Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

In this unit, students will explore the Victorian values through the character study in the novel. They will understand Janem Austen's neoclassiscal style of writing and her unique point of view of narration. Through the character study, students will understand the heroine's progessive behavior surpassing her era and social conventions. They will compare our contemporary society, its values and people with those from the Victorian era to draw their own conclusions whether our society has become more civil or less; or whether money & class still has the similar impact on people's decisions on marriage, etc. The novel's realistic portrayal of numerous female characters will serve as cases for gender study.

In this unit, we wil study in-depth the following skills: Style | Plot Analysis|Narrator Point of View | Symbolism, Allegory & Imagery |Setting |Genre| Tone | Theme | Diction |

Pacing Calendar:

Day #1Pre-Reading & Study Groups| Day #2 Character Study Project Base Group | Day #3 Character Study Project Character Group | Day # 4 Liteary elements Base Group | Day #5 Liteary elements Expert Group | Day #6 Theme Discussion ( Pride & Prejudice) | Day #7-8 Dramatize a Scene or Modernize a Scene(discussion and Rehearse | Day #9 Perform the Scene |Day #10Final Assessment(duing Vacation)|

Enduring Understanding- Students will understand that-

Essential Questions:

Students will be able to-

Students will know-

Informal Assessment: group discussion and presentations, dialectical journals , dramatic performance

Fomative Assessment: AP Style Essay #2; Open-ended Essay

04/04 Da y 1: Pre-Reading

Objectives: Students will become familar with the author, Jane Austen , her style and the significance of her novels.

Aim: Why does Jane Austen as a writer play such a significant role in our literary history?

Agenda-

Do Now: In your journal, write about your impression of Jane Austen as a writer. In what ways is she different or similar with other writers you know such as Joseph Conrad, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway or Shakespeare?

Acqusition: Read the following in formation -

Part I.

It is now almost exactly two centuries since the first two of Jane Austen's six completed novelsSense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudicewere published, and for much of that time writers and critics have passionately disagreed about the true caliber of her work. Austen's books received a few respectful reviews and lively attention from the reading public during her lifetime, but it wasn't until nearly thirty years after her death that some critics began to recognize her enduring artistic accomplishmentand others to debate it.

In 1843, the historian Thomas Macaulay called Austen the writer to "have approached nearest to the manner of the great master" Shakespeare; Charlotte Brontë felt, on the contrary, that "the Passions are perfectly unknown to her.... Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete, and rather insensible (not senseless) woman." Anthony Trollope made up his mind as a young man that "Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the language," while Mark Twain claimed to feel an "animal repugnance" for Austen's writing.

Austen herself would probably not have disagreed with many of her detractors' objections. She acknowledged that her themes and concerns were limited; she described them as "human nature in the midland counties." "Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on," she wrote in a letter to her niece; and in another, now famous letter to her brother Edward, she described her art as "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as to produce little effect, after much labour."

It is true that great historical events and political concerns appear only obliquely, if at all, in the background of Austen's stories; that she deals with the spiritual condition of the human soul only insofar as it manifests itself in her characters' manners and taste in spouses; that the intellectual issues of her day appear in her novels primarily as a vehicle for revealing character and spoofing fashion. Even Austen's great early champion, the critic G. H. Lewes, had to admit the truth of Charlotte Brontë's objection that Austen's style lacked poetry, and that her "exquisite" work would appeal only to readers who didn't require "strong lights and shadows." But in spite of these limitations, the particular genius and lasting appeal of Austen's writing has only become clearer and more certain as the decades pass and literary fashions come and go.

What is Austen's particular genius? And what might account for the renaissance of popular interest in her work todayone reflected in the recently acclaimed television and feature film productions of Sense and Sensibility (with an Oscar-winning screenplay by Emma Thompson), Pride and Prejudice (an A&E miniseries), the art house hit Persuasion, and the upcoming release of Emma, as well as the Emma-inspired Clueless, now atop video rental charts?

"Of all great writers," Virginia Woolf said, "she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness." But perhaps Austen herself gave us a clue to the standards for greatness she set herself, and a way to judge her achievement, when in Northanger Abbey she has a character say: "'Oh! it is only a novel!' or, in short, only some work in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusion of wit and humour are to be conveyed to the world in the best chosen language."

Austen's delightful wit is certainly one of the great pleasures of her work. As to "the best chosen language," while her writing conveys none of the lyricism of the Romantics (like Brontë) who would succeed her, it is full of intelligence and precisely crafted to convey its often subtle meaning. But Austen's strongest suit is her thorough knowledge and happy delineation of human nature. We can still, despite the vast differences between her society and our own, recognize ourselves in the ways her characters think and behave. We all know people as cleverly manipulative and outwardly affectionate as Lucy Steele or Miss Bingley; as self-involved as Fanny Dashwood or Lady Catherine de Bourgh; and as charming but as lacking in scruples as John Willoughby or Colonel Wickham. We are in turns impulsive and hyper-responsible like Marianne and Elinor Dashwood; conceal ourselves with arrogance like Mr. Darcy; assume we understand more than we do like Elizabeth Bennet; and revel in gossip, like Mrs. Jennings. And while the great events and philosophical movements of history play themselves out around us, it is our own nature and actions, and the nature and actions of the people around us, that most influence our lives.

In her own day, Austen's work signified a break with the Gothic and sentimental novels that had long been fashionable, in which heroines were always virtuous, romance was always sentimentalized, and unlikely but convenient coincidences and acts of God always occurred to bring about the dramatic climax. Instead Austen represented the ordinary world of men and women as itsometimes mundanelywas, a place where love and romance were constrained by economics and human imperfection; where women had distinct and often sparkling personalities; where characters were never simply good or evil but more complicated amalgams, reflecting both their own moral nature and the virtues and failings of the families and society that shaped them.

In these ways, Austen seems very much in tune with today's sensibilities. We love her strong, unpretentious heroines ("Pictures of perfection as you know make me sick & wicked," Austen said of them), who think for themselves and say what they mean when appropriate and don't take themselves too seriously. They are not, in today's parlance, victims. We are as interested as ever in Austen's favorite subjects of love and marriage, while also identifying with her steadfast refusal to romanticize romance; with her acknowledgment that money, class, and what other people think matter in the real world; that marriage does not result in a happy ending for everyone; and that it is dangerous to let passion blind us to reality. Living amidst the cultural fallout from the self-absorbed, sensibility-prone 1960s, we appreciate Austen's emphasis on reason, moderation, fidelity, and consideration for others.

Austen wrote her books at the dawn of the nineteenth century, when vast social changes were already encroaching on the way of life she so loved and rendered with such exquisite artistry. We read her books today on the cusp of a new century, with an unfathomable world creeping up on us, tooone globally interconnected, technologically complex, economically uncertain. Perhaps we find on Austen's rural estates and in her charming, insular society the same peace and pleasure she found there; and an analogue for the simpler, more circumscribed world of our own childhoods, itself passing quickly away into history.

The time in which Jane Austen wrote her novels was a period of great stability just about to give way to a time of unimagined changes. At that time most of England's population (some thirteen million) were involved in rural and agricultural work: yet within another twenty years, the majority of Englishmen became urban dwellers involved with industry, and the great railway age had begun. Throughout the early years of the century the cities were growing at a great rate; the network of canals was completed, the main roads were being remade. Regency London, in particular, boomed and became, among other things, a great centre of fashion. On the other hand, England in the first decade of the nineteenth century was still predominantly a land of country towns and villages, a land of rural routines which were scarcely touched by the seven campaigns of the Peninsular War against Napoleon.

But if Austen's age was still predominantly one of rural quiet, it was also the age of the French Revolution, the War of American Independence, the start of the Industrial Revolution, and the first generation of the Romantic poets; and Jane Austen was certainly not unaware of what was going on in the world around her. She had two brothers in the Royal Navy and a cousin whose husband was guillotined in the Terror. And although her favourite prose writer was Dr. Samuel Johnson, she clearly knew the works of writers like Goethe, Worsdworth, Scott, Byron, Southey, Godwin and other, very definitely nineteenth-century, authors.

If Jane Austen seems to have lived a life of placid rural seclusion in north Hampshire, she was at the same time very aware of a whole range of new energies and impulses, new ideas and powers, which were changing or about to change Englandand indeed the whole western worldwith a violence, a suddenness, and a heedlessness, which would soon make Jane Austen's world seem as remote as the Elizabethan Age. It is well to remember that in the early years of the century, when Thomas Arnold saw his first train tearing through the Rugby countryside he said: "Feudality is gone forever." So close was it possible then to feel to the immemorial, static feudal way of life; so quickly was that way of life to vanish as the modern world laboured to be born.

Pride and Prejudice has always been, since its publication in 1813, Austen's most popular novel. The story of a sparkling, irrepressible heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, the behavior of whose family leaves much to be desired, and Mr. Darcy, a very rich and seemingly rude young man who initially finds Elizabeth "tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me," is, in the words of the Penguin Classics edition editor Tony Tanner, a novel about how a man changes his manners and a woman changes her mind. Through the ages, its chief delights for readers have been its flawed but charming heroine ("I think [Elizabeth] as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print," Austen herself wrote to her sister, Cassandra); its humorous treatment of a serious subject; brilliant and witty dialogue laced with irony; a cast of humorous minor characters; and Austen's nearly magical development of a complex but believable love relationship between two complex people.

Critics have pointed to many ways in which Pride and Prejudice represents Austen's development and greater mastery of technique and artistry over Sense and Sensibility; perhaps the chief being that the conflict of the story is of the central characters' own making; and that a lively narrator more often appears to present material and to offer comment. (http://us.penguingroup.com/static/rguides/us/pride_and_prejudice.html)

Part II: About the Author Jane Austin ( refer to the Study guide)

Part III. Int roduction to Austen's Style

Clear, Witty, Sarcastic

In this dialogue-driven novel, wit and sarcasm predominate the text. Pride and Prejudice is often an exercise in reading between the lines, as Austen’s characters must almost always use polite language to mask their true intentions. (The greatest exception is, of course, when Elizabeth chews Darcy out after his proposal.)

Mr. Bennet’s response to his wife after she subjects him to a play-by-play of Mr. Bingley’s actions at the ball:

"If he had had any compassion for me," cried her husband impatiently, "he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of his partners. O that he had sprained his ankle in the first place!"

Mr. Bennet clearly doesn’t mean these things. What he’s really saying is that he wishes his wife would spare him the details.

The following snippet of conversation between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth takes place at the end of a long interrogation from Lady Catherine.

"‘Upon my word,’ said her ladyship, ‘you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?’

‘With three younger sisters grown up,’ replied Elizabeth, smiling, ‘your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.’

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence."

Meaning Making-

Discuss the following and explain whose side you take and why?

"In 1843, the historian Thomas Macaulay called Austen the writer to "have approached nearest to the manner of the great master" Shakespeare; Charlotte Brontë felt, on the contrary, that "the Passions are perfectly unknown to her.... Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete, and rather insensible (not senseless) woman." Anthony Trollope made up his mind as a young man that "Pride and Prejudice was the best novel in the language," while Mark Twain claimed to feel an "animal repugnance" for Austen's writing. "

Transfer: What's your personal connection to Jane Austen's writing or her characters?

Homework #1: Prepare for your character study and presentation in your base group. Bring in one page of your description and analysis of the chracter you have been assigned to study with references to specific pages in your book( mark the page numbers in your writing).

Although this is a group project, there is a great deal of individual responsibility for the work that will be submitted. Each group will submit the following items to me at the end of the group discussion.

· One outline from each member of the base group on the development or representation of his or her character.
· The notes from each member of the base group that were taken during research of the character and during the presentations in the character groups.

Day 2: Base Group Chracter Study

Objectives: Students will become familiar with four major characters in the novel, Elizabeth, Darcy, Lidia and Wickerham by sharing the prepared infomation in their base character group.

Aim: How do you chartacter Elizabeth, Darcy, Lidia and Wickerham respectivel? What's each character's individual significance in the novel?

Agenda-

Do Now: In your jounal, write a sentence or two to describe your personal opinion( based on the novel) about the preassigned character you will share with your base group members.

Acqusition: How to analyze a character?

1. What does Jane Austen try to convey to her readers through the character? How does she accomplish such a task( her purpose)?

2. Find three adjectives to describe your character and provide examples, supporting details and analysis for each characteristic description.

3. Make a personal statement about the character based on the nove. Support it with examples, supporting details and analysis.

Base Group - The class will be divided into groups of five students, and each student in the group will have a character for which he or she is responsible. The characters we will examine in this project are Darcy, Elizabeth, Lydia, and Wickham, Mrs. Bennet. Within each group, students may choose which characters they want to study, but there must be only one character per person, and all of the characters must be chosen. Remember that part of the grade from this project will be based on group cooperation, so groups should be judicious in how they choose to assign characters to individuals. Once the characters have been divided up, then each student will be responsible for researching the development or representation of his or her character . Then, after the character groups have met, students will return to their base groups. Each character will be presented within those groups, and outlines will be given to all group members so that they may use them to write their AP Essays.

Although this is a group project, there is a great deal of individual responsibility for the work that will be submitted. Each group will submit the following items to me at the end of the group discussion.

· One outline from each member of the base group on the development or representation of his or her character.
· The notes from each member of the base group that were taken during research of the character and during the presentations in the character groups.

Meaning Making-

Transfer- How has the based group discussin deepen your understanding of the character?

HW#2 Use the notes from your group discussion to revise your character analysis.

04/06/2011 Day 3 Expert Group Character Study

Objective: Students will gain a deeper understanding of characterization in Pride and Prejudice through close reading and group interaction.

Aim: How to present your character so the class will gain in depth knowledge of her/him?

Agenda-

Do Now: In your notebook, take a minute to jot down three points about your character you will bring to your expert group.

Acqusition: Character Expert Group - The class will re-divide into character groups. In other words, the students who are studying Darcy will form a group, and the students who are studying Liz will form a group, etc. There will be four groups overall. The purpose of the character groups is to allow an opportunity for the students who are studying a particular character to compare notes and gain a clear understanding of that character's development or representation in the novel. It is very important that each student within a character group pays close attention, because he or she will be responsible for presenting that character to his or her base group. Also, each person within the character group must present to that group on his or her research of the character for a minimum of three minutes.

1. Use the previous lesson to help you decide on the contents-

How to analyze a character?

2. How to present the character to the class?

Meaning Making

Each expert group creates a poster board and present its character.

HW#3 Prepare for your literary element study and presentation in your base group. Bring in one page of your description and analysis of the literary elemtn you have been assigned to study with references to specific pages in your book( mark the page numbers in your writing).

Although this is a group project, there is a great deal of individual responsibility for the work that will be submitted. Each group will submit the following items to me at the end of the group discussion.

· One outline from each member of the base group on the development or representation of his or her literary element.
· The notes from each member of the base group that were taken during research of the character and during the presentations in the literary element groups.

Day 4 Base Group Discussion- Literary elements

Objective: Students will understand how Jane Austen uses literary elements to reveals her thorough knowledge and happpy delineation of human nature

Aim: How does Jane Austen represent the ordinary world of men and women as itsometimes mundanely, a place where love and romance were constrained by economics and human imperfection?

Agenda-

Do Now: In your journal, respond to one of the following statement. Explain what it means and how it's represented in the novel.

Acqusition: How to analyze the literary elements?

A. Make a personal statement about how Austen uses the literary element to contribute to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Provide three examples to show how that effect is achieved through the use of literary elements.

B. The British novelist Fay Weldon offers this observation about happy endings. "The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from their readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By a happy ending, I do not mean mere fortunate events -- a marriage or a last minute rescue from death -- but some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation, even with the self, even at death." How doe Pride and Prejudice have the kind of ending Weldon describes? How are elements used to create such an ending?

C. Use a literary element to analyze that "Jane Austen is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness".

Meaning-Making

1. Members of the base group gather and each member presents your examples and analysis of the assigned literary elements. The rest of the group take notes and share insights.

2. Base Groups-

Transfer: What new insights have you gained from your base group discussion?

HW#3 Look for one specific example and its purpose/ effect for each of the literary elements you discuss. Bring in your prepared work to share with your expert group tomorrow.

Day 5 Literary Element Expert Group

Objective: Students will share literary element analysis with the members in the expert group and gain in-depth understanding of the literary concepts.

Aim: How does Jane Austen use various literary elements to serve her purpose?

Agenda-

Acqusition: How to present your insights and analysis of the literary elements with the class?

  1. Pick out one aspect from the following three to make your presentation.
  2. Use specific examples and details to support and illustrate your points.( state the page numbers for your references).
  3. Discuss the effectiveness of each assigned literary element connecting to the overal meaning of the work.
  4. Jot down on the posterboard the following-

How to analyze the literary elements?

A. Make a personal statement about how Austen uses the literary element to contribute to the effectiveness of the work as a whole. Provide three examples to show how that effect is achieved through the use of literary elements.

B. The British novelist Fay Weldon offers this observation about happy endings. "The writers, I do believe, who get the best and most lasting response from their readers are the writers who offer a happy ending through moral development. By a happy ending, I do not mean mere fortunate events -- a marriage or a last minute rescue from death -- but some kind of spiritual reassessment or moral reconciliation, even with the self, even at death." How doe Pride and Prejudice have the kind of ending Weldon describes? How are elements used to create such an ending?

C. Use a literary element to analyze that "Jane Austen is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness".

Meaning Making-

  1. Share your ideas for 10 minutes and prepare for your group presentation.
  2. Create a posterboard for your presentation
  3. Expert groups' resentation (4 minutes).
  4. Turn in individual work of preparation for your group presentation.

Transfer: How do the group presentations strengthen your views on Jane Austen's seamless craftsmanship as a writer?

Homework#4: Prepare for base group theme discussion.

Day 6 : Theme Discussion

Objectives: Students will generate various themes based on characterization, setting, symbolism and conflict.

Aim: What kind of messages are conveyed to the reader by Jane Austen in her novel Pride and Prejudice?

Agenda-

Do Now: Based on the assigned character and literary elements you have studied, generate two statements based on each element of your study.

Acqusition: Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Themes can be inferred through various ways. We can learn from characters, conflicts, setting , irony or symbolism .

All literary elements are used to contribute to the overall meaning of the text. In this case, themes are integrated in every part of the novel. In order to discuss a theme, we must comb through all the relevant details in the book so our theme statements can be overall controlling and permeating.

For example, - (the following notes are taken from http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pride/themes.html )

Meaning Making-

Meet in your expert groups and generate thematic statements based on the assigned character and literary elements of your study. Make sure you have the examples and details to support your statements.

Transfer- How does this discussion help you undertstand how your character can create your own story and become embedded with a "theme"?

HW# 6 Pick one theme your group has generated and illustrated with at least three examples from the novel to illustrate.

Day 7-8 Perform a Scene or Modernize a Scene

Objectives: This project has two main objectives. First, by translating language from Austen's Pride and Prejudice into contemporary English, students will better understand the original language and its structure. Second, students will be given the opportunity to express creatively what they have learned throughout this unit about language and how it can affect characterization and meaning in a novel.

Details: For this project, students will work in groups to select a "scene" from Pride and Prejudice and translate it into contemporary English. The length of the scene to be translated is optional, but the translation itself must be at least three pages long (12 pt. font, double spaced). This does not have to be a word for word translation of Pride and Prejudice, but each group will need to be prepared to account for anything that is either omitted from or added to what is described in the original text. Aside from the language itself, students will be expected to "modernize" other aspects of the text such as scenery, clothing, etc. The work done by each group will be presented to the class and students will have three options for how they want to present that work.

Option 1 - Each group may submit a 3- to 5-page analysis of the translation project. The analysis should be extensive and should include explanations of the group's diction, syntax, character development ,choices of scenery and costumes, etc.

Option 2 - As a second option, each group may choose to perform its scene for the class as if it were part of a play. Those groups that choose this option should include brief narrations at the beginning of their translations that explain the choices that were made regarding dialogue, scenery, costumes, and stage directions.

Day 9: Assesment-AP Essay Type #2 Excerpt plus your group essay. Your essay needs to specifically focus on how diction, syntax and one other element of your choice contribute to the meaning of the excerpt you have selected to analyze. For example, Austen’s characters must almost always use polite language to mask their true intentions. Other example are as follows-

Pride and Prejudice Writing Style

Clear, Witty, Sarcastic

In this dialogue-driven novel, wit and sarcasm predominate the text. Pride and Prejudice is often an exercise in reading between the lines, as Austen’s characters must almost always use polite language to mask their true intentions. (The greatest exception is, of course, when Elizabeth chews Darcy out after his proposal.)

We’ll offer two examples up for you.

Mr. Bennet’s response to his wife after she subjects him to a play-by-play of Mr. Bingley’s actions at the ball:

"If he had had any compassion for me," cried her husband impatiently, "he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of his partners. O that he had sprained his ankle in the first place!"

Mr. Bennet clearly doesn’t mean these things. What he’s really saying is that he wishes his wife would spare him the details.

The following snippet of conversation between Lady Catherine and Elizabeth takes place at the end of a long interrogation from Lady Catherine.

"‘Upon my word,’ said her ladyship, ‘you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?’

‘With three younger sisters grown up,’ replied Elizabeth, smiling, ‘your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.’

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence."

See what we mean? Elizabeth dodges Lady Catherine’s question, but does so in the politest way possible. We call it…polite resistance, and it requires a great deal of quick thinking.

Quoted from http://www.shmoop.com/pride-and-prejudice/writing-style.html