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Men Were Not Always At The Head Of The Table Essay

Decent Essays

Molly Clark

Mrs. Snider

AP English 12

11 October 2016

Men Were not Always at the Head of the Table

Jane Austen, in her book Pride and Prejudice, ignores that fact that, at the time, women

were inferior to the men and makes many of the female character dominate to the male

characters which causes her novel to become of like a feminist novel. Some of the female

characters include Elizabeth, Mrs. Bennet, Lady Catherine, Lydia, Jane, Miss Darcy, Caroline,

and Miss Bingley just to name a few. The male characters on the other hand include Mr. Darcy,

Mr. Bingley. Mr. Bennet, Mr. Wickham, and Mr. Collins. Although there are a couple other male

characters, for example relatives of the Bennets, they show up in the novel for a short period of

time and are rarely mentioned afterword. Just by the list of the characters alone the reader can

already see the dominance of the female characters. But what makes Pride and Prejudice a

feminist novel is not the overwhelming amount female characters, but how these characters use

what limited power they had at the time to overrule the men in the novel.

The main character in this novel is a female - Elizabeth Bennet. She is described and

shown as independent, caring, and someone who does not care about living up to society 's

expectations. Elizabeth is also described as very beautiful and she is Mrs. Bennet’s favorite

daughter because of her beauty. In the novel, Elizabeth received three marriage

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