Reread the exchange between Charlotte and Elizabeth about marriage.

Reread the exchange between Charlotte and Elizabeth about marriage.

How does this section of the novel provide a foundation for the

novel’s central messages regarding marriage?

In Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ one of the main themes

through out is marriage. In the exchange between Elizabeth Bennett

and her friend Charlotte Lucas in Chapter six two main views on

marriage are bought to the forefront. Charlotte gives the view that

marriage is more of a necessity so that women can have financial

stability, whereas it is evident that Elizabeth believes marriage

should be a union of two loving people and a lasting emotional

situation.

Charlotte’s view is that she will marry Collins because she needs to

hold her situation financially and socially, and not because of any

mutual feeling of love between them. She thinks that it is neither

necessary nor beneficial to know some one well or to particularly like

some one before you marry them. ‘Happiness in marriage is entirely a

matter of chance’ says Charlotte. She then also says ‘I should think

she has a good a chance of happiness as if she were to be studying his

character for a twelvemonth’. By saying this, she is implying that it

doesn’t matter how well you know someone before you marry him or her,

as it will make no difference to whether or not it is a happy

marriage. Charlotte even goes a step further and states that people

‘always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their

share of vexation’ meaning that it might be worse to know someone well

before marriage. This interpretation is affirmed when Charlotte says

‘It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the

person you are going to spend the rest of your life with’.

The view that Charlotte puts forward in Chapter six was a common

opinion held in the late 18th and early 19th century. Many women who

were part of the middle classes were often not sent to school and so

didn’t usually learn a skill that they could use to make a living.

Consequently, as they were women and so were often not left much, if

any, inheritance when their parents died, women found that they must

marry in order to have money and to keep their place in society.

Charlotte takes advantage of her situation to marry purely for money

and not for love, this is what many women did and what society

encouraged.

Elizabeth’s views are a contrast to Charlotte’s. Elizabeth believes

that to have happiness in marriage there must be love.