Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

From the start of Pride and Prejudice it is clear that marriage is one

of the most important aspects of the novel with the famous opening

line reading "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single

man in possession of a good fortune must be in a want of a wife". This

opening line tells us about the plot and Mrs. Bennett fills in the

gaps in the rest of the first chapter with Mr. Bingley taking on the

role of the single rich man and the wife being anyone of her five

young daughters. We also see the urgency of Mrs. Bennett to have her

daughters married, To understand this urgency one must have an

understanding of the way things were in the nineteenth century.

Nineteenth century England was an aristocracy and peoples social

standing was decided on how wealthy their family was and how mannerly

and agreeable they were as individuals. The goal of a man was to grow

up to be a wealthy gentleman and marry a beautiful woman who would be

a good mother and a good wife. The goal of women was to grow up to

please a wealthy man enough so that they could be married and in order

to do this they were not educated in subjects that would start them in

a career but taught domestic skills like sewing, how to be a good

mother and to dress and look well so they would please rich men. If a

woman was not married then she would be forced to live off a family

member such as a brother or uncle or even a cousin but this life would

require them to be servants and live demeaning lives so it was the

goal of most women to marry a rich man and if this was achieved then

the woman was set for life and considered a success by ...

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...on of her family but leaving her tied down with a man she

doesn't love. This marriage breaks up as Wickham loses all interest in

Lydia as he realizes he is permanently stuck where he is and Lydia

realizes that she's married someone that she doesn't love and soon

after Lydia loses all interest in Wick ham. Jane Austen would have

seen this type of marriage before in her time so she would have a good

idea of the repercussions it would have and creates a very accurate

scenario. This marriage shows how badly wrong things can go if people

marry for the wrong reasons even for the time this marriage would have

been frowned upon. Pride and prejudice is a novel that contrasts

between the best types of marriages and the worst and tries to break

down some of the social barriers, after all it was written by a single

educated woman.