Parenting styles and money

Its interesting to see the dramatic change in parenting skills that Mr.Bennet displays through out the story. As well as oddly indifferent ways of Mrs.Bennet .We first see that Mr.Bennet is really distant to all his children. He is what we call a permissive parent in the beginning, by letting his daughters do whatever they want and just calling them silly for it. I think through out the book he becomes a better parent through his daughters actions, he becomes aware of them for two reasons. First is that he had to learn a big lesson that instilling morals and watching your children were important because the fact that he didn't led to him having to be financially worried because of the Lynda hunband crisis. Second is that when his daughters threw him into a social world where reputation was everything, and people saw how the girls were acting, he got a glimse or a wake up call of that that wasnt the right thing to do, in the case of not letting Kitty go with her once wild sister Lynda. He was always a good father in the way he loved his children but since he put rules down on Kitty it made her a better person.

Mrs. Bennet on the other hand is a different story. She displays the exact behavior of her steriotype husband-money wanting woman. Through the book she doesn't change at all. It's sad that the girls could change only the father's views on life, that just opening him up to what was really happening with his family opened his eyes to change but Mrs.Bennet was always stuck in the dark because she was so driven for her goal. Becuase the change of  Mr.Bennet, the house should be more disiplined but it really didn't matter now because it is too late, now his daughters are pretty much raising Kitty becuase they have the money to do so. Its interesting to think that if the Bennets were rich from the start I think that the girls would have been more well kept in character, but would Elizabeth be the way that she was, or any of the girls for that matter. I think they wouldn't have as different personalitites that they had, but rather ones more like the Bingley sisters. If they were rich to begin with I dont think Mr.Darcey would be interested in Elizabeth but i still think that Jane and Mr.Bingley would because they're relationship and character aren't very strong.

emotionally satisfying?

Okay so I thought that I would not like Pride and Prejudice all that much because I thought it would be rather boring. But I actually did like it, I mean its not like the usual books I read but it still captured my interest. I think the ending could have been better, but for the style of book it is I think it was pretty good. It was emotionally satisfying because it really didn't leave anything for you to want that wasn't already implied. In class there was some discussion about if an ending could be emotionally satisfying without a betrothal, and I definitely think there can be. In the time of Pride and Prejudice it probably would be unsatisfying without a betrothal but with all the different kinds of love stories out there now, there can be a ton of different emotionally satisfying endings without betrothal.

Another point I wanted to talk about was about Wickham and Lydia. I think that they were definitely not in love. Maybe Lydia thought she was at first, but after a while you can tell she isn't. Wickham didn't love Lydia, he only married her because Darcy bribed him into it. On page 366 it pretty much tells how they don't love each other. " His affection for her soon sunk into indifference; hers lasted a little longer; and in spite of her youth and her manners; she retained all the claims to reputation which her marriage had given her."

Basically I feel like the book kind of ended with a "happily ever after" for the main couples (not Wickham and Lydia). Not the fairy tale kind obviously but a pretty good one anyways. Mrs. Bennet gets three of her five daughters married so she can relax for a while, Mr. Bennet probably then gets his time to relax since she is, and the two elder sisters have their own little happily ever afters with the men they love.

What was with the Ending?!??

Well, to begin with, the ending was a bit confusing and blurry. I didn't really understand what happened, so I had to read it again, and I began to understand it. It could have been written better, as for how the book took so long to write. Did Jane Austen just get lazy with writing the book that she just whipped the ending together? Because I honestly think that she could have made it more clear and have more of an emphasis that Darcy and Elizabeth do get married, and that their engagement is essentially the climax of the book.
Once that was clarified that they were engaged for sure, I thought that the book was alright.
I really didn't like Lady Catherine too much, she's too stuck up and snobby, because she's too prejudice and blind to see anything clearly except for things that mattered to her: money and social status.
It also wasn't really fair of her to just brush aside Elizabeth and not really see how she has a really strong and endearing personality.
Other than that, the book was decent.

All choked up!!!

Oh my Gosh... pride and prejudice is differently a book I would recommend to someone who don't find reading as entertained as it is. In pride and prejudice, its the type of book that keeps me on the edge of my set anxiously waiting to find out what happens next. I was very satisfied with this book except for one thing. I feel like we wait, and we wait for the love to come strong and everyone share there feeling and everyone marries the one that they know they can’t live without. So we get to the last chapter and that's when all the excitement happens and I felt like Jane Austen was to in a hurry to make the end on the book. don't get me wrong the end was amazing and it really put a answer to all my thoughts when reading the book and all my " I wonder if the ending will be like this " type of questions, but I think to make this book even better. Is to tell what happens a few years down the road and how they are still in love and how there love never died. I feel that would be a way better ending to really get the whole idea that the Bennet sisters really did marry and it was the right choice and how love worked its way in the end.

Not happy.

I am still sticking with my very unpopular opinion that the ending of "Pride and Prejudice" was terrible and rushed. I will also point out that the book as a whole was very slow and did not seem to move in any kind of discernible direction. We knew that Mrs.Bennett wanted her daughters married and that the story was to revolve around that. However the interactions between all of the characters were very short and seemed to lack information and resolutions. Then it was off to another scene with another set of characters and the same problems with context and meaningful events to move the story along.

I would argue that if you removed half to three quarters of the characters in this book it may have been possible to craft a very deep, personal, and engaging story while still written in the gossipy speech pattern that it was.

Jane Austen attempts to write an epic love story on a grand scale. In her attempt she has so many characters and uses their back stories to show how they are related or acquainted to the main characters. By doing this she loses the focus of the love story between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth. Then finds herself having to push for a simple and neat ending to something that was never really developed in the first place.

I found myself hoping for more from Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth while I was reading. I would get a small character insight or a slight story or character arc and then be left with nothing. As soon as something of interest was there it was gone again. Unfortunately the whole read was very frustrating and disappointing. I have read several "classic" books and am usually pleasantly surprised by what is written and how the stories are told. This book is not one of those.

I look forward to seeing if it is the writing styles or the content in the upcoming books ,that I am finding so displeasing. I have watched and enjoyed love stories in the past. Titanic is one of the movies that I had no desire to see, yet when I did I was captivated and on the edge of my seat to see how the story evolved and ended.

The Journey

In class today we talked about whether or not we thought the ending to Pride and Prejudice was a "happy ending." I was surprised to find that a few people weren't satisfied. Yes, I agree that the ending was a bit rushed, but I still found it satisfying.

I actually found the sort of rushed ending that Pride and Prejudice had to be similar to a lot of more contemporary books. Most of the books I read go into great length while building up to the climax, and then. . . . It's over. There's a resolution lasting maybe one or two chapters at most, and it's the end of the book. So maybe I found it to be satisfying because I'm used to that kind of ending from what I read.

But I think that those sorts of rushed endings are quite common today. Movies, as well as books, have endings like that. Most movies reach the climax point, resolve, and have maybe one scene after the climax to resolve anything further. They don't go into detail on what happens after, because that's not as important as what happens to get them there. Like someone said in class today, "It's the journey that matters, not the destination."

Past, Present and Future

After finishing the novel Pride and Prejudice and our class discussion today I felt that there are a lot of things open for discussion or debate depending on the individual. I would like to start with the marriage of Wickham and Lydia and how for the times the fact that they ran away together not even to elope but to run away and stay together in sin as it would have been referred to was looked on as a black mark on the family and makes them or Lydia at least look bad and shameful. As a reader it would depend on the time period that you lived in how you would look upon what they did whether it is shameful or acceptable. In my eyes I didn't look at what they did with shame but then in the day and age of today what they did happens all the time and young people do not have to run away to do it. You could look at it as some sort of preview into the future of how things change and adapt over a period of time. That one thing that is socially unacceptable at one time over the years becomes accepted. I mean if you think about it if people still believed the way they did in the time Pride and Prejudice was written could you imagine what it would have been like in the 1960's free love period all the families that would have been black marked? I mean the opposition was there and it was socially unacceptable but there was no way to stop them from doing the things they were doing because there were too many of them and it wasn't just locally oriented; yes Height Ashbury was a big breeding ground but the movement was happening all over.

Which leads me to another example of show casing future events or traits? The type of woman that Elizabeth was a strong and an independent woman is what the women in the 1960's began coming into. Elizabeth was trying to be in control of her life, mind and who she was in the time she lived. The young women of the 1960's wanted the same thing they wanted to break free from the stereo type of marrying your high school and be a homemaker (the Ozzie and Harriett) and having babies. They began pursuing a college education, joining the work force, taking the pill (birth control) which was very taboo then because you just should not be having sex until you are married so these young women began to take a stand for who they are and what they wanted to do for themselves as women. Which you can see in Elizabeth they may not be the same traits but they are a form of her either wanting to or by accident becoming an independent women. You see it in the was that she speaks to Darcy and in the other things she does for example in the beginning when she walks to see Jane who is sick and gets all covered in mad and the women of the Bingley house look down upon her for what she did. I see it as a show of independence in that you won’t take me to see my sister and I don’t trust you I will make the walk on my own just to know that she is ok. That is a great example of very head strong independent women.

So as you see you could take many of the situations out of the novel and tie them into everyday life for the time period in which you live. The situations may be examples of the time it was written in but there are also many examples of how things have changed and progressed and that these novels may have helped to pave the way for those changes. They may not have downright contributed but they may have planted the seed.