Pride and Prejudice
Marriage- Lydia and Wickham
From the start of Pride and Prejudice it is clear that marriage is one of the most important aspects of the novel with the famous opening line reading “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in a want of a wife”. This opening line tells us about the plot and Mrs. Bennett fills in the gaps in the rest of the first chapter with Mr. Bingley taking on the role of the single rich man and the wife being anyone of her five young daughters. We also see the urgency of Mrs. Bennett to have her daughters married, To understand this urgency one must have an understanding of the way things were in the nineteenth century.
Nineteenth century England was an aristocracy and peoples social standing was decided on how wealthy their family was and how mannerly and agreeable they were as individuals. The goal of a man was to grow up to be a wealthy gentleman and marry a beautiful woman who would be a good mother and a good wife. The goal of women was to grow up to please a wealthy man enough so that they could be married and in order to do this they were not educated in subjects that would start them in a career but taught domestic skills like sewing, how to be a good mother and to dress and look well so they would please rich men. If a woman was not married then she would be forced to live off a family member such as a brother or uncle or even a cousin but this life would require them to be servants and live demeaning lives so it was the goal of most women to marry a rich man and if this was achieved then the woman was set for life and considered a success by her peers. The other option for unmarried women was to become a servant to a rich family or a governess to a young woman, which was like a chaperone who would look after a rich young woman. Neither of these jobs provided a decent wage and they also lowered the social standing of young women as striving for independence was frowned upon. Higher education was unavailable to women so they could only reach a certain level of education and this level would not gain them a decent job so the majority submitted and conformed to the social expectation and aimed to marry a rich man.
