Discuss
the themes of love, money and marriage in Pride
and Prejudice.
Love
and marriage are the chief themes in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
This is nothing novel as the themes had been a matter of concern to many
playwrights and novelists ever before. Of them, Shakespeare is there, handling
the theme of love and marriage in their multifarious dimensions. What is
important is that Jane Austen, unlike Shakespeare, handles themes as ground
reality, in the context of social environs in the late 18th century.
Shakespeare also does not evade the question of money in a marriage, and the
best example is The Merchant of Venice which is markedly different from The
Midsummer Night’s Dream. The criticism that Austen moves within a two-inch
box of ivory is invalid as the box may be two-inch in size, but it is not made
of ivory. Austen’s world is the world she lived in and knew, and she made no
attempt to flint her imagination beyond the boundary line. The middle class
society in its necessary intercourse with the aristocracy and the tension that
necessarily springs out in a classified society constitute the workshop of
Austen. Naturally, the themes of love and marriage as handled by her have their
own sociological, psychological and artistic implications. Hence, marriage
which is a social institution is not handled by Austen as the ultimate result
of love however it generates. Matrimony in Pride and Prejudice always
involves the role of money.
