satire. 2 >  1 Claire Tomalin, // Jane Austen: A Life // (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 139.

> 2 Juliet McMaster, "Class," in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (Cambridge: University Press, 1995), pp. 128-29.