Pride and Prejudice a Personal Politics of Disability

Your University of Affiliation Pride and Prejudice a Personal Politics of Disability Your Name Your Subject and Section Professor’s Name May 29, 2018 Reviewer Info Positionality Statement Bibliographic Entry Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice & Mansfield Park. 2018. Web. Summary Jane Austen’s book entitled Pride and Prejudice follow the lives of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy as they fight for love despite the inherent differences that they have. On the one hand, Elizabeth Bennett despite being smart, beautiful, and talented was born as landed gentry. On the other hand, Mr. Darcy was born with a higher status, yet arrogant and impulsive. During the start of the story, these differences between them would hinder them from liking each other, which Elizabeth is exhibiting pride against Darcy, and Darcy showing an innate prejudice against her. Nonetheless, the story would end with a romantic note as both of them would fall in love with each other. Review The story Pride and Prejudice are certainly a classic that which most people read. While it’s plot is interesting to read, one of the reasons why it is required by teachers around the world is because it shows how societal norms could affect how we look at each other and perhaps hinder our ability to form meaningful relationships due to these. While this true nonetheless, I would like to note that cultural differences could still affect how the readers like me would interpret these messages that it is trying to portray. Being a natural-born Chinese, my perspectives about how relationships between people could become affected. Specifically, western culture could look at particular events in the book as a result of biases due to social hierarchy, I could perceive it as a certain social norm to which we should abide to. Aside from this, there are also other things which could affect how I view the whole story and the characters based on my background. Our Socioeconomic status, religion, upbringing, and peers could certainly affect how I view the characters in the story. One example perhaps, is how I view Mr. Darcy intentions and reasons for his actions. Just like most of us, our simple background in life would view Darcy’s arrogance as inappropriate. However, those coming from the higher echelons of the society could think differently being that Mr. Darcy’s arrogance is okay as he has the right. Due to the nature of the whole piece and how the plot goes, it could be that the target audience for Austen’s story is those who live with the same social structure and hierarchy. Particularly speaking, this is because she satirizes not only how people create their division – that is through ‘pride and prejudice’ – but more so how does society contributes to the creation of these divisions. As could be seen in the novel, one of the reasons why Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth failed to connect with each other by the start of the story were because of the differences in class that they are born with. On the one hand, Mr. Darcy thinks poorly about Elizabeth despite her good qualities just because she is below him. On the other hand, Elizabeth failed to reach out to him because she prioritized the idea that she deserved better, rather than making a move to reconcile with him. In...