Friday, February 10, 2012
thoughts about marriage proposals
As I finished this novel, I kept thinking about Austen's personal background. Austen never married even though she had received one proposal from a man whom she originally accepted but then rejected later and I couldn't help but think if Austen wrote this and created Lizzy's character after her own wishful thinking. In the novel, Lizzy receives not just one but two proposals and it just made me think of the similarities between the two. For example, the one proposal Austen received would have secured her financial well being for the future like Mr. Collins' proposal to Lizzy would have done. Both Austen and Lizzy rejected their proposals because they did not love the man it was coming from and knowing this, was Austen writing this in the mind set that she wished she would have gotten another chance at marriage with a second proposal like she gave Lizzy? While the predictability of who Lizzy's second proposal came from was foreseeable, had Austen received a second marriage proposal, would she still have written this novel the way she did? I could be stretching this a bit but hey, at least I'm trying to think outside the box a bit :)
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I don't think this is a stretch at all! I definitely think this could be modeled after Austen's life. After all, author's write about their own experiences, right?
ReplyDeleteexactly! especially after reading her letters, I can totally see her novels and characters being based off of her life and the people involved in her life. I just can't help but think how different the plot would have been had Austen herself gotten married.
ReplyDeleteI agree, even the idea of Darcy (this intolerable and brutish man) completely changing his stripes and learning to not care for class or money is pretty unbelievable. While many things in novels are hard to believe, the rest of Pride and Prejudice is very straight forward and accurately judges people. I do not think that this would have really occured with Darcy as Austen had built him up, so maybe this was her imaginative view of something she still wanted.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting idea. I'd like to think that Austen wouldn't indulge herself and sacrifice character for plot (that is, make Darcy do something that he truly wouldn't do just for the sake of the story). Her other characters seem remarkably consistent. But then, as a creative writer, I've been guilty of trying to live vicariously through fictional characters.
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