Class Privilege and Female Autonomy: Economic Independence as Feminist Resistance in Pride and Prejudice and Unmarriageable

Abstract

This article examines how class privilege mediates women's capacity for resistance in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Soniah Kamal's Unmarriageable (2019), analyzing the complex relationship between economic resources and feminist autonomy. Through comparative textual analysis grounded in Marxist feminist and intersectional frameworks, the study demonstrates that while both Elizabeth Bennet and Alys Binat employ intellectual resistance against patriarchal marriage pressures, their ability to sustain such resistance depends fundamentally on class advantages unavailable to less privileged women. The analysis reveals that Charlotte Lucas's pragmatic marriage and the employment constraints faced by the Binat sisters illustrate how economic vulnerability forecloses genuine choice, making resistance a luxury of the relatively privileged. By comparing Regency England's entailment system with contemporary Pakistan's dowry culture, the article shows that despite temporal and cultural differences, economic dependence remains the primary mechanism through which patriarchy constrains female agency. The findings contribute to comparative feminist literary criticism by demonstrating that representations of female autonomy must account for class stratification; protagonists' triumphant endings depend on fortunate circumstances that most women do not enjoy, revealing the limitations of individualist feminist resistance without systemic economic change.