Austens View of Marriage in Pride and Prejudice
Austen’s View of Marriage in Pride and Prejudice
Ⅰ. Introduction
Jane Austen (1775-1817) is often viewed as the greatest of the English women realistic novelists in the 19th century. Her greatness lies in her ability to stimulate readers to supply what is not there and expand a trifle in our mind and endow with the most enduring form of life scenes. Jane Austen wrote only six complete novels. In these novels, an assembly of characters, men and women, old and young some, but not many, children --- who are unforgettable and can become as real to the reader as his or her own friends and family is vividly described. Austen criticized comically “the overvaluation of love, the miseducation of women, the subterfuges of the marriage market, the rivalry among women for male approval, the female cult of weakness and dependence, the discrepancy between women’s private sphere and male history”(Austen 112). In Jane Austen’s novels, innocent courting and proper marriages constitute the central strands of the story, but behind these we can see that there lurks the ulterior motive of loving an marrying for money and social position. Her heroines without any money or social rank are always placed in a desperate situation of having to lure some young and rich landlords or clergymen with comfortable livings into marrying them, either with their looks or with their wiles, or with both. This is a truthful reflection of the specific historical period of the author’s time during which people seemed to take money much more seriously than other times, especially the women awaiting their marriage. As a realistic novelist, Jane Austen’s view of marriage expressed in her works is actually a true portrayal of the marital status in her time, especially of women of the gentry. Behind the comic plots, there was the sorrowful social reality that women’s fates were determined by their economic conditions and most of them were constrained by the so-called “accomplished lady”
Ⅰ. Introduction
Jane Austen (1775-1817) is often viewed as the greatest of the English women realistic novelists in the 19th century. Her greatness lies in her ability to stimulate readers to supply what is not there and expand a trifle in our mind and endow with the most enduring form of life scenes. Jane Austen wrote only six complete novels. In these novels, an assembly of characters, men and women, old and young some, but not many, children --- who are unforgettable and can become as real to the reader as his or her own friends and family is vividly described. Austen criticized comically “the overvaluation of love, the miseducation of women, the subterfuges of the marriage market, the rivalry among women for male approval, the female cult of weakness and dependence, the discrepancy between women’s private sphere and male history”(Austen 112). In Jane Austen’s novels, innocent courting and proper marriages constitute the central strands of the story, but behind these we can see that there lurks the ulterior motive of loving an marrying for money and social position. Her heroines without any money or social rank are always placed in a desperate situation of having to lure some young and rich landlords or clergymen with comfortable livings into marrying them, either with their looks or with their wiles, or with both. This is a truthful reflection of the specific historical period of the author’s time during which people seemed to take money much more seriously than other times, especially the women awaiting their marriage. As a realistic novelist, Jane Austen’s view of marriage expressed in her works is actually a true portrayal of the marital status in her time, especially of women of the gentry. Behind the comic plots, there was the sorrowful social reality that women’s fates were determined by their economic conditions and most of them were constrained by the so-called “accomplished lady”