This week we will begin to work on the argument driven essay that is required for this class.
Focus on Pride and Prejudice and Bridget Jones’s Diary. It must draw on the article and book chapter that we read last week.
The essay must be between 1500 and 1750 words and be formatted correctly according to MLA format. It must include in-text citations and a works cited at the end.
The works cited will need to include both novels, Harzewski’s book, and Harrison’s article.
Essays will need to provide close readings of specific passages in each novel and exact references to Harrison’s and Harzewski’s works.
Choose from the following two topics:
Topic One
Compare and contrast the ways that Bridget Jones’s Diary and Pride and Prejudice can be considered as bildungsromans. Note the Harzewski suggests that BJD is an ironic bildungsroman. You may agree with her, but you do not have to.
You can set forth a different interpretation. In order to bring in Harrison, you might consider how the marriage plot relates to the bildungsroman.
Be sure to address each aspect of the definition of bildungsroman as defined on the Victorian Web: (Links to an external site.)
A Bildungsroman is, most generally, the story of a single individual’s growth and development within the context of a defined social order. The growth process, at its roots a quest story, has been described as both “an apprenticeship to life” and a “search for meaningful existence within society.”
To spur the hero or heroine on to their journey, some form of loss or discontent must jar them at an early stage away from the home or family setting.
The process of maturity is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the protagonist’s needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order.
Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society.
The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself and his new place in that society.
These aspects should be addressed for each of the two novels.
Be sure to answer the following questions:
What exactly is the quest of each protagonist?
What is the source of discontent that “jars [each protagonist] away from the home or family setting”?
How do the protagonists’s journeys of growth bring their “needs and desires” in conflict with the “views and judgements” of “an unbending social order”?
In what way do the protagonist come to embrace the social order and find their place in society?
How does the protagonist assess herself and her new place in society at the and of each novel?
To what extent is each novel a serious bildungsroman? to what extent can the marriage plot or chick lit serve as female bildungsromans?
Of course if one or both of the novels fail to meet one of these requirements, one can write about that too.
Topic Two
In what ways do courtship novels exhibiting the marriage plot, like Pride and Prejudice, serve as the basis for the chick lit genre of the 1990s like Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Basing your essay on these two novels and on the works by Harrison and Harzewski, discuss the ways that that these genres overlap and deviate from one another as they play out in the plots of these novels.
Be sure to address all aspects of the chick lit genre and marriage plot listed below.
You may conclude the essay with a short discussion of the extent these genres remain relevant today.
Chick Lit (Harzewski 62-63)
Single female with career
Confessional in style–such as a diary
Urban family
ineptitude in the kitchen–protagonist spends more time on appearance that domestic management
emphasis on the quotidien (every day ordinary details of life)
protagonist revels in consumption of fashion but not solitary or self-driven, instead prefers camaraderie
Marriage Plot (Harrison 113)
focus on courtship of heroine and hero
emphasize the female perspective
“conflicts, misunderstandings, and tension” threaten the relationship
The couple overcomes the obstacles, profess their love for one another and marry–presumable to live happily ever after.
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