Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice

When reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, many of the ideals revolving around marriage that we saw in The Duchess film were prevalent. The first quote that stood out to me was talking about the mother and stated, “The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.” The way that this sentence is worded leads the audience to interpret that the only job that a mother has once she has a daughter is to find someone of high power to marry them. This is heartbreaking to learn about because mothers in today’s world have children for various other reasons, the main one being to take care of and spend time with them. Back then, people had children for the sole purpose of keeping the family name going and keeping power in the family. This sort of marriage is emotionally draining on the wife’s part, but also on mothers because all of the pressure is on them to get their daughters married. 

    Later in the text, Austen stated, “But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man, whom they had never seen before, of most gentlemanlike appearance, walking with another officer on the other side of the way.” This language makes it seem as though these arranged marriages were based solely on appearance. Today, we are told that looks are not everything and that there is much more to a person when you look beneath the surface. In the text, we see that that is not the case and that the purpose of marriages is very different than it is now. Today, marriage is about love and romance whereas back then, marrying someone could have meant that you don’t even have to know them very well; it was based mainly on appearance and social status. 

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice.

Comments

  1. Sydney SizemoreFebruary 11, 2021 at 8:07 AM

    I think your analysis of both quotes is spot on. I also really enjoyed that you took information learned from the movie and applied it to the novel. I thought it was really interesting that you looked at how the marriage affected the mother rather than just the daughters, because I do not believe this is something that is considered very often. In the movie, we see the mothers desire to marry off her daughter, but I agree that it is emphasized greatly in Pride and Prejudice.

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