In the novel you meet many characters from different types of classes some of who get married. You see different types of marriages based on different types of grounds, such as love. Security, financial reasons etc. The characters Mr and Mrs Collins get married not for love but for financial security and Darcy and Elizabeth get married for real love, although there are also financial reasons involved, if Darcy wasn’t so wealthy as he is it would be highly unlikely that Elizabeth would marry him. The characters Mr and Mrs Collins get married purely not because of love or feelings towards each other. Mrs Collins fears that she will be all alone for the rest of her life since she is old now and fears that if she doesn’t accept his marriage proposal she won’t get another chance, therefore accepts to marry him purely for financial reasons. Mr Collins first asks Elizabeth Bennet to marry him thinking she won’t reject his proposal because his position in society was better than hers. When she declines his proposal he later asks Charlotte to marry him and she accepts. This shows that Mr Collins doesn’t really care about charlotte; he just wants to marry, because in those days it was the right thing to do.
The characters Mr and Mrs Darcy get married because they love each other, which you can see starts to develop during the novel. At first Darcy isn’t attracted to Elizabeth at all. he said: [“She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”] (Chapter 3, Page 7) Elizabeth overheard this conversation between Mr. Darcy and Charles Bingley and got a first impression of Mr. Darcy being arrogant and having too much pride, which is where the book is mostly about, since it was first titled first impressions by Jane Austen but got published under the title Pride and Prejudice instead.
During the novel Darcy meets Elizabeth several times and even though he said in the beginning of the novel that Elizabeth is not handsome enough to tempt him he becomes very attracted to her during the novel. Later it is described that he looks for a woman of intelligence, one who reads, writes, and basically, one who has a mind to think on her own. Elizabeth’s boldness and ability to speak her opinion is what ultimately attracts him to her and when she enters a room he can’t keep his eyes off her.
Elizabeth’s prejudice against Darcy doesn’t change till chapter 13. Which is where Elizabeth finally realizes first impression, and that her pride and prejudice have been false and wrong toward Mr. Darcy. Both Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy could not have experienced such a character transformation as these if it weren’t for their initial first impressions of each other. They both grew to know each other better and deeper and to look beyond first impressions without letting their pride hide their sight of who someone really is.
After Darcy and Elizabeth really knew and loved each other, they married each other, unlike Mr and Mrs Collins who married each other in a situation where love had nothing to do with it at all. The novel starts with: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Although a man in that time could marry someone because he loved her, like Darcy loved Elizabeth. Or because he just wanted to marry for other reasons than love such as Mr Collins.
