'1the Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet\r'

'The vexation of Elizabeth white avens And Mr. Darcy Susan Fraiman in her essay â€Å"The Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet” argues that Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of Jane Austens young Pride and disfavour, is disempowered when she marries Fitz ordainiam Darcy who succeeds Mr. Bennet as controlling literary paradigm. Fraiman claims that Elizabeth is a surrogate-son to her father detain inside her female body during an age when sexual activity roles were rigorously fixed.Judith Butler in her essay of 1990 c every(prenominal)ed â€Å"Performative Acts and sexual practice Constitution: An Essay in Pheno handsology and Feminist Theory, â€Å"states that accomplish ones sex wrong initiates a set of punishments twain unequivocal and indirect. Through the contri only ifion of Butlers theory, this essay aims to ground up that it is not only, as Fraiman claims, Elizabeth Bennet who is punished by corporation for playing her sexual practice wrong, save witha l Mr. Darcy. In respect to convention, Mister Darcy performs his gender wrong as well as he goes by a powder-puff name and is often passive, â€Å"unsocial” and â€Å" silent” as Elizabeth puts it.He admits: â€Å"I certainly commit not the talent which some people possess of conversing substanti totallyy with those I have never seen beforehand” He admits to Elizabeth at the very that he was embarrassed when she asks him why he was â€Å"so shy of [her]”. It must be considered then that Darcy does not want to â€Å"humiliate? Elizabeth with his â€Å" encompassing power” of a â€Å"paternalistic noble” but is rather humiliated by it himself. after all he has many â€Å"feminine” characteristics: He waits to be approached; he prefers listening to talking; e is assailable rather than aggressive; he is anxious slightly his reputation and judges people correspond to their address; he is the person his friends come to for advice, and he writes earn instead of personally confronting people. To perform ones gender right, as Judith Butler asserts in â€Å"Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” spuriouss to perform ones gender in accordance with historical and heathenish sanctions that change everyplace time. Butlers essay deconstructs societys belief that gender is a fixed natural given.She questions if and how we exist before societal ideologys imposition by observing gender in a phenomenological way and finds that gender is of all time performed, but the performance varies according to time period. What does not vary, however, is societys punishment of people who dont perform their gender according to the current convention. Elizabeth Bennet has aligned herself with her father and his male, supreme perspective. Mr. Bennet bequeaths [to Elizabeth] his ironic distance from the world, the habit of examine and appraising those around him, the role of social critic.Therefore Lizzie is slight a d aughter than a surrogate son, who by giving up the mother and giving in to the father, reaps the spoils of maleness. In regards to society, however, Lizzies male independence is dangerous. She does not answer like a gentlewoman of her time who was anticipate to draw and do needlework indoors magic spell waiting for a suitor to whisk her aside to the altar. Ex. *The haughty Bingley babys immediately declare her behavior ill-matched: â€Å"To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! What could she mean by it?It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a intimately country-town indifference to decorum” (Austen 25). *When Mr. Collins proposes to Lizzie, she doesnt employ â€Å"the mutual practice of elegant females, but declines his offer as a â€Å"rational creature speaking the honor from her heart” (Austen 75). go Lizzies decision to refuse the zany Mr. Collin s is expertified, it is nonetheless precarious in her situation. If she and her sister Jane hadnt married Darcy and Bingley respectively, which can be regarded as the exceptions to the rule, they would have lost their parents? ntailed house to Mr. Collins. Lizzie, within Regency England society, is performing her gender „wrong? by not accepting a promising proposal. Instead, she displays typically male behavior: â€Å"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Darcy, by coming in all this state to hear me? But I will not be alarmed though your sister does play so well. There is a self-will about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage ever so rises with every attempt to intimidate me” (Austen 115). Obstinacy and shamelessness are not socially scripted feminine qualities. Lizzie turns down Mr.Darcys proposal in an equally cocksure manner: â€Å"Every time Darcy opens his mouth, he is superseded by a speech of greater length and fierceness;â₠¬Â â€Å"Her language, her feelings, her judgments overwhelm his” (Fraiman 361). Elizabeth here not only matches Darcy in intellect, she tops him. Many of her characteristics would be highly-regarded in a man, but not in a woman. While earn-communication was common practice in Regency England for both women and men alike, the letter Mr. Darcy writes to Elizabeth is not a regular equipoise letter, but a letter that deals with his strong emotions in a very feminine fashion.In his need to vindicate himself for Elizabeths accusations, he bares his soul in such(prenominal)(prenominal) a forthcoming, dignified, and eloquent manner as only a womans love letter would be expected to accomplish. His letter is so well-composed that he likely dedicated hours of drafts to it. Austen emphasizes the uniqueness of Darcys letter by putting male letter-writing into perspective. Charles Bindleys letter are described as chaotic, correspondence-related and short: â€Å"Charles writes in the most careless way imaginable.He leaves out one-half his words, and blots the rest,” claims his sister Caroline (Austen 33). Meanwhile, she employs feminine terms to get Mr. Darcys writing: â€Å"do you invariably write such charming long letters” (Austen 32-3). The boyish Elizabeth, in contrast, writes two letters in Pride and Prejudice: both are addressed to Mrs. Gardiner and are saucer-eyed correspondence letters. Mr. Darcys letter thitherfore is less of a hostile pullulateover of auctorial power, as Fraiman calls it (â€Å"her authorial powers wane”), but rather his only mean of expressing himself to Elizabeth (Fraiman 377).He is not a â€Å"controlling literary figure” (Fraiman 383) that replaces Elizabeths father, but someone who takes a great hazard by revealing sensitive personal expound which could be used to destroy him socially to a woman who has just refused him as a husband. In a very feminine way, Mr. Darcy gives Elizabeth power over hi s familys reputation and himself. Darcys behavior so far has, as Butler puts it, â€Å"initiate[d] a set of punishments both obvious and indirect” (Butler 279). Elizabeth especially, as a member of her society, misreads him repeatedly and therefore indirectly disempowers him because he cannot make himself comprehend by her.Mr. Darcys passive feminine side is loosely misread by society as pride, which shows that to perform ones gender „wrong? results in punishment. Darcy doesnt court Elizabeth in the way she and society expect; therefore he, just as frequently as Lizzie, suffers â€Å"a press release of clout” (Fraiman 377). The gender-performance that is expected of Elizabeth and Darcy by society runs profane swearing to their real one and they realize toward the end of the novel that they have to succumb to societys gender-script if they want to be together.As Susan Fraiman argues, Elizabeth, as a woman, has to relinquish some of her power: â€Å"Elizabeth marries a decent man and a large estate, but at a certain cost;” â€Å"Darcy disempowers Elizabeth if only because of the positions they each occupy in the social lineation: because he is a man and she is a married woman” (Fraiman 384). The cost is her compromise, but Darcy has to make it as well; the cost might even be a gain if Darcy respects Elizabeth as a wife, and there is no evidence in the novel that he won? t. Conclusion: Fraimans blame of Mr.Darcy disempowering Elizabeth is misdirected in that she reads him solo as a man, not as a person who has as much trouble performing his gender right as does Lizzie. Darcy has to give up passive observing and letter-writing in favor of action, such as saving the damsel in distress Lydia. Fraimans critique of Elizabeth marrying Darcy also does not invoke downrightness as a liberating alternative, in which case Lizzie would lack even more power. The novel rather reveals the limits of everyone’s personal autonomy i n a society where gender roles are fixed.Mr. Darcy never sought to take Elizabeths power or independence away-quite the opposite- they caused his falling in love with her. If Elizabeth is disempowered after her marriage, the blame must be directed at Regency society, not Mr. Darcy; marriage itself is always a compromise, after all. Mr. Darcy, just as much as Elizabeth, sacrifices a great deal of his original individuality by aligning his gender-performance with Regency societys convention. But, as Lizzie says: â€Å"We do not suffer by accident. ”\r\n'