TITLE:
Female Agency and Social Constraints in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility
AUTHORS:
Zana Shllaku
KEYWORDS:
Jane Austen, Female Agency, Feminist Theory, Patriarchy, Social Construction of Gender, Marriage, Social Class, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Access Library Journal,
Vol.13 No.5,
May
22,
2026
ABSTRACT: This study examines female agency and social constraints in both Pride and Prejudice [1] and Sense and Sensibility [2], arguing that Jane Austen depicts the protagonists in both novels as individuals who negotiate their rights, resist patriarchal constraints, and shape societal expectations of women. Through an analysis of the female characters in each novel, this research demonstrates that Austen represents her female characters not through rebellion but through moral judgment, rational decision-making, self-control, an emancipated mindset, and witty ideals. Accordingly, this study employs social constructivism and feminist literary criticism as its principal frameworks, which together contribute to the examination of the portrayal of human relationships. Furthermore, the study highlights marriage, inheritance laws, financial security, and class hierarchy as central mechanisms that shaped a woman’s future. It also shows how Austen’s ideas about literature both predicted and contributed to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century debates about identity, gender, and social order by situating these narratives within the circumstances of the societal borderline.