Social Class and Classism

As this poem acknowledges, Jane Austen’s novels were never “free of snobbery or class” (Line 4). Two novels to which the poem alludes which are particularly well known for this are Emma and Pride and Prejudice. In the first stanza, the speaker recounts a scene from the former novel: “Emma on Box Hill, rude to poor Miss Bates, / by Mr Knightley’s Were she your equal in situation” (Lines 7-8). This reflects both Emma and Mr Knightley’s deep set awareness of social class, and the (contrasting) beliefs about how their social class should affect their behavior. This classist attitude, the speaker argues, is exclusive to compassion and grace. In this way both the speaker and the celebrated author use class divides as a way to draw attention to their pitfalls, and even erode those divides in readers.

In the second stanza, the...