Newest Literature Essays

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen creates her protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, to be a strikingly unconventional female with respect to her time. Elizabeth tends to relate less to her female companions, and instead needs to define herself by her...

Place: The particular portion of space occupied by or allocated to a person or thing.

It is interesting to observe Dictionary.com's definition of the word "place" in relation to "person". Especially when it comes to Pride and Prejudice, where...

While the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen does not openly display Marx's idea of the oppressed and the oppressor, it does clearly demonstrate Marx's ideas of society as a history of class struggle. Austen portrays class divisions and...

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" (Austen 1). From the first, very famous sentence of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen introduces to her readers a satirical view...

Two English literary works, one a comedy and the other a tragedy, by two different authors of separate centuries, both have their fair share of characters who illustrate the admirable and the not-so-admirable of dispositions. Jane Austen's...

The world of Pride and Prejudice revolved around the relationships between its men and women. Austen made this theme obvious from the opening sentence. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune,...

The concept of "design" and calculation plays a prominent role in Pride and Prejudice. Design is used as an indicator of values, particularly in marriage, and presents the characters with a challenge in balancing scheming and morality in its use....

In the society described in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, money was as much a social currency as it was a means of exchange for goods and services. Money was often commensurate with social rank, yet there was a feeling against parvenus who...

In the novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, she displays a stark contrast between two characters in the story. Austen does so by discussing the theme of pride throughout the novel. The concept of pride can be defined in two ways: positive and...

"And they lived happily ever after." This picturesque phrase can hardly be described as a typical ending to a Flannery O'Connor work. In a 'standard' O'Connor piece, one can expect to find several allusions to religion, sardonic situations, and...

In his masterpiece, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens strengthens his theme of paired opposites by juxtaposing the characters of Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay. Initially, it seems as though Carton and Darnay are completely bipolar. While...

The storming of the Bastille, the death carts with their doomed human cargo, the swift drop of the guillotine blade - this is the French Revolution that Charles Dickens vividly captures in his famous novel, A Tale of Two Cities. With dramatic...

The chaotic and churning society of the eighteenth century is well-depicted in Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities. As France goes through its intense revolution, England remains in its peaceful state. Dickens compares the two countries and their...

In both the tragedies of King Lear and Othello, the plot is affected by one character's malicious actions, which exacerbate any tensions that are already inherent in the relationships between the characters. Iago in Othello and Edmund in King Lear...

The literary compositions of Edgar Allan Poe, especially his short stories of terror based on supernatural or psychological manifestations, continue to be highly praised by a select group of readers who relish the dark, nightmarish worlds of human...

A child has the ability to make the most critical and objective observation on society and the behavior of man. How is this possible? A child has yet to mature and lacks proper education and experience. However, it is for this very reason that a...

Rosalind's literal significance in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" is grounded in her motivation in acting as Ganymede, for it is her sole perspective that elucidates the reader of the biases of society's gender roles. The necessity for Rosalind to...

"American literature is male. To read the canon of what is currently considered classic American literature is perforce to identify as male; Our literature neither leaves women alone nor allows them to participate." Judith Fetterley (Walker, 171)

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In the play, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello presents a humanistic worldview. The assertion is made repeatedly that we, as humans, can define who we are, that our actions dictate our character. This view is presented in two...

Though Salman RushdieÃÂÂs MidnightÃÂÂs Children if full of comic details and humorous anecdotes of Saleem SinaiÃÂÂs family history, the overall tone of the novel is in sharp contrast. Destruction and deception pervade much of the novel, and in the...

One of the tragedies in The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is that Lily Bart is unable to marry Laurence Selden and thereby secure a safe position in society. Their relationship fluctuates from casual intimacy to outright love depending on how...

Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a bleak book. Its characters are a collection of victims and victimizers, each pitiable or damnable. Of this sorrowful lot, perhaps the most tragic individual is Louisa Gradgrind. Ingrained since childhood with...

According to the conventional plot formula, the forces of good are clearly arrayed against the forces of evil. Good and evil fight; good eventually triumphs. In Hamlet, William Shakespeare created an excellent cast of distasteful characters. The...

Often put off as a writer of supremely masculine literature, Earnest Hemingway has earned a top position in the literary canon of the modernist era. As a master of provocative understatement, Hemingway developed his reputation for addressing...