Pride and Prejudice: Blog Response #3

What should marriage be based on? Appearance? Social status? Stability? Love? Jane Austen explores this topic through her novel Pride and Prejudice by managing to include all types of marriages. Her criticism towards marriage based on superficiality leads her to conclude that marriage should be based on love. There are seven different marriages presented in the novel. Excluding the Gardiner and the Lucas, the remaining five marriages contrasts each other to reveal Austen’s opinions and thoughts on the subject of marriage.

The marriage between Darcy and Elizabeth reveals the characteristics, which constitutes a successful marriage. One of these characteristics is that the feeling cannot be brought on by appearances, and must gradually develop between the two people as they get to know one another. In the beginning, Elizabeth and Darcy were distant from each other because of their prejudice. The series of events, which they both experienced, gave them the opportunity to understand one another and the time to reconcile their feelings for each other. Thus, their mutual understanding is the foundation of their relationship and led them to a peaceful and lasting marriage. This relationship between Elizabeth and Darcy reveals the importance of getting to know one’s partner before marrying.

The marriage between Jane Bennet and Bingley is also an example of successful marriage. Jane Austen, through Elizabeth, expresses her opinion of this in the novel: "....really believed 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 her and himself"(55). However, unlike Darcy and Elizabeth, there is a flaw in their relationship. The flaw is that both characters are too gullible and too good-hearted to ever act strongly against external forces that may attempt to separate them: "You [Jane and Bingley] are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income" (55).

Obviously, Lydia and Wickham’s marriage is an example of a bad marriage. Their marriage was based on appearances, good looks, and youthful vivacity. Once these qualities can no longer be seen by each other, the once strong relationship will slowly fade away. As in the novel, Lydia and Wickham’s marriage gradually disintegrates; Lydia becomes a regular visitor at her two elder sister’s homes when "her husband was gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath." Through their relationship, Jane Austen shows that hasty marriage based on superficial qualities quickly cools and leads to unhappiness.

Although little is told of how Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet got together, it can be inferred by their conversions that their relationship was similar to that of Lydia and Wickham - Mr. Bennet had married a woman he found sexually attractive without realizing she was an unintelligent woman. Mrs. Bennet’s favoritism towards Lydia and her comments on how she was once as energetic as Lydia reveals this similarity. Mr. Bennet’s comment on Wickham being his favorite son-in-law reinforces this parallelism. The effect of the relationships was that Mr. Bennet would isolate himself from his family; he found refugee in his library or in mocking his wife. Mr. Bennet’s self-realization at the end of the novel, where he discovers that his lack of attention towards his family had led his family to develop the way they are, was too late to save his family. He is Jane Austen’s example of a weak father. In these two latter relationships, Austen shows that it is necessary to use good judgment to select a spouse; otherwise the two people will lose respect for each other.

The last example of a marriage is of a different nature than the ones mentioned above. The marriage between Mr. Collins and Charlotte is based on economics rather than on love or appearance. It was a common practice during Austen’s time for women to marry a husband to save herself from spinsterhood or to gain financial security. However, Jane Austen viewed this as a type of prostitution and disapproved of it. In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen dramatizes this form of women inequality and show that women who submits themselves to this type of marriage will have to suffer in tormenting silence as Charlotte does, "When Mr. Collins said any thing of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she [Elizabeth] would involuntarily turned her eye on Charlotte. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but in general Charlotte wisely did not hear” (28).

In Pride and Prejudice, Jane has denounced the elements of marriage and society that she found distasteful. The five marriages mentioned above contribute to the theme that a happy and strong marriage takes time to build and must be based on mutual feeling, understanding, and respect. Hasty marriages acting on impulse, and based on superficial qualities will not survive and will lead to inevitable unhappiness.