Social Status Comparison Pride & Prejudice and Great Expectations

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English 101 Final Paper Social Status Comparison Pride & Prejudice and Great Expectations In Pride & Prejudice and Great Expectations, there is a common theme of social status in these books, with gaining a higher social status as the goal. At the time Jane Austen and Charles Dickens wrote these books gaining social status was a large part of people’s lives. Both author’s show the positive and the negative that social status has on peoples lives, and how status defined who a person was; it provided opportunities as well as limitations for some people. As it was frowned upon for upper class people to married anyone of lower standing. Yet it was a goal of lower or middle class people to gain higher social status, either through marriage or education. Also the Industrial Revolution created many opportunities for to increase one social standing through trade as in Miss Havisham case her family wealth came from running a brewery. As with the Bennet daughter’s in Pride and Prejudice, marrying men of status, was how the family would survive into the future, because of their estate being in placed into entailment. Mrs. Bennet’s desire to marry into high status is made evident by the opening line of the book; ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ But the reverse is also true for a single woman in the 1800, whose social options were very limited were in want of a husband. Jane Austen makes a point to show even men have to establish contacts to rise to a higher social status. Austen characterizes this in Mr. Collins, who constantly brags about his associations with the high class Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is the enforcer of the social class system and will do anything to ensure her nephew Mr. Darcy marries someone with equal family status. Several others in
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