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Significance of Education in Pride and Prejudice
In education and learning, students are often classified as either good or bad learners, depending on how they are able to capture different concepts, how well they perform in their papers, how creative they are, or how good they are at making arguments. While it is not fair to classify a ‘bad’ student as bad since all students should be treated equally, knowing which student is good and which student is poor can help teachers concentrate their efforts appropriately so that every student can get the best from their teachers and help them learn. That way, teachers can be able to do their job better and, instead of judging students, help them learn since by putting labels as good or bad students, they might make the ‘bad’ students feel unworthy of learning. A teacher should endure all difficult students and try to find out their problems in order to come up with a solution to help them learn more easily and effectively. Every human being has the ability to learn. However, it depends on the type of method being used to help the student learn or the things being learned. A particular style of teaching might be more effective on a specific student and not as effective on another. With this in mind, all students are equal and can learn, but it takes different learning methods to educate different types of students, and therefore, their no such thing as a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ student.
Jane Austen’s novel, Prive and Prejudice, is set in an era when women did not have the right they have now. During this era, education for women was forbidden, and all women were supposed to do is give birth to children and stay at home and take care of their families while their husbands were out earning an income. The best thing a woman could do is marry a rich man and be nothing more than his wife. This can be seen in the novel where Mrs. Bennet is desperate in getting her daughters married when Mr. Bennet dies, and the estate is supposed to be passed on to the male member of the family line and not to any female (the daughters), which shows how biased society was on women (Chapter 7). Austen tries to describe the importance of education through Elizabeth’s character, who is witty, intelligent, and has the ability to handle different people. She compares Elizabeth to her three younger sisters to show how attractive her character is and ultimately showing how important it is for a woman to be intelligent.
The fact that women did not have the right to have a career, suffrage, or even political opinion and understanding; higher education was considered unnecessary for them. Jane Austen, in her novel, validated the patriarchal position by assigning domestic roles to the women characters in her novel and recommended practical and religious training for them. In the novel, Caroline, one of the women characters, represents this attitude when she says, “a woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word” (Austen 29). Darcy then echoes Austen’s thoughts, “to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading” (Austen 29). This clearly highlights the importance of education in women in bettering their social standing.
In the novel, Austen gives Elizabeth courage, wit, and intelligence. This way, she is seen as superior to most of the people within her environment as she is able to deal with her own marriage and is happy. Austen uses other characters such as Jane Bennet, Lizzy, Darcey, and Lydia to show different levels of intelligence, wit, and independence among women, depending on their accomplishments, value, or social status. She uses Elizabeth to show how important education is to a woman and uses Lydia’s imprudent conduct to show how lack of education can bring misery and lack of purpose in a woman’s life. Overall, in the novel, Austen juxtaposes characters against each other and emphasizes her strong faith in education in enabling people to make their lives better or getting better prospects.
Jane Austen’s work is mainly aimed at emphasizing the importance of educating women whom she describes as a major section of the society. She believes that without educated women, society will collapse. She strongly believes that women are crucial to the development of the nation and that when women are well-educated, society will be liberated. Her novel, Pride and Prejudice, clearly highlights this through her narration using the characters in the novel. She believes that a woman’s ability to carry herself in a proper manner is based on her education or intelligence and also, her value to men and the society is determined by her level of education. Hence, education, as much as it is important to men, it is also very important to women.
Works cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and prejudice. Broadview Press, 2001.