Marriage in Pride and Prejudice

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Marriage in Pride and Prejudice

Forever and Ever…?

“ It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” This sentence, the first of the novel Pride and Prejudice is the statement of one of the major themes in the book. Within this novel there are seven different marriages that exist, and Austen uses each one to represent different attitudes that people have towards marriage in the society in which she lived. In addition, her ultimate goal was to show the reader the marriage that she believes to be the most idealistic one.

The first marriage that we encounter in the book is that of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. The Bennets are not well matched at all in character or social background. Mr. Bennet is intelligent, and a “gentleman”, while Mrs. Bennet had little money and much “lower social connections” before their marriage. Their union was based on an initial physical attraction-Mr. Bennet found Mrs. Bennet to be beautiful, and Mrs. Bennet wanted the economic and social status that this marriage would provide her with. However, a marriage that is based on this kind of superficial attachment is doomed to failure, because as the years go on and the beauty fades Mr. Bennet is left living with a woman whom he absolutely does not respect at all.

There is also no communication between the Bennets because they are not on the same wavelength at all. While Mrs. Bennet is constantly worrying about getting the girls

married, Mr. Bennet spends most of his time retreating to his library so that he will not have to deal with the “silliness” of his daughters that are growing up to be just like his wife. We see how much Mr. Bennet regrets his marriage decision later on in the book when Elizabeth tells him that she is going to marry Mr. Darcy. Mr. Bennet thinks that Elizabeth dislikes him and is only marrying him for his social status, so he proceeds to tell her, “..let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life.” (314) This statement obviously stems from the fact that he has learned from his own mistakes and does not want his daughter to fall into the same situation.

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