Pride and Prejudice discussion

Do you think Elizabeth Bennet would choose the same rural lifestyle if she was placed in the 21st century?

She wouldn't be subject to the vagaries of male primogeniture, she wouldn't be barred from an education. She would be free to do whatever her personal courage enabled her to do. So it's a difficult question to answer, isn't it?

We are all now Elizabeth Bennett and we are, to some degree, free to be whomever we chose, wherever we chose. Within, of course, the strictures of our abilities, our health (mental as well as physical), our economic means and the societal conditions into which we are born.

It's a novel, thus at a remove from reality, and to my mind, Elizabeth was extraordinarily fortunate to emerge into the world as she did. She is, to a degree, not a real woman, but formulaic, as all Ms. Austen's heroines were a response to the conditions of her time, within what was acceptable to her, to her stratum of society. Merge Ms. Austen's women with those of George Elliot and you may get a more realistic platform from which to pose your question. If a woman were to choose to leave the familial, moral, social, environment into which she was born, she exposed herself to almost unimaginable risks. It really is almost impossible to answer, but an interesting question, Dianne, nonetheless. But I can't quite formulate the question in my mind. Is she Elizabeth Bennett born and raised in the 21st century, or Elizabeth Bennett fallen into the 21st century and left to her own devices (admirable devices as they are)? Tough one.

I think EB fallen into the 21st century. :)

The question maybe anachronistic. Liza Bennett had position, however tendously, because her father was a sizeable landowner. In a early 19th-century story, it is right that Liza be placed in the country. In a 21st-century novel, her father would have to ge a businessman whose business was expanding.