Jane Austen’s views on love and marriage.

Jane Austen is one of the greatest

English authors known today.

Pride and Prejudice

Emma

Sense and Sensibility

Mansfield Park

Persuasion

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Austen’s ideas and views of love and marriage are expressed in her writings through the actions and comments of her characters in her novel Pride and Prejudice.

By using ironic humor to tell about matters that are quite emotional and serious in her novel, she encourages the reader to think deeper than what she has written.

During the time that Jane Austen wrote her novels women did not have many rights or entitlements.

A woman in that era only had two types of futures to hope for; to be born into a wealthy family that would take care of her even as an old maid or to marry a wealthy man that will take care of her and her unmarried siblings.

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.“

-- Jane Austen, Letter in 1816

Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, had a different view of what marriage should be. She did not want to see herself marrying someone she didn’t have any sort of affection for but she was realistic about the chances of marrying happy as she articulates in this quote;

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always

continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with

whom you are to pass your life.”

-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Even in Jane Austen chose to turn down the only marriage proposal she

had.

In her novels, Austen tends to constantly stress the importance of marriage and how it plagued every facet of thought in not only the woman’s mind but in the parents’ mind as well.

This quote was to Elizabeth Bennet from her mother in Austen’s novel;

"If you go on refusing every offer of marriage, you will never get a husband -- and I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father is dead.“

-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Marrying for love was a luxury that women just didn’t have

then and Jane Austen’s novels are, although fictional, a

realistic view into the world she lived in and the challenges she had to face in her own life.

In Austen’s novel she creates certain categories in which she believes married couples fall under. Austen uses the different marriages in Pride and Prejudice as an example of each category.

Lydia Bennet’s marriage to Mr. Wickham:

-- A bad marriage that is well deserved.

Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley:

-- A happy match, but flawed.

Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins:

-- A marriage based on economics rather than lust or love.

Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy :

-- The “perfect” marriage. The two have strengths and flaws that compliment each other well.

In Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen denounced all the things she found distasteful about society and marriage. This novel is full of conclusions that she has come to about what she has observed of the people around her. However as expressed in her writing, she has come to terms with the things she has seen about marriages and love around her, and has accepted them with and without their faults, as did her heroine in Pride and Prejudice.