What is the sociological background of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice?

When analyzing sociological
background, one is analyzing the type of
society that the author is writing about. You are analyzing things like
the types of government, types of
laws, and types of rules. You
can also analyze if you think the author actually likes the
society, or does he/she dislike it. This can
also lead you to analyze what social changes the author
might make.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is
a very true sociological reflection of Austen's own social
situation during the Regency period. Just as Austen knew it, England's government in
Pride and Prejudice is a monarchy that is governed upon the advise of the Prime
Minister, Cabinet, and members of Parliament. Also, just as Austen new it, her novel's
society is divided by class rank, including the noble class, the landed gentry, the
middle class, and the merchant class. In fact, one social
phenomenon Austen experienced herself and wrote about in the book was the
increase in wealth of the merchant class. Around the same
time as the French Revolution, some members of the merchant class were becoming
increasingly wealth, wealthy enough to rub shoulders with the landed gentry, purchase
estates of their own, and live among the gentry. At the same time, the English nobility
watched all of the French nobility be beheaded. Not wanting the same fate, the English
nobility decided to begin softening some of the lines of demarcation separating classes.
Austen's era began seeing the intermarrying of the classes
( href="http://www.mssresearch.org/?q=Social_Evolution_in_Pride_Prejudice">"Social
Evolution"). Both the rise of the merchant class
and the mingling of the classes are social
issues Austen covers in her novel.

Austen especially
portrays the social issue of the rising merchant class with
Mr. Bingley. Austen makes it evident that Bingley's father
actually earned the Bingley fortune through trade and left it to Bingley to buy the
family estate. However, using Mr. Bingley and his sisters, Austen points out the
consequence from the social phenomenon, which was in
increase in prejudicial snobbery. In particular, we see
Bingley's sisters criticize the Bennet family, which are actually in a class higher than
they are since Mr. Bennet is gentleman with an estate, simply because Mrs. Bennet is
descended of the working class, just like the Bingleys. As Austen phrases
it:

[The
Bingley sisters] were ... in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and
meanly of others. They were of a respectable family north of England; a circumstance
more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own
had been acquired by trade. (Ch.
4)

Hence, one aspect of
society Austen shows a desire to change is
class snobbery.

In addition, Austen also
portrays inter-class marriages when she has
Elizabeth marry Mr. Darcy. Technically, they are members of the same
class. As Elizabeth points out to Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "In marrying your nephew, I
should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a
gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal" (Ch. 56). However, some, like Lady Catherine,
may consider Darcy to be a cut above Elizabeth because he has noble class relations
while Elizabeth, again, has working class relations. Austen is not only using the
marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy to support inter-class
marriages, which were on the rise in her society, she is also using Lady
Catherine to once again criticize class
snobbery.