Fairy tales and anti-fairy tales: 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Middlemarch'

Fairy tales had a profound effect on the writing of Jane Austen and George Eliot, but in very different ways. As is evident in Pride and Prejudice , Austen embraced the happy and sometimes unrealistic themes that fairy tales propagated, subsequently creating a retelling of Charles Perrault's version of Cinderella. In her novel, Middlemarch , Eliot chooses to reject the themes of fairy tales in favor of realism and subsequently creates a novel that responds to fairy tales by challenging many of the fairy tale elements found in Austen's novel. This paper will argue that fairy tales influenced Austen in her writing of Pride and Prejudice , and Eliot's novel, Middlemarch, written almost 60 years after Pride and Prejudice, is an anti-fairy tale that responds to Austen's novel.