Jane Austen expressed the contextual issues of her time through literary techniques in her book Pride and Prejudice, written during the English Regency period. Austen was a writer who lived from 1775 to 1817 and wrote six major novels, assessing and observing society as she knew it. He did this through the use of techniques such as circumlocution, satire and pedantic characters. She used circumlocution to portray class issues, satire to criticize marital ideals, and pedantic characters to comment on the unrealistic expectations of women in the upper classes, which she believed were relevant during the regency period. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Austen used circumlocution as a literary technique to express her views on class as a contextual issue in her society. Austen heavily criticized the way in which class was a determining factor in many aspects of a woman's life in Regency England. Mr Collins's attachment to Lady Catherine de Bourgh can be explained by his understanding of this, and how he knew it would be advantageous for him to have intercourse with members of the aristocracy. “...the respect he felt for her high rank, and the veneration for her as his protector, mixed with an excellent opinion of himself, of his authority as a priest, and of his right as rector, made him in complex a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, personal importance and humility. In this excerpt, Austen used circumlocution, a technique in which the speaker uses an excessive amount of words to make a point that could easily have been conveyed briefly. Upper-class people often used it to support superficial civility and etiquette. This also demonstrated how people of different classes were expected to act, thus expressing how Austen applied circumlocution as a literary technique to express her views on class as a contextual issue in her society. Austen used satire in Pride and Prejudice to portray her views on marriage as a contextual issue. He believed that marriage was a contextual issue because it was often for flimsy reasons, such as acquiring land. He used Charlotte as an example of what upper-class people thought of marriage in Regency England, as a means of gaining status and wealth, shown through the quote: "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of luck... it is better to know as little as possible about the flaws of the person you will spend your life with.” Satire is a style of writing in which the author criticizes people or ideas in a humorous way, to make a political statement and in this excerpt Austen has ridiculed Charlotte. and those with similar marital ideals. Charlotte states that happiness in marriage is only through luck and that she will not marry for love, but for wealth and status, and will end up marrying Mr. Collins. By using satire, Austen allows a character who believes in easy marriages to marry unhappily, slightly criticizing those who share Charlotte's beliefs regarding marriage This is Austen's way of using satire to comment on marital ideals in Regency England. Austen used pedantic characters to express her criticism of the expectations of upper-class women, as a contextual issue. He believed this was a problem because while men could play cards and bet constantly, women were expected to/216)