A atitude contestadora de Elizabeth Bennet frente à sociedade do século XIX em Orgulho e Preconceito de Jane Austen

Abstract

The seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the scene of great upheaval as the Enlightenment (1650 - 1700) and the French Revolution (1787 - 1799) in France and the Industrial Revolution (1789 - 1848) in England. The aristocratic values were no longer dominating and the ascending bourgeois society of the time longed for new social concepts. The Enlightenment was the great forerunner of rational values, men found several answers in it, but women were apart from it all, possessing only the spectators’ role. Women’s education at that period, and until late nineteenth century, had always been very poor. The education they received was used to maintain their roles as housewives, since they were responsible for the home, the husband and the children’s wellbeing. Very early should the girls learn to deal with home and religious issues, as well as learn to paint, sew and draw. We realize, however, that in her works Jane Austen features a woman almost inimical to the values expected from her. We observe that the character Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1813), symbolizes the rational woman for she is incisive and disruptive, contrary to the female role of the time. Thus, we will address this aspect present in Jane Austen’s work and in the English bourgeois society of the nineteenth century. For the theoretical approach we will study the ideas of Candido (2006), Hobsbawm (1997), Duby and Perrot (1994), Perrot (2005), Scott (2002), Woollstonecraft (1999), Showalter (2011), Amaro (2009), Ramos (2002), Rodrigues (2001), Morais (1999), Foucault (2009), Mill (2006), Copeland Macmaster (2011), Auerbach (1984), Cabreira (2012) and Morgan (1975).