The Regency Period saw a great many events that changed and impacted England forever but Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which was first published in 1813, remains one of the more descriptive texts in which the rigid social structure and conventions of the middle-upper class in Regency England is clearly displayed through the actions and features of characters. The world created by Austen in Pride and Prejudice is a narrow one and focuses on distinctive class realism but it reflects the world in which Austen knew best being the daughter of a clergymen and having lived a relatively privileged middle-class life. Austen was considered to have a more modernized mind than many other females of her time and in Pride and Prejudice, her exploration on the oppression and limitation of self-protection and financial security of women highlights some of her own personal experiences. It is through her novel that gender expectation of both sexes is conveyed to have been directly pressured into convention by their individual social status and/or the desire to achieve high socially.
The definition of middle-upper class was wealth and powerful family connections. With these social tools, one was automatically accepted in the fold of the elite and had the privilege of being self-righteous. This is clearly displayed in Pride and Prejudice through the construction of Lady Deburg and Mr Darcy although it must be pointed out that Lady Deburg’s “rude” pride stands to contrast with Mr Darcy’s pride is reasoned that “I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice though not in principle…the only son I was spoilt by my parents…allowed, encouraged, almost taught to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world…”. This part of a speech by Mr Darcy to Elizabeth functions to allow readers to understand why upper-class is so prideful. This also works to construct the concept that the lower “inferior” classes...