Social Norms In Pride And Prejudice

In the classic novel, Pride and Prejudice, author Jane Austen allows her readers to experience the lives of a typical 19th century family through the perspective of the Bennets. As readers follow along with the lives of the Bennets, many social norms and conducts from that era are revealed. Although readers learn the results of possessing pride or prejudice through the theme, Austen is also able to demonstrate that women were socially pushed into unreasonable expectations, especially to be musically and artistically inclined. Society believed that women should possess certain types of traits and skills to be socially acceptable and pleasing. Such skills consisted of “refined female occupations such as music, dancing, painting, needlework, …show more content…
Society placed a great amount of pressure on women to get married, especially at the seemingly appropriate age of their mid-twenties. After much research, Kelley Smith (2002) has observed the “sole purpose in life [of 19th century women] is to find a husband, reproduce, and then spend the rest of their lives serving him,” however if women chose to remain single or marry late, “she would be ridiculed and pitied by the community.” Austen wrote Charlotte Lucas as an example of a woman whose “happiness in marriage [was] entirely a matter of chance” representing many various women during this era. Similar to Charlotte, many women got married for the sake of finding happiness in a secured future since they had to depend on their husbands for most things in life. Therefore Charlotte was satisfied with “a comfortable home; and … Mr. Collins's' character, connection, and situation in life” was able to “[convince her that] chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state." Because marriage was essential to these women’s survival later in life, all the expectations and limitations for women were made to be found attractive, in both appearances and manner, amongst