In the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the main protagonist, Elizabeth Bennett, learns to both embrace and overcome her prideful, independent nature. Her character is molded by her cultural and physical surroundings, which change her for the better by the end of the story.
Elizabeth grew up in 19th century English society, born to a moderately wealthy middle class family in the countryside. For all her life, her mother, along with the rest of society, have insisted that young women must marry well and marry soon. The only way to ensure a comfortable, happy life is to marry a wealthy man. The idea of a single young lady having a bright future on her own was inconceivable. This constant pressure on Elizabeth has led her to develop her own ideas about marriage. Instead of having the effect of making her obedient to society's values, Elizabeth, seeing her mother's sometimes ridiculous efforts at match-making, has come to reject the idea that women must rely on men to take care of them. She is determined to make her own path and not be pushed into an undesired marriage. Her stubbornness to not conform with society is partly influenced by her father who is also slightly eccentric and prefers to dwell in solitude instead of attending the many parties and dances his wife insists on. It can also be noted that Elizabeth was closest to her father, admiring his intelligence and appreciating his humor.
Another aspect of her surroundings was the heavy emphasis on family reputation. Elizabeth's family was not the most socially gifted. Her mother and younger sisters often forgot social decorum in their pursuit of husbands. Furthermore, they were not terribly wealthy either and were often looked down upon. Elizabeth's self-esteem therefore could not be supported by her family, so she had to rely on herself. Her pride was also hurt quite easily, especially by others who had the wealth and the family reputation like Mr. Darcy, and she often overcompensated in fixing her pride by developing prejudices. However, her nature that was so proud that sometimes it bordered on insensibility also saved her from making what can be seen as rational, but joyless decisions. One example is her refusal to marry her cousin, the extremely self-conscious and dreadfully dull church parson. Although accepting his proposal would not only mean having a comfortable life but also keeping her family grounds, Elizabeth rejected him because she was to prideful to let herself be unhappy for the rest of her life.
But though her pride would save her in one situation, it would prevent her from seeing the true natures of other people. This can be seen in her trust and admiration of Mr. Wickham and her disgust and annoyance with Mr. Darcy. Elizabeth had to overcome her pride and acknowledge that she was wrong about the characters of both men in order to find her true happy ending.
I think I just fell into every pitfall that I was warned about in 5 Steps to a 5. First off, I don't think I chose the right novel to write about. While I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice very much and it was included on the list of suggested books in the essay prompt, I could have chosen a book I had studied in a more academic light and more recently too to write about instead. I thought I had a good grasp on Pride and Prejudice until I started writing the essay and had trouble coming up with the specific details to support my thesis. I didn't realize just how familiar I had to be with the novel I would choose to analyze. So that meant my whole essay was off to a bad start.
Things I did like about the essay was the freedom of choosing what you wanted to write about and the generality of the prompt. It was refreshing to write without so many limitations on content and focus. However, this freedom also made it difficult to organize my essay. In the essay above, I was more or less dividing my essay in regards to different aspects of the surroundings that had an effect. I saw other essays where they followed a more chronological order in regards to the book. Anyway, my structure did not show much complexity of thought. I was also bordering on vagueness as I discussed my evidence for the essay and more than once I had to stop myself and ask if I was giving too much plot summary.
Also, since the prompt is rather broad, my thesis and thus my essay did not address all parts of the prompt equally. In particular, I don't think I analyzed how the surroundings illuminate the meaning of the work as a whole very well. Since you have a full length novel to work with and draw examples from, it is difficult to condense your thoughts and your writing to just the most significant, relevant, and meaningful details. I had so much I wanted to write about and I think that really slowed down my progress as I was unable narrow down my examples and my writing became rather ineffective as I was trying to extract meaning from all these sources. I also tried to push myself to find the complexity in the story, which I tried to explore at the end but I didn't have enough time to expand that theme to illustrate the overall meaning of the piece.
To improve I'm going to have to practice. That's not new. And I'm going to have to prepare much better. My goals are:
1. Over the year, to keep a catalogue of all the works we study over the school year in class, since they're bound to cover a broad spectrum of types, literary movements, and themes, that I can use to write my free-response essays over. I want to make sure I'm really familiar with them and I understand the complexities and deeper meaning within each one. As I accumulate more works, I will probably keep a running list of them, so I can remember and go back if I have too, with a few notes on each one about its most important themes. This way I can have a broad mental library to draw from.
2. Familiarize myself with sample free-response prompts and sample student essays for those prompts. The prompts for the open question are all rather general and broad. If I can be used to seeing these prompts and figuring out how best to answer each one through reading sample essays, I will be able to start my essay more quickly and more effectively.
3. Write the actual free-response essays. Half the fight I believe is being able to make that decision and choose the correct piece to analyze. I can practice this and practice writing an essay about a full length of work in such a short amount of time. I really need to practice selecting the proper details and organizing my thoughts about the book to write a relatively condensed essay about it. And I need to make sure I'm molding my examples to be relevant to the prompt.
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