The Picture Jane Austin Presents Of Marriage In Pride And Prejudice
... is only in it for pleasure, her own pleasure that is. Mr. Wickham was not of better character. About all that he had going for him was his good looks, charm and his initial likeability. This, however, did not change the fact that he was a sleazy con man. He lacked both a good heart and honorable intentions, but he does have “all the appearance of it.” His hopes for a wife were that she had a good fortune. In this case, I would have to say that they deserve one another. Neither of them was looking for love and both were extremely superficial. This couple actually gets together by accident and as a result of Darcy’s efforts. Lydia runs off with Wickham but he has no intentions of marrying her. He is actually running to escape his many debts and lets Lydia come along. Lydia does not understand, or maybe does not care, about the seriousness of running off together like that and the pain she is causing her family. It is thanks to Darcy that the couple did get married. He, very generously, pays off Wickham’s debts and offers him a handsome reward for marrying Lydia in order to save the Bennet family from further humiliation. Wickham’s appetite for pleasure and excitement, much like his wife’s, makes it almost certain that they will never behave in a mature and responsible way. The circumstances through which they get together give them a poor prospect of being happy together, but considering their personalities, they are fairly well matched. The silliest thing of all is that Lydia, along with her mother, actually celebrated that she was the first of her sisters to get married. Seemingly ignorant to the humiliating circumstances of the marriage, Mrs. Bennet “on this happy day ... took her seat at the head of her table, and in spirits oppressively high.” She even began calculations of how much Lydia will need for her wedding clothes. Austin’s view of this union is glum, and she states in the novel, “Lydia’s misery was considered certain.” The next marriage of importance is the one of Mr. Collins and Charlotte Lucas. This is a very interesting union and it demonstrates many of the prospects facing a woman in Austin’s times. This marriage was different from the two previous ones that I talked about because it had nothing to do with passion or a spur of the moment type of thing. In fact, it was about as far away from that as it could possibly get. This was a union of no passion and little affection. Do not get the wrong idea, because despite this and the fact that they are a little mismatched, their marriage is a successful one; it is far better than a marriage resulting from lust. Charlotte marries Mr. Collins for very practical reasons. It was a convenient marriage, if you will. Charlotte has no fortune of her own, and she also has two more strikes against her. She is not very good looking; in fact she is rather plain. Additionally, she is already 27. It might not seem as old to us, but at the time, this fact put her in danger of becoming an old maid. Both of these facts lessened her chances of attracting a husband, and one that she chose herself, even further. She is not a romantic person like her friend Elizabeth. In fact, she marries to have a home of her own, if nothing more. She put it best when she said, “I ask only for a comfortable home...” Charlotte also believes that “happiness in marriage is all a matter of chance.: If you look at all of the strikes against her, you must admit that she does not make a foolish or unintelligent choice, unlike Lydia and Wickham, and Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. Therefore, I must rank her marriage above the previous ones. Her character demonstrated the reality that an ordinary girl of her class had to face. Mr. Collins is a stupid and pompous man. He is not looking to marry someone he loves, he is just in search of a wife and he demonstrates this very well in the novel. He originally plans to propose to Jane, but learning of her supposed engagement to Mr. Bingley, he settles for Elizabeth. She, however, will not have him and he had no problem sneaking across the field to Charlotte who needs little encouragement to accept his proposal. So it turns out that his reasons for wanting a wife are not so much different from that of his wife. They both know what they are getting into and I believe that both of them have gotten exactly what they wanted out of this union. Their marriage might not be filled with passion, but it is a comfortable establishment. Probably the vast majority of marriages at the time had more in common with Mr. Collins and Charlotte, in a sense that they married for utility, than with Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth, who married for love and mutual affection. Charlotte’s decision to marry a man as foolish as Mr. Collins will probably not bring her companionship, but it does promise security, and that is really enough for her. You really cannot condemn Charlotte for settling. Even Elizabeth later admits, “It (the marriage) is certainly a very good match for her.” A couple, from the novel, who marries because of mutual love for one another, is Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley. While their love-at-first-sight meeting might seem like it comes straight out of a romance novel, their union is far from a fairy tale one. They are both very righteous people, and it is mostly their righteousness that keeps them apart for a large portion of the novel. Jane is a beautiful person, inside as well as out. Her beauty serves almost as much against her as for her. She has this tendency to be very trusting, and she always gives people the benefit of the doubt. This might not seem as a fault, but it results in her failure to see through Mr. Bingley’s sisters’ efforts at keeping them apart. Jane fails to see in the letter she receives from Bingley’s sisters that they plan on trying to marry their brother to Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, who they believe is their social equal. In the letter, Bingley’s sisters states that “my brother admires her greatly already” in a rather matter-of-fact way. Because of her naiveness, Jane believes this to be the case. This almost jeopardized hers, as well as Mr. Bingley’s, happiness. She is too nice for her own good, which causes people not to take her feelings seriously. Most of the time, her opinions go unheard. Mr. Bingley is not a bad looking man himself. On top of that, he is a gentleman with an easygoing nature. His best qualities could be seen at the Netherfield ball where he was not too proud to talk to or dance with anyone, in fact, he made sure to dance every dance. During the ball, he exclaims to his friend Darcy that he has “never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening.” Much like Jane, Bingley’s weaknesses are the same as his strengths. The generosity and openness of his nature, that make him so very likable, also make him able to be easily led astray. This is exactly what happens. He also fails to see through his sisters’ scheming and he does not stand up to Darcy’s interference in his relationship. He lets himself be convinced that Jane does not truly care for him. Both of their qualities almost keep Jane and Bingley apart. However, in the end their genuine affections for each other won over. The ball is the place where Jane and Bingley meet for the first time, and right from the start they obviously liked each other. Jane is the only lady there who gets asked to dance by Mr. Bingley two times, and he confides in Darcy that Jane “is the most beautiful creature I have ever beheld.” Even though they experience their fair share of difficulties in the beginning, I predict true happiness for this couple. Bingley is attracted to Jane’s apparent beauty as well as to her sweetness, as she is attracted to his good looks and his sincere goodness. They are kept apart in the beginning through no real fault of their own, unless you consider being too nice and trusting a fault. Jane and Bingley also have a very important quality in a marriage, and that is esteem. They respect one another. Their marriage is almost the best that anyone can ask for, whether it be in the 1800’s or the year 2000. I do not doubt that they are in fact truly in love. The only drawback is that they seem to lack passion in their love. Their love is almost easy going, sort of like their personalities. I do not think their feelings for each other will fade, but their ways of showing their mutual affection lacks that certain zeal and fire. A possible reason for this is because they do not seem to be very enthusiastic people and extremely modest, not that it has to be a bad thing. Nevertheless, I truly believe that they will be enormously happy together. Money was a very important consideration in choosing a life partner at that time. In that sense Jane is very lucky. She actually loves her husband and he loves her back just the same. That is already very fortunate for her. Also, another of her blessings lay in the fact that she also married into money. She gets the best of both worlds. She gets to marry the man that she loves, and she also gets to rise up economically. In other words, she gets love, position, and money. Finally, the last and most important couple is Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Unlike in the case of Jane and Bingley, you could not even tell that they like each other when they first meet. In fact, they cannot like each other less. During their first meeting at Netherfield Park, Darcy even insults Elizabeth by refusing to dance with her, considering Elizabeth and her family to be socially inferior to himself. It is, however, Darcy’s affection for Elizabeth that grows first, in spite of him. It takes Elizabeth a lot longer to realize her feelings toward him. In fact, she even gets to have the satisfaction of refusing him a dance at a later ball, but this is before she realizes she actually likes him. So you can easily see that they do not simply fall in love and live happily ever after. It is important to examine the characters of Darcy and Elizabeth because it goes to show why they end up making such a great match in the end. Elizabeth is an extremely strong-willed and independent woman. She is her father’s favorite daughter; she inherited his sense of humor as well as his sarcasm. Elizabeth is very quick to express her feelings, sometimes a little too quick, as in the case of Darcy. She does not like Darcy from the beginning. She believes him to be proud and conceited. Her prejudices against him deepen with Wickham’s story of how Darcy stole his inheritance, and with what she believes he did to make Jane unhappy. It is not until Darcy actually proposes to Elizabeth, “in spite of all his ...