Marriages in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

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Recommended: Women of the 18th century

Marriage in the 19th century was a woman’s priority. Many times women married for social status or attraction but hardly ever for true love. In many cases the happiness of a marriage was based on whether the girl was beautiful and lively and the boy handsome and competent, and whether they were attracted to each other. Jane Austen would not believe that the happiness of marriage was based upon attraction, she believed it should be based upon love. In her novel Pride and Prejudice, she illustrates three main reasons for marriage, true love, attraction, and economics.

The two main characters, Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are an example of marriage for true love. They are two of the few characters in the book that have a successful marriage because of their love for one another. Their love made Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy put aside their prejudice, pride and social differences to marry. “I do, I do like him. I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not know what he really is, then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in such terms” (314). Elizabeth explains to her father that she is indeed madly in love with Darcy although her father thinks that she hates him. Elizabeth also said that it brought pain to her when her father spoke badly about Darcy. She tells her father that he doesn’t know Darcy’s real character and that he really is a good-natured and wonderful person despite what everyone thought. She then explains to her father all that Mr. Darcy has done for their family, Lydia’s marriage and the payment of Wickham’s debt. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s love was not brought out by appearances, because in the beginning of the book Mr. Darcy states that “She (Elizabeth) is tolerable, but ...

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...onomic stability, which Charlotte can get with Mr. Collins. Elizabeth is very much against this marriage and knows that they won’t end up happy together. Though Mr. Collins and Charlotte are well-suited to each other, they are two very separate people and have no love at all in their relationship.

Jane Austen exemplifies three reasons for marriage in her novel, Pride and Prejudice: marriage for true love, attraction, and economics. These three marriages are shown in the characters, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Lydia and Mr. Wickham and Charlotte and Mr. Collins. Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy show that the real reason for marrying is true love, not for appearances like Lydia and Mr. Wickham, nor for economics like Charlotte and Mr. Collins. The characters who married for true love will always have a happy and loving marriage, those who married for other reasons, will not.

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