The Importance of Marriage in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

In the story “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen the family had five girls Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia that the family wanted all of them to get married to someone. The author Jane Austen explains throughout the whole story about a middle class family growing up with five daughters and forcing them to get married. Marriage played a big part in the family’s life. It’s almost like they had to be married. All the mother cared about was if her daughters were going to get married. She would try to find men to marry her daughters. Being single back then women got looked down upon.

The societal strictures on women played in marriage played a huge part in the story and marriages in the 1800s. In the story “Pride and Prejudice” women had many obligations and few choices. Women were complete controlled by men their whole life. The whole purpose of women in the 1800s and in the story is to find a husband, have his kids and to spend the rest of their life serving their husband. There were many rules that the women had to follow that affected the marriage. Woman who did not marry could really only look forward to living with her relatives as a dependent so that marriage is pretty much the only way of ever getting out from under the parental control. “Women married because they had a lack of options; they were not formerly educated, and were only instructed in domestic duties. They needed someone to support them, and were encouraged to marry and have children” (Ziegenfuss). If a woman were to remain single she would be contempt and pitied by the community she lives in. The rules for women were so strict it’s like she had to be a slave to her husband. “They had to obey men, because in most cases men held all the resources and wom...

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...y, inquisitive mind would have been able to further her education independently through reading” (Austen). In the 1800s unmarried women were school teachers because they weren’t in a marriage were they had to be a house wife. Typically, women were not allowed to be educated or gain knowledge outside of the home because it was a man’s world.

The roles woman played in the book “Pride and Prejudice” and in the early 1800s was important in a marriage because the women did everything. They cooked, clean, taught their children everything. If there were no women back then everything would be a disaster because the women did it all. The men took advantage of the good things they had back then. A young women coming up in this life time had it hard. They didn’t know they had it hard but looking back on the bad things men did it was a tough life to be a women in the 1800s.