Hello, I’m Antonia Carey. I’m a double major in English and Theatre Arts with a Performance concentration. I’ve never pinpointed a single favorite author, but some of my favorites are Mary Shelley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Christopher Marlowe, Sandra Cisneros, Hemingway, and Oscar Wilde.
Pride and Prejudice seems to be responding to Fordyce’s Sermons by emphasizing the individual over a ubiquitous image of “the female.” Where Fordyce is writing to women on how to be marriageable, Austen is writing about the effect that this constant pressure to be marriageable is affecting each of the women in the Bennet household. The most obviously affected by this idea of womanhood that Fordyce presents is Mary, whom we know is reader of “moral philosophy” (70). Mary does not show any signs of excessive wit or study of “frivolous arts” that Fordyce warns against (395). Yet, in Fordyce’s eyes, she still transgresses against her sex. He writes in “On Female Virtue, Friendship, and Conversation” that “Dulness [sic] and insipidity, moroseness and rigour, are dead weights on every kind of social intercourse” (397). Mary appears to have these in spades, as she is constantly taking the moral high ground and demeaning anything that she finds to be frivolous. It’s noted that when the Bennet sisters go into Meryton, accompanied by Mr. Collins, that “every sister except Mary agreed to go” (105). Fordyce also mentions women learning the difference “between an obliging study to please,” which he finds to be a good quality among women, and “an indecent desire to put themselves forward,” which is something women should avoid displaying. Mary transgresses here as well. It is stated plainly in chapter VI that Mary who, due to not being pretty like her sisters, “worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.” At this event, Mary does play a long concerto, but makes up for it with “Scotch and Irish airs” (62-63). Her behavior at the Netherfield ball is not quite as felicitous. She is imposing on the party, so much so that Elizabeth subtly entreats their father to stop her (132). Mary, by trying too hard to be the woman that she is expected to be, becomes one of the women that Fordyce denounces.
James Fordyce
Introductions and Sermons
Hello everyone! My name is Rachel and I am a senior English major at SUNY New Paltz. My favorite novelist/short story writer is Franz Kafka although recently I’ve been getting into some of Roberto Bolaño’s novels as well as Carlos Fuentes’. Among my favorite poets are Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, Pablo Neruda, and T.S. Eliot. I like to read in Spanish as well as English.
Before I dive into the text of Pride and Prejudice and how it responds to James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women, I just want to point the irony in the section titled “On the Importance of the Female Sex.” Fordyce seems to lament that women in society are more highly scrutinized than men when he writes “The world, I know not how, overlooks in our sex a thousand irregularities, which it never forgives in yours; so that the honor and peace of a family are, in this view, much more dependent on the conduct of daughters than of sons…” (394). However he has written two volumes worth of sermons telling young women how to conduct themselves and behave in society, only adding to the scrutiny. I thought also there is much irony in the way he claims that women have so much influence over men because of their sexuality and therefore should act in certain ways. It is incredibly sexist to want to control women’s behavior just because their sexuality, according to Fordyce, impacts men so much.
Elizabeth Bennet’s conduct in Pride and Prejudice completely undermines what Fordyce expects about how young women should act. Fordyce advises that women refrain from exercising wit and instead aim for piety. For Fordyce, wit is something already to be frowned upon but it is “especially […] dreaded in women” (400). Elizabeth on the other hand does not act very pious at all, in fact religion is scarcely mentioned except for when it is said that everyone attended church services. Elizabeth engages in witty banter with Mr. Darcy and she is also highly sarcastic. When in the company of Miss Bingley and Mr. Darcy one evening at Netherfield she makes sarcastic remarks makes fun of Darcy right to his face. She says to Miss Bingley, “Mr. Darcy is not to be laughed at!” (92) and continues “That is an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would be a great loss to me to have many such acquaintance. I dearly love a laugh” (92). She sarcastically says straight to Darcy “Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies do divert me, I own and I laugh at them whenever I can.– But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without” (92). Despite her mocking him, Darcy seems to enjoy their conversation and they continue back and forth, much to Miss Bingley’s dismay. Fordyce advises women to speak with grace and to never be rude. And yet while Elizabeth is mocking Darcy, they both are enjoying themselves. It is evident in Pride and Prejudice that wit does not make for dreadful women, it makes for fun and interesting conversation, fun and interesting women.
Fordyce: Proud and Mostly Prejudice
Hi, I’m Joe Curra. I’m an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. My favorite author has always been a never ending mystery, even to myself. Hemingway and Vonnegut are easily two of my favorites, but ever since reading Nathaniel West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, I’m usually compelled to mention him. West isn’t nearly as prolific as Hemingway or Vonnegut, but Miss Lonelyhearts felt like something truly special when I read it and it’s stuck with me ever since.
James Fordyce might stick with me for worse, though. In fact, his Sermons to Young Women leaves as uncomfortably distasteful of a resonance with me as Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Both develop an inexcusable, shockingly innate pro-male sexism that’s equally disturbing. This sentiment is perhaps worse for Dreiser, considering his novel came significantly later.
The first most revolting statement from Fordyce’s “sermon,” coincidentally, appears within the first sentence of our assigned reading. He states, “When a daughter…dishonours her sex…” (394). There’s a lot of extra nonsense going on in this sentence, but the contingent absurdities are best summarized through this focus, I think. Who has allowed Fordyce to decide, as a male, how a woman “dishonours” her own, non-male, sex? It’s paradoxical, especially if a woman couldn’t decide the same parameters for men. Out of what’s an assumed common desire of Victorian men to regulate, and have regulated, women’s’ behavior, stems Fordyce’s need to preach etiquette and behavior. By immediately putting down the potential for women to behavior within their own decided regulations, beliefs, or wants, Fordyce ignores the capacity for men to act “unruly” or “foolish,” insinuating repeatedly that women ought to be shamed for acting out, while men may be excused (or lack the capacity to be equally foolish altogether).
Because of Fordyce’s narrow perspective of women, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice offers clear juxtaposition between the novel’s thematic values and those of Fordyce. In other words, I don’t think Austen’s text agrees with Fordyce’s. One of my favorite examples so far of Pride and Prejudice’s anti-Fordyce practices occurs on page 123 of the text. Elizabeth states, “It is your turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy…” Elizabeth is being fairly forward, certainly sarcastic, and outstandingly witty here, as she walks Darcy through proper ballroom behavior. Fordyce would consider the reversal in superiority during this moment an attempt on Elizabeth’s part to insult Darcy, being a critic of his (which is specifically described as poor behavior on a woman’s part in Sermons to Young Women, page 398).
I think Austen is working against, fairly subversively, generally opposing male oriented dispositions and regulations within her time. The development of Elizabeth’s character, and her independence, makes Elizabeth exciting to read. Having no prior experience or knowledge of Pride and Prejudice before this class, I’m pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable the novel is.