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.
Austen’s
main subject in Pride and Prejudice is courtship and marriage, and not
love leading to marriage. The motive force is the sternly real and universally
acknowledged fact that the mother, and the father, of three marriageable
daughters, must be in search for young men of good fortune for their daughters.
In the novel, there are seven marriages ( Mr.& Mrs Bennet; Bingley & Jane; Elizabeth & Darcy;
Charlotte &Collins; Lydia & Wickham; the Lucases; the Gardiners ), five of them very
important,(and the marriages) as they provide perspectives to judge what are
the requirements of a good marriage. It is obvious that in Jane Austen’s view a
marriage based on pure economic considerations is a bad marriage. Charlotte Lucas, in her
bid to find security, binds herself with Collins who is not an ‘eligible’
bachelor. The background was the inequitable law of succession that gave no
girls the right of inheritance. Again, in a comparatively feudal world, with
little growth of capitalism, employment opportunities for womenfolk from decent
families were nil. Collins’ eligibility consists in his being under the
patronage of Lady Catherine in Hunsford, where he has a very good house and
sufficient income. He intends to marry into the Bennet family in order to
inherit some fortune, and so he shifts his attention from Elizabeth to Jane very
quickly. Charlotte accepts Collins as she is a woman of small fortune, and
seeks a preservative from want. Moreover, she marries Collins despite his
stupidity because she does not wish to die an old maid. The second marriage,
exemplified in the marriage between Lydia and Wickham, being based on physical
charms is also an example of an unhappy marriage. This kind of marriage, where
infatuation plays a greater role than love, is bound to be burdened with
strain, and this is evident in the kind of life that Lydia leads in London
where Wickham merrily and irresponsibly prances about caring little for the
family. They both are dependent on Elizabeth for financial support. A
marriage without financial soundness backing it
is an aerial castle that takes little time to wither. Mae West
reminds us of this peril when he says that ‘love conquers all things – except
poverty and toothache’. Physical attraction that formed the foundation of the
marriage between Lydia and Wickham and that was so strong, is seen to disappear
before long. They remind us of Pope’s words : “ They dream in courtship but in
wedlock awake.” The marriage between Mr. And Mrs. Bennet is far from
being ideal. It is almost parallel to or acts as the model of the relationship
between Lydia and Wickham. Both the partners in the marriage are silly and
superficial, and their relationship is based on forbearance rather than love.
Mr Bennet’s financial strength is the buttress of the relationship. Mr. Bennet
is a subject of inexplicable indifference to the cause of the girls and is a
foil to his wife, who while being silly and shallow, is desperate and
overenthusiastic about finding husbands for their daughters. He is a specimen
of Helen Rowland (1875-1950) who in A Guide to Men said : “ A husband is what
is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.” Little wonder that
Wickham is Mr. Bennet’s ‘favourite son-in-law’.
