Jane Austen’s genius comprehends the subject of marriage and the book of love in all its intricacy, practicality, goodness, and mystery.

Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: 

A Book of Love & Marriage

by Mitchell Kalpakgian 

Jane Austen’s genius comprehends the subject of marriage and the book of love in all its intricacy, practicality, goodness, and mystery. Her novels center on the importance of marriage as one of life’s most important choices and life’s greatest source of happiness—“all the best blessings of existence” to use a phrase from Emma. In Emma the bachelor Mr. Knightley observes of his brother’s marriage, “There was too much happiness in his brother’s house; woman wore too amiable a form in it.”Pride and Prejudice portrays the entire range of motives and reasons that distinguish the best marriages from mediocre matches.

First, many choose marriage for its social benefits and image of respectability. Mr. Collins visits the Bennet family with the intention of marrying one of the daughters because his patroness Lady Catherine has advised the young Anglican clergyman to uphold propriety and convention. To win the approval of this wealthy aristocrat to whom he is obliged for his living, Collins in the course of a two week visit pursues marriage as a transaction without the romance of courtship, expecting to marry the oldest daughter Jane who is ineligible, proposing to Elizabeth who adamantly rejects his offer, and choosing Charlotte who accepts his proposal because, as she explains to Elizabeth, “I am not romantic you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home, and considering Mr. Collins’ character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.” Charlotte’s desire for economic security and her wish to escape the stigma of old maid move her to accept Collins’ idea of marriage as a mere social arrangement based exclusively upon financial independence and popular approval. Elizabeth is forewarned both by Collins and Mrs. Bennet that a sensible woman never shuns the one marriage proposal she may receive in her lifetime: “But I tell you what, Miss Lizzy, if you take it into your head to go refusing every offer of marriage in this way, you will never get a husband at all.”


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