“In Pride and Prejudice, marriage is presented primarily as an economic arrangement”.
How far and in what ways do you agree with this view?
“Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong argument in
favour of matrimony,” wrote Jane Austen in a letter to her niece Fanny Knight, encapsulating in
a moment the inextricably dependant relationship between marriage and money existing,
especially for women, in Georgian society.
The significance of property and fortune is evident from the opening chapter, in which the report
of Bingley’s ‘large fortune; four or five thousand a year’ precedes even his arrival into the
neighbourhood. The exact financial details of characters are often thus declared upon their
introduction, most notably Darcy’s fortune of ‘ten thousand a year’, news of which is in ‘general
circulation within five minutes of his entrance’. The stated fortune of the Bennets, the Bingleys,
Miss Darcy or Miss King would have been an instant and precise indicator of class to the
contemporary reader. Where the numerical value is not specified, the subtle gradations of
wealth are indicated through tokens of affluence: the possession of a carriage, which Mrs Long
conspicuously lacks, a cook, whose employment Mrs Bennet is anxious to impress upon Mr
Collins as a matter of pride, ‘the chimney-piece’ at Rosings which ‘alone had cost eight hundred
pounds,’ or ‘the house in town’ that Mrs Bennet so joyfully anticipates for Elizabeth upon the
news of her engagement. It is clear from Mrs Bennet’s comic transferral of effusions, first in
reaction to Jane’s engagement - ‘Wickham, Lydia, were all forgotten. Jane was beyond
competition her favourite child’ - then Elizabeth’s - ‘What pin-money, what jewels, what
carriages you will have! Jane’s is nothing to it - nothing at all’ - that her primary concern is
economic. This pervasive preoccupation with money displayed by Mrs Bennet and the local
neighbourhood is simultaneously asserted and ridiculed by the narrator in the opening line,
through clever distortion of the ‘universal truth’ of an eligible man being the ‘rightful property of
some one or other of their daughters’. The irony of this illogicality is unmistakable, for women
held no legal ownership of property, even in marriage, and the statement is made to satirize the
money-grabbing attitudes of rural communities, specifically Mrs Bennet, here juxtaposed to
comic effect.
However, while Mrs Bennet’s attitude is clearly discredited through the ruthless derision of the
narrator, an altogether more sympathetic philosophy on marriage is exemplified by the ‘sensible
intelligent’ Charlotte Lucas, whose ‘pure and disinterested desire of an establishment’ leads her
to accept a man she recognises to be ‘neither sensible nor agreeable’. Her actions are initially
horrifying to the reader and to Elizabeth, who considers Charlotte to have ‘sacrificed every
better feeling to worldly advantage’, ‘disgracing herself’ in the progress, much as Elizabeth
would have herself in accepting the proposal that had so divided her parents: ‘Your mother will
never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.’ To
Elizabeth, who has not yet learnt the shortcomings of her father’s cavalier attitude, Charlotte’s
acceptance appears to exhibit a ‘selfishness’ and ‘insensibility of danger’ akin to her mother’s.
For ‘what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent
motive? Asks Elizabeth. The crucial distinction here between Charlotte Lucas and Mrs Bennet is
that of discretion, moderation and sense- all qualities highly valued by Austen. While Mrs
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