Extra Credit Blog #2 - Week of 11/15

1) This one may be the easiest yet. :) I'd like to hear about the text you have chosen for your project. I'm actually asking you for summary here -- imagine that! What drew you initially? Did anything we read this semester spark an interest or lead you to your choice? Do you think you would have chosen this text at the beginning of the class rather than the end?
Not only does this sound like the easiest blog yet, but one of the most fun blogs yet.  The romantic novel, Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen, is a beautiful love story about two people that are complete opposites of each other. Miss Elizabeth Bennett is a young, beautiful woman living in a family where her mother is downright determined to get her and her sisters married off to a wealthy, young man. Elizabeth is young and carefree, and full of opinions about life in general, and she is certain about one thing – she does not want to marry out of financial obligation. She wants to marry a man for the right reasons – she wants to be in love. Back in the 1800s, this was a nice idea, but not necessarily a requirement of marriage. Parents married off their daughters so their daughters would be financially secure. This was Mrs. Bennett goal in the novel, and she was very persistent throughout the entire story. Elizabeth never agreed, and even turned down her cousin’s offer of marriage because she did not love him. Elizabeth’s match in the novel is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, a very proud, stubborn man that has a very hard time mingling with others that are not of the same “class” as he is. When Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth first met, he made a statement about Elizabeth that greatly offends her at the community ball. Mr. Darcy states to Mr. Bingley (his friend) when Mr. Bingley tries to get Mr. Darcy to dance with Elizabeth, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies that are slighted by other men” (Austen 8). Elizabeth overheard this very rude comment that Mr. Darcy made, and she immediately had an understandably disliking of him. Furthermore, as she interacted more and more with Mr. Darcy throughout the novel, her prejudices against him increased because of his hard exterior, his attitude, and the rumors that she heard about him. However, as they really got to know each other, they both realized that it was their strong, different personalities that made them unique, and that some of the opinions that they had of each other changed as they discovered each other’s true character. They then became attractive to each other, and fell in love. At the end of the novel, Elizabeth’s eldest sister, Jane has married Mr. Bingley (Jane married Bingley for love too!), and Elizabeth and Darcy are happily married. Darcy proved his love to Elizabeth in more ways than one throughout the course of the story, and Elizabeth realizes this at the novel’s conclusion. They are happily married, and living in Darcy’s mansion, Pemberley. This is one of my favorite Jane Austen novels, and after I read it a second time, it seemed more magical than the first reading.
What initially drew to Pride and Prejudice for this project was the fact that we got to choose any piece of literature that I wanted for this project. I was so excited about that aspect of this research paper – the topic for my previous research papers were always chosen for me, and even though in some ways it made it easier to conduct the research, it was not exactly “fun.” When I read the prompt for our research project, and saw that we could choose any novel that we liked, I immediately thought of this old, romantic classic. I just love good, clean romance novels – they always leave me feeling so happy at the conclusion of the novel. Pride and Prejudice is no exception – in fact, it is my favorite romance novel because of the fact that it is so old, but has the power to still captivate people with its story of love even though we are not living in the 1800s. Furthermore, after having written a couple of essays in this critical thinking class, I feel that I am ready to analyze my favorite novel critically in a way that I have never done before and I am excited to do it. This is what initially drew me to my favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice – the fact that I was able to choose it, and because I am excited to critically analyze it.
Yes, one small thing that we read this semester did help to spark my interest again in Pride and Prejudice. It was actually when we were going to write through a literary lens for Oleanna, but we ended up not doing that. It was the small paragraphs at the back of our textbook about the different schools of literary criticism on pages 1600-1603. The one paragraph that particularly awoke my love of Pride and Prejudice and helped me to see it differently than before was the paragraph on “Marxist Criticism.” I thought this paragraph was very interesting – I never really understood what Marxist theory was, and how it applied to different things, but after reading that paragraph in our textbook, I have a renewed interest in the history behind Pride and Prejudice and applying Marxist criticism to Pride and Prejudice. The paragraph about Marxist Criticism was not very large; however, it was chalk full of information, and I found it very interesting – interesting enough to do a full research paper on! It is amazing how a short paragraph that I read earlier in the semester affected what I wanted to do for this research project. I am so excited to see the outcome of it!
Honestly, no, I do not think I would have chosen Pride and Prejudice at the beginning of the class. I have to say, this has been one of my favorite English classes I have ever taken because it really has helped me to dig deeper into the readers, and really learn to analyze things. This really has been an enriching experience for me. In English 101, I learned how to structurally write better, but in this English class, I learned to actually analytically write better. I love that! I love reading texts and viewing then critically viewing it. It is quite fascinating to me. Keeping this in mind, if I would have chosen to analyze this novel at the beginning of the class without first knowing how to analyze properly, I know that I would have failed this project. This project is the “grand product” taking everything that I learned how to do beginning from the beginning of the semester – if I just jumped into it at the beginning of the semester and was told “choose my favorite novel and write it through an appropriate critical lens,” I would have probably looked at that like it was some form of Greek – from another planet. I am still a little bit unsure as to how I am going to structure my essay, but I have a good idea as to how I am going to write it (after I learned everything these past few weeks). I would not be able to say that if I have never heard of literary criticism. I would want to analyze this novel to the extent that it deserves, and I feel fairly confident that I can do that now after getting my feet wet in our first few writing assignments. However, if this assignment was given to us at the beginning of the semester, I probably would have not chosen Pride and Prejudice. Even though it is my favorite novel, now that I know the extent of analyzing we do in this class, I probably would have chosen something a little bit less complex until I learned all of this. However, since this is not the beginning of class, and we are nearing its completion (I cannot believe it!), I feel that I can critically analyze Pride and Prejudice to the extent that it fully deserves.
Normally, I do not get too excited about research papers as they do require a lot of research (which is probably they are termed research papers!), but for this particular paper, I am excited about piecing it together as I get to write about my favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice. I have high expectations for myself – I want to see if I can critically analyze Pride and Prejudice properly using Marxism as the critical lens through which I view the text. I have never written a research paper like this before, and I cannot wait to see how it turns out! Good luck, everyone!