Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice is an 1813 romantic novel by Jane Austen. It charts the emotional development of the protagonist Elizabeth Bennet, who learns the error of making hasty judgments and comes to appreciate the difference between the superficial and the essential. The comedy of the writing lies in the depiction of manners, education, marriage and money during the Regency era in Britain.
Mary Wollstonecraft
In contrast, there was one writer of the generation after Wollstonecraft who apparently did not share the judgmental views of her contemporaries. Jane Austen never mentioned the earlier woman by name, but several of her novels contain positive allusions to Wollstonecraft’s work. The American literary scholar Anne K. Mellor notes several examples. In "Pride and Prejudice", Mr Wickham seems to be based upon the sort of man Wollstonecraft claimed that standing armies produce, while the sarcastic remarks of protagonist Elizabeth Bennet about "female accomplishments" closely echo Wollstonecraft's condemnation of these activities. The balance a woman must strike between feelings and reason in "Sense and Sensibility" follows what Wollstonecraft recommended in her novel "Mary", while the moral equivalence Austen drew in "Mansfield Park" between slavery and the treatment of women in British society tracks one of Wollstonecraft's favorite arguments. In "Persuasion", Austen's characterization of Anne Eliot (as well as her late mother before her) as better qualified than her father to manage the family estate also echoes a Wollstonecraft thesis.