Exploring 19th century attitudes towards marriage and courtship in pride and prejudice and comparing these with todays views.

Authors Avatar

Nokutenda Tizora

Exploring 19th century attitudes towards marriage and courtship in pride and prejudice and comparing these with today’s views.

In pride and prejudice Jane Austin uses both male and female characters to express different opinions on marriage in the 1700s. These are some of the factors that were considered important when marrying: speaking a little French, having a talent, playing piano, sewing, and singing. In that time it was voluntary that if a woman wanted to marry well she would have to have an arranged marriage. This links to pride and prejudice because in the 19th century most women were more interested in love rather than wealth when marrying, but the society around them were more into wealth and good looks. In the 1900s marriage took place in a church if a woman decided to divorce it would ruin her reputation. Additionally higher class women weren’t allowed to work and I think that was unfair because she would have never got a chance to experience the world herself. In the poem called “A woman to her lover” by Christina Welsh it states what men expected of their wives which were general things like; the women had to cook, provide children and look after the children because it wasn’t customary for a woman to work.  

        Mrs Bennet was preoccupied with getting her five daughters married because if Mr Bennet died then the daughters would have no where to go and they would be left destitute. Furthermore it was Mrs Bennet’s job as a mother, to make sure that her five daughters were married and they had good matches. It would also set a good example to the society. Mr and Mrs Bennet had a good marriage themselves according to their time.

Mr Collins was a close cousin of the Bennets. And he was to inherit all of Mr Bennet’s belongings when Mr Bennet dies. When Mr Collins paid a visit to the Bennets’ his intention was to make peace between the families because long back Mr Bennet and Mr Collins’ fathers had a disagreement and Mr Collins` father had died, so he came because he had always been uneasy about the disagreement and he felt that as a clergyman, it was his duty to ensure that there was peace in all families, including his own.

Join now!

Mr Collins was disliked by most of the family but he thought it was right for a clergyman like him to get married. Later on in the novel he proposed to Elizabeth who is the second oldest from Jane in the family  because he thought since he was going to inherit the property it would have been good to get married to one of the girls in Mr Bennet’s family. But in fact Elizabeth refuses his proposal because she felt they were ill qualified for each other; also she wouldn’t have been happy living with Mr Collins because he wasn’t ...

This is a preview of the whole essay