Marriage in Jane Austen's Novels
Jane Austen Wrote of the Need for a Good Match – Most of the Time
Jul 4, 2009
Most people were not so lucky to have both affection and fortune. Women, especially, were compelled to marry by the mores of the time basically to survive, unless they inherited family money or earned a living. But working as a teacher or governess was a meager prospect that women did not choose, but rather were forced into by circumstances.
There are few more famous opening lines than that of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
However, single women with even small family inheritances also had to protect themselves from dangers of being “caught” by fortune-hunters. Everyone knew the so-called hunting was taking place, but it was not mentioned as such in polite society.
Men and women donned their finery and paraded themselves around at parties, social events such as recitals, and balls. The game was on. Most pretended to or simply did not see the truth of what was happening.
Jane Austen saw through the games and frippery and felt frustrated by the plight of those without fortunes, especially women. A loveless match and a resulting lifetime of misery were the prices paid for survival.
Marriage Without Love
“Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection,” Jane Austen wrote to her relative Fanny Knight in November 1814. And this theme is echoed by characters in almost all of Jane Austen’s novels and her other writings.
- The reasons for marrying without love are explained by Elizabeth Watson in The Watsons: “But you know we must marry … but my father cannot provide for us, and it is very bad to grow old and be poor and laughed at.”
- Her sister Emma answered her: “Poverty is a great evil; but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.”
- Even the naïve character Catherine Morland from Northanger Abbey had a strong opinion about marriage without love: “And to marry for money I think is the wickedest thing in existence.”
- However, the ever-prudent Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet’s friend in Pride and Prejudice, who chose to marry the ridiculous clergyman Mr. Collins after Elizabeth refused him, set forth the more common view and condition for which most people had to settle: “In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
- Indeed, in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen uses Charlotte Lucas’ position to explain the situation: “Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been (Charlotte Lucas’) object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.”
Jane Austen’s Own Courting Experiences
Jane and Cassandra Austen were not strangers to affairs of the heart and the courting rituals of the day.
- Cassandra was actually engaged to a man named Tom Fowle who died of yellow fever in the West Indies. Her family supported and sought to comfort her, but she never again thought of engagements or marriage. Perhaps her negative experience with love affected her younger sister, who so looked up to her.
- Nonetheless, Jane Austen had several brushes with love and affection, which she managed to brush off. A family friend named Tom LeFroy paid her the closest attentions, yet went away without proposing and Jane Austen let him go without taking it too much to heart. A summer romance was serious, but he died before they could pursue the relationship further.
- Finally, Jane Austen actually accepted an offer of marriage from a man she liked, but did not love. His name was Harris Bigg-Wither. Perhaps it was his name, perhaps it was a night of contemplation, but the next morning, Jane Austen told him she could not marry him. She and Cassandra then removed themselves with all dispatch from the area.
Joys of Single Living
Jane Austen and Cassandra visited friends and attended parties and balls. Cassandra drew and painted, and Jane Austen was seriously writing, though in secret. They were free to follow their passions. Jane Austen perhaps has the title character from Emma speak for them when she says: “A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.”
Marriage, in Jane Austen’s time, was more often a matter of necessity, of business, even, than of love.
Rather than the harsh criticisms levied against her writing that denigrate it as only focusing on marriage, Jane Austen’s work can be viewed as statements about her time, venues for her observations and frustrations with the way things were.
She perhaps used her sharp wit to cover true anger and tired annoyance at an archaic system that caused so much pain to both men and women.
And she used her good wits and happy circumstances to avoid getting caught in the marriage trap. Perhaps readers can thank her single life for her work – if she had been married, she might not have been free to write, or perhaps would have died earlier in childbirth, though her life was indeed cut way too short as it was.
Truly, Jane Austen has a much nicer ring to it than Jane Bigg-Wither.
Sources:
The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen, compiled by Dominique Enright, Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2002, 2007.
My Dear Cassandra: The Illustrated Letters, selected and introduced by Penelope Hughesh-Hallett, Collins & Brown, 1990.
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