Pride and Prejudice - Discuss in Relation to the Novel, the Importance of Marriage and the Status of Women in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries

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'Discuss in Relation to the Novel, the Importance of Marriage and the Status of Women in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries'

Throughout her novels, Jane Austen writes many things in relation to the status of women and how important marriage was to them in regency England. This essay will discuss how Jane Austen relates the importance of marriage and the status of women through her novel: Pride and Prejudice.

Jane Austen uses both Lydia and Elizabeth to tell readers a lot about the importance of marriage, and the advancement it could have brought to the status of a woman in her time.

'Lord, how I should like to be married before any of you; and then I would chaperone you about to all the balls'

(In this time, an unmarried woman needed a married woman, known as a chaperon, to escort her to a ball). Marriage was the only way for a woman to gain any status of her own, and here Lydia is telling us how she would love to have a status above her sisters who, being older than her, would have been her superiors in the family hierarchy. In