Against the Grain

Against The Grain

Life, death, and reputation: these are three basic elements of what sacrifices Elizabeth and Winston make in their societies. Winston represents life or death because of Big Brother’s control. Elizabeth’s family namesake is in jeopardy because of her uncommon beliefs on love and life. The two protagonists from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and George Orwell’s 1984, Elizabeth Bennett and Winston Smith, stand against their cultures. While Winston’s stand is more elaborate, calculated, and secret, Elizabeth’s stand does not jeopardize her livelihood, but only her family’s reputation, so it is more public. Elizabeth is able to better her life through the knowledge she gains from challenging the society, while Winston cannot continue to live in his society knowing what he knows.

Malcolm X once said, “If you don’t stand for nothing you’ll fall for anything”. With that sentiment Winston and Elizabeth decide to stand rather than fall in line within their civilizations thought systems. Mr. Smith and Miss Bennett’s biggest parallel is that both of their stands come from ideas they are very passionate about. 1984’s leading protagonist seems more passionate because he has his “off-kilter” memories that help him to develop a hatred for the leader of the Party, Big Brother. He was an outcast in Oceania because everyone else was eternally devoted to Big Brother while he was extremely skeptical. Elizabeth’s mind-set was also dissimilar from her the people in her surroundings. Although she went to balls and gossiped with her family like other women were expected to do, she was always different in how she carried herself. Elizabeth often spoke her mind and did not tolerate disrespect.

The main difference between Winston and Elizabeth is how they take their stands against the society they live in. Austen’s protagonist is more outlandish, brute, stubborn, prideful and self-confident. For example, when Mr. Collins tries to ask for her hand in marriage, she declines because she is neither attracted to nor in love with him. Most women during that time period would have married Collins in her situation. Even though he is extremely ridiculous and obscene, the importance of capturing a stable husband outweighs all of the cons. This is portrayed in the quote, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (5). Elizabeth’s society functions by certain expectations, but she continuously goes against them.

There is a complete difference in Orwell’s leading man. He always has a burning hatred for Big Brother and the Party. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the fire represents how people will sell each other out. This is also expressed in 1984 in the quotation, “Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me” (293). Winston keeps his thoughts secret because his society is tremendously different from Elizabeth’s. While the ruin of a family’s reputation was the biggest consequence to endure in England, Oceania’s was vanishing, torture, and death. For instance, Winston and Julia have to escape to a secret grass field in order to have relations and rebel against the rules of the Party. In comparison to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, society is their cave, and the light represents the overcoming of their societies with newfound knowledge and enlightenment as well as how Malcolm X said “By any means necessary.” Winston steps out of the cave, but never really stays out of the cave. His steps to exit the cave are the flashbacks he has from time to time of how the world was before the Party as well as all of his acts of rebellion: ranging from writing against Big Brother in his diary to meeting Julia in the room about Charrington’s store. He learns all about the Party’s never-ending control over its people from the Brotherhood book and realizes that all of the Party’s actions are done just to keep itself in power. But towards the end of the book, when he