Social Evolution in Pride and Prejudice. Social analysis is a common feature of modern literary criticism. The social context and antecedent of authors and their fiction works are invariably examined in order to shed light on the characters and events depicted in the stories. If literary works are influenced by the times in which they were written, it is equally true that the characters and events in fiction reflect on human character and the character of the times which they depict. The storyline of a novel may be fictitious, but the insights it can provide are very real and true to life. Pride and Prejudice was written during an epoch when France was in the midst of a violent revolutionary upheaval and vividly depicts the social response to those events in England. England had already undergone a major social upheaval with the dethronement and execution of Charles I and the Glorious Revolution of 1. In spite of these two major cataclysmic changes, a century later, it was once again threatened with revolutionary change by contagion from across the channel. The whole nation rose to the occasion of the French Revolution and was ready to do everything in her power to avoid a revolution. The French aristocracy had resisted the winds of change with rude vulgar assertion of their superiority, until it was imposed on them by physical force. In the process, about 1. Their English counterparts consented to accommodate the aspirations of the rising middle classes by permitting intermarriage with commoners. Pride and Prejudice depicts this silent process of social transformation in the lives of the English gentility. The whole process is summarized in Elizabeths accusations against Darcy, accusing him of arrogance, pride, conceit, and selfish disdain for others. Darcys conscious individual response epitomizes the collective subconscious response of the English upper classes. He accepts the truth of her accusations and endeavors and transforms himself for the explicit purpose of pleasing and winning her. Thus, a charming story of romance and marriage becomes both a vehicle for and a product of social evolution. Any story reflects the mood of its period. The marriages of Darcy and Bingley are symptomatic of the mood of the period. The French aristocrats lost their heads not only because they were aristocrats but because of the assertion of their superiority. Darcy lost his arrogance and saved his head. The implicit theme of this story is that what the less civilised achieve physically, the more mature nation attains by a psychological change. Social Character. Every society has a character that places a unique stamp on the values, attitudes, opinions, customs and conventions of its members, activities and institutions. That character undergoes a process of continuous development or evolution. Events occur in a social context and reflect the character of the society and the character of the times in which they take place. Often the event can be seen as a specific individual expression of the general direction and process of social development. Knowledge of the process of social development reveals the determining character of society on the outcome of action. Society is not just the sum total of the individuals who participate in it. The characteristics of a society are not merely a sum, average or other mathematical function of the values, opinions, and attitudes of those individuals. A society is a living organism with a life of its own, a living collective which consists of many living individual human beings, just as our physical bodies are living collectives made up of many living individual cells. Both the body and the cell have their own distinct individuality, though obviously the two are related. Although we commonly think of society as the sum of its individual members, historically the consciousness of the collective evolved before the emergence and development of individuality, which is a much more recent phenomenon. Groups developed collective activities, beliefs, attitudes, habits, customs and values that they imposed on their members, demanding unstinting conformity, often on pain of exile or death. Every society is undergoing a continuous process of adaptation and adjustment to survive and maintain the status quo or to grow, develop and evolve. Different levels, segments and aspects of the society move simultaneously in different directions, some to resist change and others to foster it. Often an event can be seen as a representative individual expression of the general direction and process of social development. Knowledge of the process of social development reveals the determining character of society on the outcome of action. Jane Austen composed First Impressions during the period 1. French Revolution and just two decades after the American Revolution, but she was unsuccessful in publishing the novel at that time. A revised version was published as Pride Prejudice in 1. Thus, the period preceding composition of both the first and second versions of the novel was one populated by radical new social ideas and rapid social transformation. Across the English channel in France, the process was wracked by violence, while in England it took on a less visible and turbulent form. Understanding this social context is essential for a full comprehension of the novel. Para quienes no conozcan lo que es Netflix, los invito a visitar su web en www. netflix. com. Ahora bien, de qu viene esta nota Netflix realiz su debut hace unas. Read the essential details about Henry VIII that includes images, quotations and the main facts of his life. Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour. Anne of. EMILY CLIMBS by L. M. Montgomery Lucy Maud, 18741942 1925 Contents. Writing Herself Out. Salad Days. In the Watches of the Night As Ithers See Us. Concept of Social Development. We commonly think of social development as a desirable set of outcomes such as greater material prosperity, education, productivity, technology and freedom. But these outcomes are the result of a process and that process is occurring all the time. In essence, society evolves when the collective accumulates surplus energy that is not required for its survival and growth at the current level and when a subconscious collective will, forms for development in a particular direction. That will expresses through the conscious initiatives of individuals who depart from conformity to the status quo and pioneer new forms of behavior, which are then imitated by other individuals and eventually accepted by the social collective and organized in the society by new political, legal, social, economic or cultural activities, institutions, customs and values. Over the past five hundred years the entire Western world and more recently the world as a whole have been moving along a course of development that has several identifiable characteristics. Societies in the past promoted the development of the collective by constraining the development of their individual members within narrow fixed boundaries. They now seek to actively develop their individual members and to release their energy and initiative as a means to foster the progress of the collective. Societies in the past developed by a concentration of benefits of development knowledge, power, privilege and wealth among a very small portion or an elite class of its members. They are now distributing more of the achievements of the elite to wider sections of the population out of recognition that this makes the society as whole stronger and more stable. Democratization, universal education, human rights, social security and economic opportunity are expressions of this movement. Societies in the past suppressed, exploited or ignored the lower or weaker sections of the population. They are now striving consciously to protect, support and develop those sections through equal rights and equal opportunities for less fortunate individuals and weaker nations. Evolution vs. Revolution. The development process can occur in one of two ways through violent revolution or slow gradual evolution. Society is structured in a manner similar to the earths crust, which consists of layers of tectonic plates that rest on, interlock and shift constantly in relation to each other. Geological processes build pressure for movement of the plates in different directions. When the pressure mounts, either the plates slide past each other defusing the pressure or the pressure continues to mount until a sudden violent adjustment takes place that we perceive as an earthquake. Like the earth, society can respond to the mounting pressure either by revolutionary or evolutionary change. Pride Prejudice was written at a time of violent social revolution in France, where the stiff resistance of the old aristocracy refused to acknowledge or accommodate the growing aspirations and power of an emerging bourgeois middle class.
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