To Be or Not To Be… Married Are marriages the same in modern time as they were in the early and middle 1800’s? Today, society allows a much more significant value on marriage than there was in the early 1800’s. Early in the 19th century, women knew when they would get married that they would be financially provided for the rest of their lives, protected from the outside world, and be viewed as having filled society's ultimate role for woman. That ultimate role was being a companion to a man who made a house into a loving home. Men looked forward to marriage because it gave them a companion who would support them for the rest of their lives. In the modern 21st century usually men and women would wait until their early to mid twenties to get …show more content…
Marriages are considered to be based on economic and social backgrounds, rather than how much someone truly loves another human being. She shows how marriage was often looked at as a type of financial security, saying in her novel, why do they need love when they have money to cover up any problems? Many marriages in the novel seek that one’s heart does not always dictate marriage in other words, the marriages in the novel are mostly based off of money not love. “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.” (15) This provides a great example of how Austen expresses her own emotions about marriage through Elizabeth. When Mr. Collins was turned down by Elizabeth in the book, this shadowed a rare occurrence because it was not often a woman turned down a man because she did not like his appearance. Usually back then all love was about was money or …show more content…
The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet shows how the lack of love in a marriage can have negative consequences. Their marriage was strictly based on wealth, looks and poor judgements, instead of the more important key components. It lacks the devotion of affection and lust, which results in Mr. and Mrs. Bennet not even being able to communicate with each other regularly. Neither of them found the same attraction for one another. Mrs. Bennet wanted her husband because she could be financially supported for the rest of her life time. Mr. Bennet wanted to marry his wife because of her beauty. This was even shown by the following passage from the book, "Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had every early in their marriage put an end to all real affection to her"
The culture that exists in America is one that is constantly changing to suit the times and the many different types of people that reside in the country. One aspect of American culture that has changed profoundly is the institution of marriage. Marriage began as the undisputed lifestyle for couples willing to make the ultimate commitment to one another. However in less than a century, pointless and destructive alternatives such as premarital cohabitation, have developed to replace marriage.
Mrs. Bennet is a greedy and arrogant woman. Her business is to get all her daughter to marry the most richest man in England, and she is willing to take on any obstancles that stand in her way. "Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!". This quote shows how she believes in marrying for money instead of love. The percipient woman would rather her daughter's to die than not marrying. Quoted: Had she found Jane in any apparent danger, Mrs. Bennet would have been very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was not alarming she had no wish of her recovering immediately, probably remove her from Netherfield. I picked this quot because it shows she is a bad mother, because a mother should care about her daughter. The woman is malcontent until all her daughter's is married.
The major movement regarding marriage in the eighteenth century was from church to state. Marital laws and customs, once administered and governed by the church, increasingly came to be controlled by legislators who passed many laws restricting the circumstances and legality of marriages. These restrictions tended to represent the interests of the wealthy and uphold patriarchal tradition. Backlash to these restrictions produced a number of undesirable practices, including promiscuity, wife-sale, and divorce.
Bennet fails to fulfill the duties assigned to a husband and father that are necessary to create a self-sufficient society. Unlike Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Bennet, as a man, more than likely had access to education and has more of an ability to provide for his children in the way Wollstonecraft outlines. However, he fails to do so, and allows his children to depend on marriage for provision rather than teaching them self-sufficiency. Wollstonecraft equates fatherhood to God’s role in humanities life saying “He—the common father, wounds but to heal,” (Wollstonecraft, 270). However, Mr. Bennet fails to heal after he has wounded. Instead he acts selfishly for his own amusement. Mr. Bennet encourages Mr. Collins eccentricities saying “his cousin was just as absurd as he had hoped,” instead of attempting to resolve the issue of the entail that forces his children to rely on marriage as their savior (Austen, 66). Mr. Bennet also encourages Elizabeth’s love for Mr. Wickham, not for her own benefit, but so she would be “crossed in love,” as her sister, which Mr. Bennet would find amusing (Austen, 123). In combination to failing his children, Mr. Bennet fails to fulfill the duties Wollstonecraft assigns to the role of husband. Instead of choosing a wife for her cleverness as Wollstonecraft suggests, he was “captivated by youth and beauty,” of the young Mrs. Bennet (Austen, 203). He consequently marries her, without considering the long term effects of her personality. After
Through the use of literary devices, Pride and Prejudice reveals Jane Austen’s attitude towards the novel’s theme of true love through the actions of the suitors; the process of courtship in the 1800s articulates characterization, foreshadowing, and irony. The novel opens with the line, “it is a truth acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of wife,” (Austen 1) which foreshadows the conflict of finding a significant other . During the Victorian age, men and women courted others of the same education, wealth, and social status; it was considered uncommon for someone to marry beneath them or to marry for love. Jane Austen uses Elizabeth Bennett’s encounters with different characters of varying social statuses to criticize the traditional class system; she illustrates a revolutionary idea that marriage should be based on love. In the resolution of the plot, Austen demonstrates the perfect qualities in a marriage; she incorporates Aristotle's philosophy of friendship to prove the validity of the having an affectionate relationship.
To begin, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have a love of simple infatuation. This type of love is one without intimacy or commitment, and lies with pure passion. After the passion runs out, no love is left. Mr. Bennet married his wife because she had ample beauty, however, she exposed herself as unintelligent. He often warned his children not to do the same, just as he says to Elizabeth: "My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about" (Austen). The lack of love between her parents was quite obvious to Elizabeth as well. She saw that "her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in...
Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice portrays varying attitudes to marriage. "The intricate social network that pervades the novel is one that revolves around the business of marriage". Through her female characters the reader sees the different attitudes to marriage and the reasons that these women have for marrying. These depend on their social status and their personal values. The reader is shown the most prevalent and common view of marriage held by society in Austen's time, and through the heroine, a differing opinion of marriage is explored. We are shown how marriage is viewed by the very wealthy and the values they emphasise in marriage. Through the characterisation of these women and use of irony, Austen has influenced the reader's opinions on the characters attitude about marriage and that of their contemporaries.
Marriage is a beautiful bond, where two people who love each other unconditionally, promise to love and take care of one another for the rest of their lives. Through the experiences of Lydia and Wickham, Charlotte and Collins, and Elizabeth and Darcy. Jane Austen criticizes marriages based on Infatuation, convience and money and emphasizes that marriages can only be successful if they are founded on mutal love.
Wealth and happiness was the common debate for most people at the time, and usually wealth would conquer happiness. Women, and even men, always wanted to “marry up” and climb the social ladder. Austen seems to convey the idea that one should marry someone for love but does put importance on money. Although most of her main characters marry for love she makes sure they have an income. Even the characters who claim that happiness is most important, such as Marianne, have a subconscious desire for men of wealth; and sensible characters such as Elinor hesitate at the idea of a marriage that would be made impossible by a lack of fortune. In the end love and happiness triumph over wealth and grandeur as Willoughby and Lucy lose the people they love and Marianne, Edward and Elinor live contently.
Has the value of marriage become obsolete to the up and coming generations? With the decline in respect amongst individuals, increasing divorce rates, a decrease in moral values, infidelity rates, and lack of communication amid people, are we setting our future generations up for marital failure? The generations of today are being shown that marriage is something that they are expected to do rather than what they are meant to treasure. Marriage was once revered as a sacred union between two individuals in which they honored and cherished the vows in which they chose to recite to one another, values our current society may be lacking.
Austen?s tone is condemning when talking of marriages based on money, which on one hand shows her recognition of romance and sentimentalism but on the other can be seen as her bitterness for never finding love and marrying. For a novelist so concerned with the theme of marriage, it would seem that Austen believes in love with marriage being the just way to display affection. Austen?s condemning tone towards marriages based on class and wealth could be Austen recognising that marriage is not the only important thing in life. Austen would have had time to contemplate this, being so close to the end of her own life and realising that her life was complete without marrying.
Pride and Prejudice is the most enduringly popular novel written by Jane Austen. It talks about trivial matters of love, marriage and family life between country squires and fair ladies in Britain in the 18th century. The plot is very simple. That is how the young ladies choose their husbands. Someone said that "Elizabeth Bennet, the protagonist of the novel, flatly rejected William Collins' proposal, who is the heir of her father's property and manor, and refused the first proposal from the extremely wealthy nobleman Fitzwilliam Darcy later,"(1) all this makes it clear that Elizabeth "seeks no fame nor fortune, but self-improvement and high mental outlook."(1) It's right. From the view point of Austen, Elizabeth's marriage, who finally marries Darcy, as well as Jane-Bingley's, composing money and love, is the ideal marriage people should after. But in other marriage cases in this novel, we can see that if money and love can't be held together in one marriage, love would always make a concession to money because of the special social background. After reading through the whole book, we will find that money acts as the cause of each plot and the clue of its development. It affects everybody's words and deeds, even Elizabeth Bennet. Tony Tanner once said, "Jane Austen, as well as other authors, is very clear that no feeling could be extremely pure and no motive could be definitely single. But as long as it is possible, we should make it clear that which feeling or motive plays the leading role." (2)
Society, as Austen describes it, is similar to the survival of the fittest. In order to get to the top, one must do everything he or she can to get there, including manipulating marriage. In the novel’s society “family and marriage occupied a far more public and central position in the social government and economic arrangements” (Brown 302). The members of the society in Austen’s novel, specifically Mrs. Bennet, will do anything, including marrying their daughters off to wealthy men, in order to gain a respectable status amongst there peers. Marriage, therefore, becomes a way of getting to the top of the social ladder. This focus on the importance of the social order significantly influences the idea of love and whom to love because it changes the people into thinking that marriage is not about love, but about status. It shapes the individuals into thinking that societal gains are what truly matter in a relationship. In
Equally, Mr. Collins’s proposal stresses even further, how he is willing to marry without passionate feelings, Jane Austen presents the ingratiating, self centered side of Mr. Collins in the line “I am convinced it will add greatly to my happiness” Firstly this quote is evidently suggesting that Mr Collins is a sycophant and he is trying to marry purely for selfish reasons and for his social status. Secondly, Mr Collins is also trying to...
Here, the main aspect of the novel is revealed by Austen presenting to the reader, what marriage was thought of at the time of writing. This quotation contains no utterance of marrying for love, only doing so on the grounds of obtaining a greater social standing and increased financial security. This quotation also goes to show how important the “want of a wife” would have been at the time of writing; not singly to the man himself, but also “in the minds of the surrounding families”. The consideration of marriage as being vastly important lies with the surrounding families as well due to the fact that they will inevitably be hoping to offload an eligible daughter into the hands of the man in possession of a good fortune; not only for the benefit of said daughter, but for the social standing...