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For Tuesday: Pride and Prejudice, Vol.2 1-19 (read all Vol.2 if possible!)

Gainsborough, Portrait of Molly and Peggy (c.1760)

REMEMBER: No class on Thursday--go to the 1920's event in the UC instead! 

Try to read all or as much of Part II as you can for Tuesday's class since you have a few extra days (and what else would you want to do, except spend all day reading Austen?!). 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: How does Austen satirize the upper classes ala Mr. and Mrs. Andrews (the Gainsborough painting) at Rosings? Consider how Lady Catherine treats her social inferiors--the Collins and Elizabeth--and how might Austen be sharing Elizabeth's delight here in "anything ridiculous"?  

Q2: How does the manner of Darcy’s proposal echo, in some particulars, that of Mr. Collins? Why is each one incapable of a truly flattering, romantic proposal? What factors does Darcy apparently have to overcome to express his love and affection to Elizabeth?

Q3: Why do you think Elizabeth conceals the proposal from her family, as well as the truth about Wickham, and only reveals her secrets to Jane? Is she ashamed of turning down a fortune? Or is she secretly flattered? Consider her reflection shortly after their meeting, “That she should receive an offer of marriage from Mr. Darcy! that he should have been in love with her for so many months! so much in love as to wish to marry her in spite of all the objections...”

Q4: In Chapter XIX, the Narrator notes that “Had Elizabeth’s opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort." What does she notice in her own family to make her disinclined to ever marry, or to think that love exists outside of novels? According to the novel so far, do you think Jane Austen was of the same opinion?

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