Love and Marriage in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

3102 Words7 Pages

Examine the themes of love and marriage in Jane Austen's Pride and

Prejudice.

Pride and Prejudice is the best known and best loved novel of the

English writer, Jane Austen, who first gave the novel its modern

character through the treatment of everyday life. Austen started to

write for family amusement as a child, and received a broader

education than many women of her time, as she grew up in an

upper-class environment, which she wrote chiefly about. The reader can

learn much about the upper-class society of this age, and also gets

and insight to the author's opinion about 18th century society, which

at the time was divided into three: aristocracy, gentry and common

people, although these divisions were becoming blurred. Austen

presents the high-society of her time from an observational point of

view, ironically describing human behaviour. She describes her views

and adds her own comments to it in a very light and easy way. She

never seems to be condescending or snubbing in her criticism but

applies it in a playful manner. This playfulness and her witty, ironic

comments on society are probably the main reasons that make this novel

still so enjoyable for readers today.

She was greatly inspired by woman writers of the Romantic Movement

such as Fanny Burney, and even though this movement was reaching its

height, the reader is kept unaware of this, much like the many events

that occurred during Austen's life. Her generation lived in a period

of great social and political upheaval, that saw events such as the

French Revolution, the American War of Independence, the Battle of

Trafalgar, Stephenson's first locomotive and the Battle of Waterloo.

Instead, Jane Austen devoted herself to very limited canvas. Her...

... middle of paper ...

...ng women marry for money, but I feel that

she tried to give a more balanced look on marriage and love, to show

the overall morality of this statement. She did this by giving

different looks to all her relationships - in her two happy and

successful marriages, Jane and Bingley experienced love at first sight

and Elizabeth and Darcy learned to compromise, change and grow. In

marrying, they not only fulfil themselves as individuals, but also

affirm the principle values of society. As in many of her novels, this

marriage at the end of the novel shows us Jane Austen's ideal view of

marriage as a social institution.

She also showed us less successful marriages such as Lydia and

Wickham's, or Mr. And Mrs. Bennet's. In conclusion, it is clear that

the themes of love and marriage are repeatedly mentioned in the novel

through the relationships stated in my essay.

Open Document