When Darcy is introduced in the novel, the first thing that the reader is introduced to him is how much money he has, suggesting that perhaps in Jane Austen’s time people with money were more mercenary and it seems that the income that a person did have was more important than most other things. The amount of money a person's family had, also determined that person's rank in society like Emma and the Bennet girls. Knowing a person's income gave a very good idea of how that person lived.
Like money, marriage is also compared and contrasted very early on tending to reveal Jane Austen’s own attitudes and concerns. In chapter three of Pride and Prejudice, Bingley and Darcy’s attitudes are contrasted with each other and so are Jane and Elizabeth's personalities. In this chapter two love affairs are beginning to shows and are being contrasted. The romance of Jane and Bingley starts smoothly whereas Elizabeth and Darcy manage to antagonize each other from the very beginning. We can look forward to seeing them strike sparks from each other whenever they meet. Jane Austen
In Emma, the opening lines are portrayed differently to Pride and Prejudice. They give the impression of a certain kind of person to begin with. ‘Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich…had lived nearly twenty one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.’ Jane Austen tends to be a shrewd observer of human nature and represents this by mocking the society she lived in.’ One of the major themes portrayed in Emma, is arrogance and self- deception. Emma is one such person as she foolishly thinks that she is better than most people and is capable of managing the lives of others, such as Harriet Smith and Elton who is a Clergyman.
An important theme that runs throughout ‘Emma’ as well as in Pride and Prejudice is the importance of marriage. It was very important to a woman in the English society of the eighteenth century to get married because she didn’t have any real chance of a career. She was totally dependent upon her husband for support. If a husband was not found for a woman then she may have to take up work that might be humiliating or undignified such as being a governess, like Miss Taylor was. Jane Fairfax refused to accept that sort of job and was keen to marry so she didn’t have to become a governess therefore many women may have been trapped in unhappy marriages. The marriage of Emma's elder sister Isabella to John Knightley, who is a lawyer, shows that the husband and the wife only tolerate, each other for the sake of their five children, as they don’t seem to love each other. Jane Austen's views about marriage tend to be conveyed throughout and it seems to be her who is behind all the ideas that people think. Miss Bates, a character in ‘Emma’ is an example of an unmarried woman being an object of pity. She wasn’t able to get married because she didn’t have a dowry big enough and she lived with her elderly mother who she wanted to look after which she wouldn’t have been able to do if she had been married. Hidden within the marriages portrayed is also social rank. Harriet Smith is an example of this because she is an illegitimate daughter and is ‘the natural daughter of somebody’. She has lived in a boarding school for most of her life and therefore is of a low social class but she is eligible to marry someone of a higher rank because she has a big dowry but she is happy to marry Robert Martin who is a tenant Lots of marriages take place such as Miss Taylor and Mr Weston’s, Mr Elton’s, Emma and Mr Knightley’s and Harriet and Mr Martin’s, therefore the marriages at the end of the novel show differences of social, economic and psychological bases for marriage.
In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen depicts her ideas of a relationship and all kinds of marriages. Mr and Mrs Bennet’s marriage is an example of a bad marriage as they are completely different characters. For the women of her time marriage was often the only escape from a depressing spinsterhood in respectable poverty. Around this crucial issue of marriage she weaves her lively sub themes of social criticism, making fun of snobbery, hypocrisy, the spiteful gossip of respectable housewives and the prying impertinence of wealthy ladies. While she concentrates on mainly getting the Bennet girls married, Austen actually examines marriage itself, and the effect it has on five different couples. She comments, through her heroine, on the ironic fact that the Bennets must be happy over a marriage that can bring no happiness to anyone. An example of that was the impending marriage between Lydia and Wickham.
In conclusion, Jane Austen conveys many of her attitudes and concerns in the opening chapters, which include marriage and money, and the reader gets an insight into how they lived and what their ideas of morals were. In Emma she cleverly expresses how the reader should think of Emma because she is a horrible character, but later on we see that she does have some compassion and she does realises that she was wrong in the end. In Pride and Prejudice the very main character is Darcy and at the beginning he is seen as arrogant and full of pride but later in the book, the reader discovers that he is in fact very generous and kind especially towards his tenants and anyone connected to him. He also saves the Bennet family from disgrace when Lydia runs off with Wickham, which Elizabeth is immensely grateful to him and her prejudice of him disappears.
