Reread the exchange between Charlotte and Elizabeth about marriage. :: Free Essay Writer

Reread the exchange between Charlotte and Elizabeth about marriage. How does this section of the novel provide a foundation for the novel’s central messages regarding marriage? In Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’ one of the main themes through out is marriage. In the exchange between Elizabeth Bennett and her friend Charlotte Lucas in Chapter six two main views on marriage are bought to the forefront. Charlotte gives the view that marriage is more of a necessity so that women can have financial stability, whereas it is evident that Elizabeth believes marriage should be a union of two loving people and a lasting emotional situation. Charlotte’s view is that she will marry Collins because she needs to hold her situation financially and socially, and not because of any mutual feeling of love between them. She thinks that it is neither necessary nor beneficial to know some one well or to particularly like some one before you marry them. ‘Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance’ says Charlotte. She then also says ‘I should think she has a good a chance of happiness as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth’. By saying this, she is implying that it doesn’t matter how well you know someone before you marry him or her, as it will make no difference to whether or not it is a happy marriage. Charlotte even goes a step further and states that people ‘always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation’ meaning that it might be worse to know someone well before marriage. This interpretation is affirmed when Charlotte says ‘It is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with’. The view that Charlotte puts forward in Chapter six was a common opinion held in the late 18th and early 19th century. Many women who were part of the middle classes were often not sent to school and so didn’t usually learn a skill that they could use to make a living. Consequently, as they were women and so were often not left much, if any, inheritance when their parents died, women found that they must marry in order to have money and to keep their place in society. Charlotte takes advantage of her situation to marry purely for money and not for love, this is what many women did and what society encouraged. Elizabeth’s views are a contrast to Charlotte’s. Elizabeth believes that to have happiness in marriage there must be love.