Sir William Lucas describes his daughter Charlotte's marriage to Mr. Collins as "an alliance".
After Charlotte's engagement to Mr. Collins is announced, she describes that she has a good chance at happiness "in the marriage state."
Jane and Elizabeth call Charlotte's and Mr. Collins's upcoming marriage as a "match".
Lady Catherine de Bourgh talks about Mr. Darcy's supposed arranged engagement to Anne as a "match".
Other adjectives used throughout the book:
Charlotte is at least twice described as "amiable". "Their amiable neighbor" and "his amiable Charlotte"
When Mr. Collins goes back to Kent: "After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity"
About Mr. Bingley's perceived affection for Jane: "I never saw a more promising inclination."
How Lady Catherine first refers to Elizabeth:
"...and who she observed to Mrs. Collins was a very genteel, pretty kind of girl."
She doesn't even speak to Elizabeth! She just tells Charlotte what she thinks.
Mr. Darcy's infamous first marriage proposal. He says that he has "struggled" "in vain" and that his feelings will not be "repressed". He has found it "impossible" to "conquer" his affections for her.
I suppose that an Indo-European theme would apply to Darcy here, though not in the traditional sense. He has been trying to overcome his affections for Elizabeth, which by his society's standard, would be unwise. However, it is his pride that he must overcome--he cannot care about what other people may think if he marries a woman of a lower social class. His pride is the dragon, and in the end, he does overcome it and he loves Elizabeth and her lower status is of no consequence to him.
I like the way that you used the language details to back up the theme of marriage in the novel. What is the name of the linguistic text-binding feature that your details are documenting?
ReplyDeleteI have no read pride and prejudice, but I want to go through and see how many different times and ways marriage is referred to, whether the terms are romantic or political. It would be a neat subject to write a paper about. You should consider doing that, eh eh? wink.
ReplyDeleteMaybe someday I will write something like that. I'll put that one down as a possible writing subject in the future, among other things I'd like to write.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the text-binding feature that I was using is called cohesion, as we discussed in class.
That's right. Cohesion means the text strategies that help guide the reader, and repetition, reference, and synonyms contribute to lexical cohesion.
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