Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Emely Bronte's Wuthering Heights

The characters in the novels Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, each face life altering choice which not only effect their own lives but also the individuals around them. These choices influence their futures and can completely alter the course of the novel. When critically assessing these novels, it is very important to consider the choices made by the young people throughout; these choices can ultimately shape the entire plot of the novel.

The first choice to consider is Lydia’s decision to flee with Wickham, and eventually marries him and Lydia seems to have no understanding of how her elopement with Wickham could be perceived as a sinful act. Zimmerman (Zimmerman 64-73)believes that “Lydia's interest in marriage has displaced any other perspective [she] might have, including a moral one”. Often marriages were arranged between parents to make sure their daughters or sons would find suitable husbands and wives in both regards to money and social standing. Marriages were also common to form political unions between houses, or to finalize a business contract. So the fact that Lydia and her family are not of a wealthy background Wickham cannot want her for financial reasons, consequently society would presume they had run away for sordid reasons. This, of course, would disgrace the family and bring disrepute on her family. They would be outcast from society and without society, the Bennet sisters could not hope to make successful marriages. Lydia married Wickham as she believed he was one with large fortune and high social status; however Wickham married Lydia for her looks and her naivety. For instance according to Austen (Pride and Prejudice: 263), “Wickham's affection for Lydia was just wh...

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• Zimmerman, Everett. "Pride and Prejudice in Pride and Prejudice." Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 23. 1 (1968): 64-73. JSTOR. Web.http://www.jstor.org/stable/2932317 .