Pride and Prejudice Themes

Pride and Prejudice Themes

Love

(Click the themes infographic to download.) No matter what Stephenie Meyer wants to believe, Austen is much more Married with Children than Twilight. There are a lot of marriages, but not mu...

Marriage

(Click the themes infographic to download.) From our 21st century perspective, the concerns of Pride and Prejudice might seem trivial. Who cares if the Bennet girls ever get married? Can't they jus...

Wealth

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Money makes the world go 'round, especially if you're a young woman trying to get married in Regency England. The five Bennet daughters have almost no mo...

Society and Class

(Click the themes infographic to download.) We hear you: if everyone in this novel is so concerned about money, why don't any of them have jobs? Because we're talking about a specific class: the ge...

Women and Femininity

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Pride and Prejudice may start off with the anonymous figure of a rich, single man, but the novel is actually concerned with the plight of the poor, singl...

Family

(Click the themes infographic to download.) If you think your family is embarrassing, try having a satirical father, an idiot mother, two hopeless flirts for youngest sisters, and a nerd for a midd...

Deceit

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Sure, Wickham fools everyone. But Pride and Prejudice is really interested in self-deceit: the lies we all tell ourselves. You know, like, "I'm totally g...

Language and Communication

(Click the themes infographic to download.) In a society where you aren't really supposed to say what you're thinking—witness all the trouble Lydia gets into—it's no easy task to express feelin...

Principles

(Click the themes infographic to download.) In Pride and Prejudice, characters are divided into certain types. There are those who just regurgitate whatever principles they've been taught without m...

Pride

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Pop quiz: in Pride and Prejudice, who represents pride, and who represents prejudice?Okay, we confess: it was a trick question. Turns out, almost everyon...

Prejudice

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Let's get something straight: Pride and Prejudice has nothing to do with racial prejudice. (If you want to read about that, Shmoop has plenty of options....