Love In Pride And Prejudice Love And Marriage Essay

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Jane Austen 's wonderfully witty satirical novel, Pride and Prejudice, exemplifies her distaste for marriage for money with a lack of love often found throughout the entirety of the 19th century. During this time period women could not earn money, and thus must be married into money in order to live a happy life. Not only that, but many women, the Bennet girls for example, could not gain the land of their fathers due to, "INSERT NAME HERE", and thus would be homeless upon the death of their father and thereby even less desirable. Ultimately this leads to the desire for men with money and a quick marriage, and the mother of the Bennet girls, the shrewd, grotesque Mrs. Bennet, continually pushed the girls to forget about love and solely marry …show more content…
Collins, marries for money. Elizabeth Bennet and her beautiful sister Jane both marry Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley respectively out of love, not for their money or their status, and their wild promiscuous sister Lydia unfortunately hastily married the "man of her dreams" out of lust. Through the description of these three types of marriages, Jane Austen truly portrays to the reader that true happiness is not obtained through marriage by lust or money, but rather solely by love. The first unholy marriage of the satire was the marriage between the pompous Mr. Collins and the poor, old Charlotte. The theme and conflict of social class differences thrived in the making of this marriage. Before Mr. Collins had even thought of marrying the poor, old Charlotte, he proposed to Lizzy, however he did so in …show more content…
Wickham as well was another unholy marriage which Jane Austen despised, and ultimately she describes it as leading to the same melancholy marriage as that of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. This marriage, however, was not initiated in order to please societal norms and expectations, and in fact it went entirely against societal norms as it was made out of lust. The young, wild Lydia Bennet had stumbled upon the attractive young men of the military throughout her ramblings throughout the village of Meryton, and ultimately met the symbol of lust and desire itself, Mr. Wickham. Mr. Wickham had continually been supported by the father of Mr. Darcy, but continually wasted the money on useless expenditures such as lavish parties and alcohol, and thereby surmounted a vast debt similar to that of Mr. Bennet’s. However, few knew about this, and Lydia especially is blind to his debts and misdeeds. Ultimately, Wickham convinced Lydia to run away with him solely so he could sleep with her, ultimately bringing great shame and disdain to the Bennet’s family name. However, this shame was quickly averted when some strange procurer was able to pay Wickham a hefty annual sum in order to convince him to marry Lydia. Many of the Bennet’s presume it to be their uncle, Mr. Gardiner, however Lizzy quickly finds out the procurer, ultimately changing her entire opinion of the

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