Marriage, Community and Austen – Part 3

Now let us consider what marriage meant for men in that society. It seemed that not only women with little fortune were limited in their choice of marriage, but also men had to be prudent in choosing a partner. Taking Mr. Wickham as an example will prove the point. On his entrance to Meryton, he becomes well acquainted with Elizabeth, showing perhaps a partiality toward her. Such that Elizabeth is warned by Mrs. Gardiner against falling in love with Wickham and getting involved “in an affection which the want of fortune would make so very imprudent.” Very shortly after this, we are told how his partiality toward Elizabeth is subsided and that now he is “the admirer of someone else”, a Miss King who had recently come into possession of ten thousand pounds. What here comforts Elizabeth is her belief “that she would have been his only choice, had fortune permitted it” and the fact that “The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most remarkable charm of the young lady” because after all “handsome young men must have something to live on”.

This matter is brought up again through Mr. Darcy who, despite loving and admiring Elizabeth, has “struggled” “in vain” against his better judgment and the expectations of his family to forget her because of the inferiority of her situation. Something else we can see in Darcy’s situation is that it is not only financial reasons that determine marriages, but also the society’s conventions regarding class and connections. But in this marriage formula there is no place for personal feelings. It is clear that love plays little role in the conventions of this society. It has little significance in the eyes of the people, though this is not the author’s view, which I shall present in the next post, and all these “rules” are defied through Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage.

Marriage, Community and Austen – Part 2

In the novel Pride and Prejudice Mrs. Bennet’s attitude toward marriage can be taken to be representative of her community’s, though not the author’s – the language used to describe Mrs. Bennet is clearly one of criticism (see previous post).

But perhaps we cannot totally blame Mrs. Bennet to have such a view of marriage, since that seemed the best and sometimes only option for a girl in that society. A girl with little fortune and no connections seemed to have few choices open to her, as is the case with Charlotte Lucas who, despite being a sensible and intelligent girl, accepts to marry a man who her friend for very good reasons refused. On a personal level, Mr. Collins is “a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man”, yet on a social level he fares better: he is the rector of a parish, he has a parsonage, connections and Lady Catherine de Bourgh as his patroness. So he can provide for Charlotte all that she could look for in a husband: someone to give her “a comfortable home” and security, which is probably the most important reason for her to want to marry such a man. What Austen is trying to show here is less a criticism on Charlotte’s character than on the society of 19th century England. A society which provides little security and almost no chance of happiness for women outside marriage and which makes its members give up their personal feelings in favour of worldly advantage.

Marriage, Community and Austen

Jane Austen is definitely one of my favourite authors, but her Pride and Prejudice has to be not only a favourite of mine, but also, I believe, her masterpiece. I cannot get bored of it and to prove that, I have watched the movie seven times as well as the TV series, and read the book three times! What follows is a closer look at one of the social aspects of the novel: marriage.

If we take Pride and Prejudice as representative of 19th century England, or even as a community on its own, Austen gives a clear picture of the conventions and customs established within this society or community. She also reveals her own views and judgments regarding these conventions. The subject of this and the following posts is to look at how Austen presents the conventions concerning marriage present in the society at the time the novel was written. The argument presented shows how she criticized some of the ways in which these conventions worked in the society.

The very first lines of the novel opening with the famous sentence “It is a truth universally known that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” serves to do just that: in this community daughters must be married off. This “truth” is “so well fixed” in the community that any man with such a fortune is “considered as the rightful property” of their daughters. The very tone of the narrative sets forth the attitude of the author toward this “truth”. The irony and satire with which this “truth” is presented indicates criticism. This criticism is further enhanced in the conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, where the latter expresses how she wishes Mr. Bingley, whom she knows nothing about except that “he is a single man of large fortune”, to marry one of her girls. Mrs. Bennet, then upon Mr. Bennet’s apparent ignorance, goes on to say that though he has no “design” in settling in Netherfield, “it is very likely that he may fall in love” with one of the Bennet girls. These opening sentences, therefore, give us a feeling of the community, of which Mrs. Bennet may be taken as a representative, its ruling conventions, and the attitude of the writer. We are assured that it is not only Mrs. Bennet who holds such views and that it is truly a “universal” matter since it was Mrs. Long who told her the news and that “Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go”. Even all throughout the novel Mrs. Bennet’s attitude on the subject little changes and she remains determined to have all her daughters “well married”. And since we are told that “She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper” with “manners so far from right”, we can rightly take it that her way of life was not much approved of by the author.