... "accomplished" (38). As well as these skills, a woman must possess a natural grace and flawless manner "to deserve the word" (39). Elizabeth Bennet's reply of "I never saw such a woman" highlights Austen's concern with the notion of the ideal woman within her nineteenth-century English ... Mrs Bennet immediately "sees him as an insurance policy against future privations."5 Once an attraction has formed between Bingley and the eldest Bennet daughter, Jane, Mrs Bennet manipulates the situation and sends Jane to Netherfield on horseback during a storm, hoping she will catch a cold. Her plan...

• Word Count: 5516
• Approx Pages: 22
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

... , "his sense of her inferiority--of its being a degradation--of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination were dwelt on" Elizabeth's mother, in particular, is only the daughter of a smalltown attorney, a station in life taken up by her brother-in-law, while her brother (Elizabeth's uncle) is, unfortunately, from the point of view of Darcy and his class ... what Elizabeth fears and represses in herself. Elizabeth is furious, too, that her mother is "more alive to the disgrace which the want of new clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any sen...

• Word Count: 3336
• Approx Pages: 13
• Grade Level: Undergraduate