Using Pride and Prejudice, the Marquis of O, and Adam Smiths Theory of Moral Sentiments: In one novel after another, Jane Austen avails herself of the marriage plot. She shows how her heroines learn and exercise judgment in attaining rational happiness by entering into consensual marriage with partners in relationships of mutual education. Elizabeth Bennet learns to overcome the limitations of her own prejudices, Emma Woodhouse learns that self-knowledge must accompany the ability to know and judge others, and Anne Elliot learns, upon re-encountering Frederick Wentworth, that judgment may entail exiting the values of ones given circle or the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle. Strangely enough, marriage plots figure also in stories by Kleist, although in less obvious ways. In The Chilean Earthquake, he alludes in the symbol of Jeronimos ring to an informal, unsanctioned union. In The Betrothal in San Domingo, Toni and Gustav become informally betrothed to one another in a way that echoes Marianne and Gustavs betrothal in France. In The Marquise of O., the Marquise marries the Count not just once but twice in a twist of events that presumably re-establish rightful paternity in a disordered world. On a structural level, Austen uses the event of marriage as telos or goal of her novels construction and as a milestone for the progress of the subject of judgment. Kleist, on the other hand, uses marriage to stage crises of judgment that expose limits in conceptions of community and confront readers with shifting criteria that render characters speech and actions, in J. L. Austins terms, infelicitous. Choosing any one text by Austen and one text by Kleist, compare how these authors use marriage plots to shed light on processes, parameters, and problems of judgment.Show more
