Pride & Prejudice: Overview (AQA GCSE English Literature): Revision Note

Pride and Prejudice: Overview

The Pride and Prejudice question is part of Paper 1, Section B of your GCSE. For this, you are required to write one essay-length answer to one set question. This can seem daunting at first, but this page contains some helpful information and links to more detailed revision note pages that will enable you to aim for the highest grade. This page includes:

• Who was Jane Austen?

• A summary of Pride and Prejudice

• A brief overview of what is required in the exam

• Pride and Prejudice characters

• Pride and Prejudice context

• Pride and Prejudice themes

• Pride and Prejudice quotes

• Top tips for the highest grade

Who was Jane Austen?

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose six completed novels are among the most widely read works in English literature. She was born in the village of Steventon in Hampshire on 16 December 1775, the seventh of eight children of a country clergyman, and died in Winchester on 18 July 1817 at the age of forty-one.

Austen wrote an early version of Pride and Prejudice, then called First Impressions, in 1796–97, when she was in her early twenties. It was rejected by a publisher and revised over many years before appearing in 1813. Like her other novels, it was published anonymously: the title page credited only “the author of Sense and Sensibility”.

Austen is best known for her sharp, ironic writing about the English gentry, a small social world in which money, land and marriage decided almost everything. She never married. She wrote about women whose futures depended entirely on who they married, and that gives her comedy a hard edge. Austen’s irony is one of her most important techniques, so it is worth studying closely: for more on how she uses tone, narrative voice and style, see the Pride & Prejudice: Writer’s Methods and Techniques page.

Pride and Prejudice summary

Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners written by Jane Austen, published in 1813 but written earlier, in 1796–97. It is set in the fictional village of Meryton in early 19th-century England and follows the Bennet family, and in particular Elizabeth, the second eldest of five daughters.

The news that a wealthy bachelor, Mr Bingley, has rented nearby Netherfield Park sets the plot in motion. At a ball, Bingley and Elizabeth’s sister Jane are immediately drawn to each other, while Bingley’s friend Mr Darcy refuses to dance with Elizabeth and publicly snubs her. Elizabeth decides he is arrogant and proud; Darcy, to his own surprise, finds himself increasingly attracted to her.

Elizabeth’s dislike hardens when she meets the charming officer Mr Wickham, who tells her Darcy cheated him out of his inheritance. Meanwhile the Bennets’ cousin Mr Collins, who will inherit their estate, proposes to Elizabeth and is refused, and marries her friend Charlotte Lucas instead.

Visiting Charlotte the following spring, Elizabeth meets Collins’ patron Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who is Darcy’s aunt. Darcy proposes and is rejected, then gives Elizabeth a letter explaining the truth about Wickham. Forced to reconsider both men, Elizabeth begins to recognise her own prejudice.

When Wickham elopes with Elizabeth’s youngest sister Lydia, Darcy quietly pays to arrange their marriage and save the family’s reputation. Bingley returns and proposes to Jane. Lady Catherine tries and fails to force Elizabeth to refuse Darcy, and Darcy proposes a second time. Elizabeth accepts.

For a more detailed summary, please see the Pride & Prejudice: Plot Summary page.

How is Pride and Prejudice assessed in the exam?

• Your GCSE Paper 1 requires you to answer two questions in 1hr 45min. That means you have approximately 52 minutes to plan, write and check your Pride and Prejudice essay

• Paper 1 is worth 64 marks and accounts for 40% of your overall GCSE grade

• The Pride and Prejudice essay is worth 30 marks in total — unlike the Shakespeare question, there are no AO4 marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in this section

• The Pride and Prejudice question is in Section B of Paper 1 and you are required to answer the one available question on the novel

• Your question will also include a printed extract of about 35 lines from the novel

• It is a closed-book exam, which means you will not have access to a copy of the text (other than the printed extract) in your exam

• The question will require you to analyse and write in detail about an aspect of Pride and Prejudice

• Your answer will need to address both the extract from the novel that you will be given, and the novel as a whole

For a much more detailed guide on answering the Pride and Prejudice question, please see our revision notes on How to Answer the 19th-Century Novel Essay Question.

Pride and Prejudice characters

The characters you should focus on when revising Pride and Prejudice are:

• Elizabeth Bennet

• Mr Darcy

• Jane Bennet

• Mr Bingley

• Mr Wickham

• Lady Catherine de Bourgh

When considering Pride and Prejudice or any other text, it is crucial to remember that characters are intentionally crafted by the writer to serve a specific purpose. In many cases, these characters embody certain concepts or beliefs, and the writer, such as Austen, uses them to reflect on and examine these ideas. For more details, please see the Pride & Prejudice: Characters page.

Pride and Prejudice context

Understanding what context actually is can be tricky at GCSE. Examiners understand context not as historical information or biographical facts about a writer, but as the ideas and perspectives explored by a writer through their text. Therefore, the Pride and Prejudice context you should explore in your essay response is not information about Regency England, or facts about Jane Austen’s life, but ideas about:

• Gender

• Social class

• Realism in 19th-century novels

Lots of these ideas and perspectives are universal, so your own opinions of them are valid and will be rewarded in an exam. For a detailed breakdown of the contextual topics listed above, see the Pride & Prejudice: Context page.

Pride and Prejudice themes

Understanding the themes that Austen explores in Pride and Prejudice is one of the best approaches any student can take when revising the novel. This is because to get the highest mark on your exam, you need to take what examiners call a “conceptualised approach”: a detailed and perceptive exploration of Austen’s ideas and intentions. The main themes explored by Austen in Pride and Prejudice are:

• Love and marriage

• Social class

• Gender roles

Austen explores numerous other themes in Pride and Prejudice beyond those mentioned above and you are encouraged to examine these themes as well. However, the above list makes a great place to start and detailed breakdowns of each of these themes can be found on the Pride & Prejudice: Themes page.

Pride and Prejudice quotes

Although you are given credit for including quotations from Pride and Prejudice in your answer, it is not a requirement of the exam. In fact, examiners say that “references” to the rest of the novel are just as valid as direct quotations: this is when students pinpoint individual moments in the novel, rather than quoting what the characters say. In order to select references really successfully, it is extremely important that you know the novel itself very well, including the order of the events that take place. This detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the plot will help you to revise the chronology of Pride and Prejudice.

However, it can also be useful to revise a few — very well selected — quotations from the novel that can be used in a variety of essays on different themes and characters. Luckily, we have made that selection for you! For a detailed analysis of each of these quotations, see the Pride & Prejudice: Key Quotations page. If you are revising a particular character, the Pride & Prejudice: Character Quotations page groups the most useful quotations by character.

Top tips for the highest grade

Please see our revision pages on the 19th-century novel exam for guides on:

• Structuring the Pride and Prejudice essay

• Pride and Prejudice methods and techniques

• How to include context in the Pride and Prejudice essay

• Understanding the Pride and Prejudice mark scheme

• A 19th-century novel model answer

Sources

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classics.