Austen, Brontë, Eliot

Debate Questions

Pride and Prejudice

Please decide whether you agree or disagree with the following statements and be prepared to defend your position.

• Pride and Prejudice supports Dr. John Gregory’s contention that women should curtail their wit, keep their intelligence a secret, and, in general, cultivate an agreeable, external personality before society.

• Pride and Prejudice argues that both men and women should behave with propriety at all times.

• Pride and Prejudice endorses a paternalistic relationship between the sexes in which men are the dominant sex.

• Pride and Prejudice argues that love should be rational and marriage based on practical considerations.

• Pride in the novel is always a negative characteristic.

• Prejudice in the novel is always a negative characteristic.

• There is little or nothing in the novel to place Austen at the head of female literary tradition.