Jane Austen’s light, ironic style cannot conceal the fact that she took marriage very seriously, particularly for women born without a fortune. Underlying her novels is the sense that marriage is a dangerous proposition for anyone who enters into it for the wrong reasons. Men and women, therefore, must strive for what Austen calls “intelligent love,” a love which places reason above passion. She created a number of memorable characters who personify that ideal, such as Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Knightley and Anne Elliot, all of whom marry only after adversity and trials have fully tested them and their beloved. To emphasize the importance of that ideal, as will be shown, she created equally memorable characters who are driven by their emotional or financial needs to marry in haste, and whose lives then turn into a caution for her readers.
Mrs. Bennet is one of those cautionary characters. She is the best known of Austen’s mothers, portrayed in the novel Pride and Prejudice as “a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper.” Her husband is an intelligent, kindly man who spends most of his time in the library, hiding from his wife; or, as the narrator says, “Mr. Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character” (Ch. 1, 3).
The reasons he married her may be deduced from the character of his daughters. At the time he met her she must have been beautiful, impulsive and lively just as two of his three “very silly daughters” are now, and he must have been as irresponsible then as he is when he ignores Elizabeth’s advice to discipline Lydia and thus prevent her elopement with Lt. Wickham later (Ch. 41, 205). Mrs. Bennet is the more responsible of the two parents, one who is fully aware of the financial danger her daughters are in for as long as they remain single. Her methods might be questionable but without support from her husband, she cannot be expected to do much more. The downside of marriage is seen in the way she and her husband work at cross-purposes, unable to communicate or even understand each other, and the way they bring out the worst qualities in one another. In that way, Austen strengthens her moral argument that marriages must be made intelligently and between equals, or the marriage and the children it produces will suffer the consequences.
There are other examples of marriages contracted for the wrong reasons in Pride and Prejudice, notably Charlotte Lucas’s marriage to the Reverend Mr. Collins. Charlotte is past her prime, yet more than anything she wants to manage her household. She, therefore, accepts Collins’s offer of marriage three days after Elizabeth has refused him, fully conscious of his less attractive qualities. In a conversation with Elizabeth sometime before the proposal, Charlotte explains that she sees little point in getting to know a prospective mate, saying that “happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. … it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life” (Ch. 6, 12), a philosophy that will help her accept Mr. Collins’s offer. Elizabeth believes she is merely being cynical but the narrator takes a different view:
The stupidity with which he [Mr. Collins] was favored by nature must guard his courtship against any charm that could make a woman wish for its continuance; and Miss Lucas, who accepted him solely from the pure and disinterested desire of an establishment, cared not how soon that establishment was gained. (Ch. 22, 62)
This is taking rational marriage too far. When Elizabeth visits her she finds Charlotte has encouraged her husband to take up gardening to get him out of the house as often as possible. In those and other ways, she has adapted to a loveless marriage. At the other extreme, Lydia’s impetuous elopement with Lt. George Wickham shows no regard for the family’s name or her future, only her feelings at that moment and the consequences of her action threaten the family’s reputation. The ideal marriage lies somewhere in the middle of Charlotte’s and Lydia’s and will be modeled by Elizabeth’s marriage to Mr. Darcy.
In Emma, the heroine loses her governess, Ann Taylor, when she marries a well-to-do businessman, Mr. Weston. Their marriage is an example of a union based on mutual love and respect which has a deeper influence on Emma than she realizes. One result is that she is well disposed toward Mr. Weston’s son, Frank Churchill, and responds to his flirtation by becoming mildly infatuated with him. Frank, however, is secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax who comes to Emma’s village ostensibly to stay with her relatives, Mrs. and Miss Bates. In Jane, Austen shows what can happen to a beautiful, accomplished, and personable woman when she is born without a fortune. Jane has been educated to earn her living as a governess, a fate she abhors. Only a good marriage can save her, and she depends on Frank to do exactly that.
Frank has many good qualities but behaves recklessly at times, even flirting with Emma in front of Jane even though he can see how unhappy that makes her. All the indications are that he will continue to make Jane miserable even after they are married. Mr. Knightley, the most reliable character in that novel of misunderstandings and secrets, tells Emma that Frank Churchill is “a disgrace to the name of man.–And is he to be rewarded with that sweet young woman?– Jane, Jane, you will be a miserable creature” (Ch. XIII, 226). When he learns that Emma was only flattered by Frank’s attention, not in love with him, Mr. Knightley tries to wish him well but ends by saying that Frank “had used everybody ill–and they are all delighted to forgive him.– He is a fortunate man indeed!” (Ch. XIII, 227). In that way, Austen emphasizes Frank’s weak character and reaffirms that marriage not based on mutual love and respect will lead to unhappiness.
Not that her characters’ traits are fixed. If they learn from their mistakes they can be redeemed. Harriet Smith, for example, allows herself to be persuaded to give up the man she loves for one her mentor, Emma, believes is more suitable. By trying to match the naïve girl up with the Rev. Mr. Elton, Emma interferes with the natural processes in which she, unknowingly, is participating as she slowly comes to realize that she is in love with Mr. Knightley. When Harriet obediently falls in love with Mr. Elton, Emma has to tell her that Elton has fallen in love with her (Emma); then has to stand by and watch Harriet fall in love with Mr. Knightley to whom Emma by this time feels she has a prior claim. In the end, Harriet returns to her farmer and all ends well but Austen’s point is clear: Emma may think she brought Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston together, and she may think she can succeed again with Harriet, but, as the narrator says, Emma had “a disposition to think a little too well of herself” (Ch. 1, p. 1). It is Emma’s overconfidence that almost ruins Harriet’s life, and would have if the younger woman had not benefited from her experiences and, as a result, had seen that Robert Martin, her original choice, was the right man for her. In the same way, Emma learns from her mistakes and is redeemed by them.
In Persuasion, Lady Russell performs Emma’s part by advising Anne Elliot against marrying a naval officer, Captain Wentworth. Anne and Wentworth were young and in love but Lady Russell felt Anne could and should marry better. As a result of this separation, Anne has lost much of the beauty that once attracted Wentworth and is at the age where eligible young women turn into spinsters. She is courted by her cousin, William Elliot but finds him difficult to understand until she learns from her friend, Mrs. Smith, that he has a bad character. Her relationship with him, however, has revived Captain Wentworth’s interest and so the novel heads for a happy ending.
However, for her sister Elizabeth, there is no such possibility. All through the novel, Elizabeth has shown the worst traits of her father, whose strongest feature is vanity and whose self-love is so great that he approves of Captain Wentworth because he imagines he cuts an equally dashing figure as himself. At the end of the novel, Elizabeth and her father are excluded from Anne’s happy life, although she takes care to include Mrs. Smith and even Lady Russell. In some ways, Elizabeth’s fate is worse than any of Austen’s characters, even Lydia’s, because her character has been found unworthy of marriage. As the narrator says toward the end, “it would be an insult to the nature of Anne’s felicity, to draw any comparison between it and her sister’s; the origin of one all selfish vanity, of the other all generous attachment” (Ch. 20, 159). Elizabeth’s only chance at marriage would come if she were to meet someone like Mr. Collins.
There are other examples of the downside of marriage in Persuasion. When Anne visits her sister Mary, married to Charles Musgrove, she sees that Charles could have married better and that if he had “Anne could believe, with Lady Russell, that a more equal match might have greatly improved him; and that a woman of real understanding might have given more consequence to his character, and more usefulness, rationality, and elegance to his habits and pursuits” (Ch. 6, 39). This is true of Mr. Bennet as well and Mrs. Bennet. The best marriages in Austen’s novels are those that are preceded by a trial of constancy and love. Thus Darcy has to undergo the humiliation of being refused by Elizabeth, then must demonstrate his love and after that, he must run the risk of proposing again. Mr. Knightley has to wait until the girl he loves becomes a woman, and Captain Wentworth has to fall in love with the older, wiser Anne Elliot before she can give herself to him unconditionally. For those who do not put each other to the test but marry on impulse, like Lydia Bennet, Frank Churchill, or Charles Musgrave, marriage soon turns into a lifelong punishment. In that way, Austen reinforces her argument that passions mislead us.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. (1813) Introd. Isobel Armstrong. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
Emma. (1816) London: Penguin Books, 1996.
Persuasion. New York: Modern Library, 2001.