Discuss how Pride and Prejudice engages with the theme of love and marriage
Pride and Prejudice engages with the theme of love and marriage - Pride and Prejudice depicts five marriages in all.
Charlotte Lucas, Jane, Elizabeth, Lydia and Mrs Forster are the brides and all
of them marry to their advantage, elevating themselves socially. If Jane and
Elizabeth have escaped Charlotte’s fate, it is because of their beauty which
gives them a somewhat wider choice in the marriage market. Charlotte is 27, not
especially beautiful and without an especially large “portion”. It is therefore
her advancing age that hastened her engagement to Collins “solely from the pure
and disinterested desire of an establishment”. When marriage as an institution
has been commodified, she observes that it is not sensible to marry for ‘love’.
Thus, to Charlotte, marriage is an economic transaction undertaken in self-interest.
Austen, meanwhile, poses countless smaller obstacles to the
realization of the love between Elizabeth and Darcy, including Lady Catherine’s
attempt to control her nephew, Miss Bingley’s snobbery, Mrs. Bennet’s idiocy,
and Wickham’s deceit. In each case, anxieties about social connections, or the
desire for better social connections, interfere with the workings of love.
Darcy and Elizabeth’s realization of a mutual and tender love seems to imply
that Austen views love as something independent of these social forces, as
something that can be captured if only an individual is able to escape the
warping effects of a hierarchical society.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a
single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
The arrival of Charles
Bingley a young man
with a fortune at Netherfield Park, sends the neighboring Bennet household into
a flurry of excitement. Mrs. Bennet with five marriageable daughters, has fond
hopes of arranging a match between the eligible suitor Charles Bingley and any
one of her daughters. After the customary introductory visits, there is the
occasion of the ball from which proceeds the Jane Bingley love story as well as
the story of Elizabeth’s prejudice and Darcy’s pride which keeps them apart
initially until they come closer gradually and eventually marry at the end.
By the time we have reached the end of the novel, not only
the hero and heroine, Darcy and Elizabeth, but most of the young people have
succeeded in pairing off in marriage. However, it is from the courtship of
the hero and heroine that the story derives much of their tension. Though,
marriage is the end of her novel, yet it involves more than the conclusion of a
simple love story. There is a depth, variety and seriousness in Jane Austen’s
treatment of these topics.
Marriage – an Important Social and Economic concern
Marriage was an important social concern in Jane
Austen’s time and she was fully aware of the disadvantages of remaining
single. In a letter to Fanny Knight she wrote:
“Single
women have a dreadful propensity for being poor-which is one very strong
argument in favour of matrimony.”
Jane Austen, tells us bluntly, that Charlotte ‘without
thinking highly of either men or of matrimony‘ had always had marriage as
her object because it was the only honorable provision for well-educated, young
women of small fortune, and while it may not have provided happiness, it would
at least have protected them from want. The only option for unmarried woman in
Jane Austen’s time was to care for someone else’s children as Jane Austen
herself did; as there were no outlets for women in industry, commerce, business
or education. The novels of Jane Austen- especially Pride and Prejudice dramatize
the economic inequality of women, showing how women had to marry undesirable
mates in order to gain some financial security.
There are seven marriages in Pride and Prejudice Novel, all of
them undoubtedly intended to reveal the requirements of a “good” and “bad”
marriage. Three marriages that of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Charlotte and Collins
and Lydia and Wickham reveal the ‘bad’ marriage and the importance of good
judgment and proper feeling in determining a couple’s future happiness.
Mutual respect, the basis of a sound marriage is
lacking in the Bennet’s marriage. Prudence alone should not dictate, as it
does in Charlotte’s case, nor should it be disregarded, which is what Lydia
does. Thoughtless passion leads only to disgrace and misery for the families
concerned. Esteem, good sense and mutual affections are the right ingredients
for a successful marriage as the Darcy-Elizabeth marriage indicates.
Jane Austen firmly believed that to form a right judgement, one must have right
principles and right perception of the nature of other people.
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Unhappy Marriage or Social Marriage - Jane Austen’s view is the marriage
based on economics, such as that contracted by Mr. Collins and Charlotte Lucas.
As a result of Charlotte’s need for financial security, she is willing to
destroy her own life by linking herself to a pompous ass.
The second kind of “bad” marriage is marriage based on such
superficial qualities as sex, appearance, good looks and youthful
vivacity- the runaway marriage of Lydia and Wickham. The passion between
the unprincipled rake Wickham and the flighty Lydia is bound to cool and in
their unhappy married life mutual toleration is the nearest approach to
affection that can be expected.
A less obvious example of this kind of marriage is that
between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Even at this late stage Mrs. Bennet is similar to
Lydia in her silliness and shallowness. The Bennet marriage ends in mutual
forbearance. Mr. Bennet is in general retreat and isolation, and Mrs. Bennett
is a disorganized woman.
The marriage between Jane and Bingley is a successful
marriage of its kind. Jane Austen expresses her opinion about this marriage
through the words of Elizabeth:
"All his (Bingley) expectations of felicity, to be rationally founded,
because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super excellent
disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between
them." However, unlike Darcy and Elizabeth, there is no planning in their
relationships. Both the characters are too gullible and too good-hearted to
ever act strongly against external forces that may attempt to separate them.
So, their marriage is in between success and failure.
The fifth and final example of marriage is that of Elizabeth
and Darcy. It is a kind of an ideal marriage based on the true understanding
and cross examinations. According to Jane Austen , the courtship of Darcy
and Elizabeth is a perfect union which sums up the purpose of her novel.
Although it begins with the pride and prejudice; it passes through many stages
as "it converts from full hatred to complete admiration and
satisfaction" . For Darcy, Elizabeth is no longer the woman who
is "not handsome enough to tempt (him)", as he admits
that “… it is many months since I have considered [Elizabeth] as one
of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”. Also for Elizabeth , he is
no longer "the last man in the world whom (she) could ever be prevailed
on to marry" but he becomes the "man who in disposition and
talents , would most suit her" .
“There can be no doubt that it is settled between us
already that we are to be the happiest couple in the world.”
Pride and Prejudice depicts a society in which a woman’s
reputation is of the utmost importance. A woman is expected to behave in
certain ways. Stepping outside the social norms makes her vulnerable to
ostracism. This theme appears in the novel, when Elizabeth walks to Netherfield
and arrives with muddy skirts, to the shock of the reputation-conscious Miss
Bingley and her friends. At other points, the ill-mannered, ridiculous behavior
of Mrs. Bennet gives her a bad reputation with the more refined (and snobbish)
Darcys and Bingleys.
Jane Austen is of the view that mutual harmony
is essential for a successful marriage. Mrs. Bennet measures the matrimonial
game with wealth. Thus she thinks Bingley as a suitable match for her daughter
Jane. But the novelist does not agree with the view of Mrs. Bennet. For Austen
nature and temperament are the necessary conditions for a marriage. It is
because the aim of marriage is higher than the household business. Marriage is
both an intellectual and emotional companionship between a husband and a wife.
Marriage without this is no marriage at all.
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The main theme of the novel surrounds love. In the same way all the three sub-plots of the story are centred round love. In the main plot Elizabeth and Darcy come together in spite of their previous differences. Another story is the love story of Jane and Bingley who also are united in marriage after certain interruptions. The marriage of Lydia and Wickham also takes place with the help of Darcy. In this case love is one sided. Lydia loves Wickham while the latter does not. He simply runs away with Lydia to insult Bennets. He did so to enrage Elizabeth who refuses to marry him. The third sub-plot consists of the marriage of Mr. Collins with Charlotte. This marriage takes place all of a sudden without showing any inclination of love from either side. Thus here the novelist has presented various phases of love. Here love is neither aggressive nor passionate. It is the form of love found in the ordinary persons in the world.
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Question No. 1 - “Fielding is one of the most pro-woman writers in English.” Do youagree with this view? Justify your answer with illustrations from the text of Tom Jones.
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