Jane Austen's Personal View on Marriage in Pride And Prejudice

The novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is set in the 19th century where family respect and social differences were very important to everyone. This novel is a love story with various forms of marriage such as; marriage as and economic contract, marrying outside out side of your social class, marriage to a person whose personality and character are unequal to your own and marriage for love. Jane Austen has different opinions to each one of these, this essay is going to analyse each one to see which she most agrees with.

Throughout the book many forms of marriage are seen evident, one of the most obvious being marriage for economic reasons. What this means is that people in the 19th century especially women would get married for economical reasons such as to be able to have a decent house with something to eat.

Mrs. Bennett has a strong opinion on this subject due to her situation in life which is that she should be concerned with herself and her daughters because if Mr. Bennett dies they will be left with nothing, because all their property will go to Mr. Collins. Mrs. Bennett ego to get her daughters married, her great anxiety to get her daughters married is shown when she says A single man of a large fortune; four or five thousand a year.

What a fine thing for our girls! (pg. 6). Another exemplar character of the novel who promotes this attitude towards marriage is Mr. Collins, the first example of Mr. Collins act to marry for economical reasons is when he proposes to Elizabeth clearly shown by how he says to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured father, I could not satisfy myself without resolving to chuse a wife among his daughters� (pg. 104).

The second example is with he asking Charlotte to marry him, Charlotte very cleverly did this to be economically secured in life which was done very commonly this is shown by when it is described in the book how she started to plan how many years Mr. Bennett would be alive till Mr. Collins could inherit the estate. Jane Austen's opinion on this topic is that she does not view it as a thing she would want to do but at times such as expressed through Charlotte you have to be realistic and take into account your economic situation because it was seldom to marry a rich man of a much higher class than your own.

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