Pride and Prejudice Essay

The novel seems to be showing that first impressions are a very important thing during this time period. The novel Pride and Prejudice was set during the 19th century. This was a time that when you are meeting someone for the very first time, you have to do your best to try and impress them, to try and show them that you are a very well and respected family.
This is evident a couple times in the book. One of these times is in the beginning of the book, when we first meet the Bennett family. For the Bennett family it is very important to try and get in good with other families. One of the reasons that the daughter of the family needs to look good at all times and have to try and find a man, is because they are women. During this time, when a family had an estate that came through the family, it went to the oldest male son in the family. But for the Bennett’s it is very hard because the Bennetts have five daughters, no son. So this is leading to the five daughters, Jane, Lizzy, Mary, Lydia and Kitty, having to look for men, for a man that will be able to support them. Mrs. Bennett is very concerned on making sure that she finds a man for at least one of her daughters, she shows this by say, “A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!”(1). She is really wanting one of her girls to get married. She is wanting one of her daughters to get married, to have on of them to be a support for their family and for one of them to keep the estate.
But even though it seems that first impressions are a very important thing during this time period, you can see that some times people just get so tired of having to act like they are perfect and that there life is so nice. This is shown when Lizzy if first meeting Lady Catherine De Boure and the fact that she is rude in her response in her conversation. “With three younger sisters grown up, your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it. Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence”(113). Lizzy is meeting Lady Catherine for first time and you would think that Lizzy would be on her best manner, but that is the last thing Lizzy is. She is really into being insanely rude and mean to her. Lady Catherine is trying her best to be a kind guest

Show More