The Representations of Femininity in Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen, one of the most well-known 19th century novelists recognized today continues to captivate people with stories of love and romance through the transformation of her novels into film and television. All of her novels are about women dealing with romance, courtship, and marriage during a repressing period. Most of her characters and stories revolve around the lives of the upper class. It centers on the values, rituals, and manners of high society in England during the Regency Era. Her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice published in 1813 maintains the interest of its audiences as it did almost two centuries earlier as evidenced by its frequent incarnations. In 1995, the British Broadcasting Corporation produced a six†¦show more content†¦This adaptation offers an accurate representation of the story and characters which overall offers a beautiful visual rich in semiotics for exploration. In Roberta Grandi’s article, The Passion Translated: Literary and C inematic Rhetoric in Pride and Prejudice, she observes that â€Å"in an age when naked bodies are overexposed and sex is common topic of discussion, costume films rediscover a taste for visual repression. Through the concealment of the bodies and translation of their sensuality into objects, both voyeuristic and fetishist sensations are enhanced† (50) which I believe is the reason behind the lasting appeal of period dramas. This will keep audiences, especially the younger viewers today, engaged in the characters conversations, actions and tiny gestures in an attempt to decipher what the characters truly feel and think as in Grandi’s words, â€Å"if passion is nowhere expressed it means that passion is concealed everywhere† (50). Even if the times had changed and values have become more progressive compared to that of Jane Austen time, viewers nevertheless enjoy the passion in herShow MoreRelatedComparing The Representation Of Women s The Yellow Wallpaper And Pride And Prejudice 1662 Words   |  7 PagesCompare the representation of women in Gilman’s ‘The yellow wallpaper’ and Austen’s ‘pride and prejudice’. To what extent do you agree with the view that Gilman presents conventional patriarchal expectations of women, more critically than Austen. Both Austen and Gilman breakthrough the conformity of femininity at a time of rising feminism in a bid to encourage the female viewpoint which was put down or rather shunned to be less valuable by the society they lived in. Gilman however presents it inRead MoreThe Imitation Game Essay1018 Words   |  5 Pagesthe question ‘How are men and women (masculinity and femininity) portrayed differently in the text?’. 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