Marriages in Pride and Prejudice

Set in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries England, Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice deals with a marriage subject, as clarified in the opening sentence: “It is truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen 2). While wittily claiming that a wealthy single man should look for a wife, this sentence ironically reveals the society’s uncomfortable reality of marriage, in which women were driven into the bond of marriage entirely for their financial security. Against this conventional attitude of British society, Elizabeth Bennett, the protagonist of the novel, expresses her discontent and further explores her somewhat radical quest towards marriage. Some critics claim that Austen degrades women’s social status in Pride and Prejudice because she eventually ends her story with marriage, emphasizing that marriage is the sole option for women. However, as many other critics suggest, Austen’s …(생략)