Pride and Prejudice versus Unaccustomed Earth

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Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth both depict women negotiating social convention and cultural expectation in terms of love and marriage; the only difference in both women’s approaches is that Austen tells her story from the perspective of an English woman in the 19th century, while Lahiri takes her stand from the Bengali culture in the 21st century. Although one would expect that there would be some difference between two novels, Lahiri shows that certain social expectations are still placed on the women of today, even with all the enlightenment and revolutions that have taken place.

One of the central themes in both novels is the idea of marrying within one’s social circle whether class wise or culture wise. In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the idea of class and its consequent expectations is prominent throughout the story. The different couples all had class issues to deal with. Jane Bennet and Charles Bingley were separated because of their differences in class, which they had to fight through in order to be together. Bingley’s sisters, although they liked Jane as a friend, could not entertain the idea of having in-laws who live close to their source of income. Then there is the case of Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, with the latter furiously trying to fight off his attraction to former because of “his sense of her inferiority,” although failing in distancing himself from her in the end (Austen 125). The last being Lydia Bennet and George Wickham’s tryst that could have been much more disgraceful if Fitzwilliam Darcy did not step in. Wickham did not see Lydia as wife material because she did not have a dime to her name, and viewed her as only being useful as a concubine. However how different the way each couple came together, they each had to overcome the obstacles that their society placed them in, in regard to their class and problems of marrying above/beneath their class, although it is more prominent in the cases of Jane and Elizabeth.

While in Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth, the expectation is more of marrying inside one’s nationality, even though class plays a role in some of the stories. Ironically, all the subjects marry outsiders except for Hema: Ruma marries Adam; Pranab Kaku marries Deborah; Amit marries Megan; Sudha marries Roger; while Sang dates Farouk. But, the idea of the intensity of marrying a Bengali is seen more in Pranab Kaku and Deborah’s story; their marriage was doomed to fail by the Bengali families because Deborah is an outsider. She is professed to be the one to break Pranab Kaku’s heart and request a divorce because she is American and is not bound by the customs and traditions of the Bengalis. But the reverse is the case, it was Pranab Kaku that falls in love with another woman, a Bengali, and divorces Deborah.

The only difference in both novels is the fact that all Lahiri’s short stories seem to end on a sad and negative note except for “A choice of Accommodation” and in a weird way “Unaccustomed Earth,” while Austen ends her narration with a pleasant tone.

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. Print.
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Unaccustomed Earth. New York: Vintage, 2008. Print.