1. During the late 1700's and early 1800's, England was embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars and Romanticism dominated European literature. However, Jane Austen, one of the premier authors of her time, made absolutely no reference in her novels either to the historical events of the literary movement taking place in the world around her. Instead, she wrote about what she knew: women and the conditions in which they lived. Due to the narrow scope of her works, Austen was able to show the standards of eighteenth and nineteenth century society, standards which "impose some order and control on a situation that in fact gave scope for great suffering and disastrous marriages, a situation in which women had no status except as a daughter and a wife, and where, if she were deprived of her belief that marriage was both a worthy ambition and her salvation, she would be deprived of life"
2. Marriage Themes:
a. FINANCIAL PRESSURE TO MARRY : In the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice, Austen writes, "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a wife" (51). Actually, Austen, a systematic ironist, meant that a single woman, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, was in want of a man with a good fortune. In Austen's little world, marriage "was the only honorable provision for a well-educated young woman of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want" (Austen 163). The only viable alternative to marriage was to become a governess, commonly referred to as the "governess slave-trade" since "minimum wage and hour limitation for workers did not exist at the time" (Brown 63). Even those who became governesses were not guaranteed stability since unemployment among them was common. In 1869, the "Home for Unemployed Governesses took in 24, 000 women and turned away many more" (Brown 63). It was for this reason - to avoid being a governess - that many of Austen's female characters married. For example, Charlotte Lucas in Pride and Prejudice was a twenty-seven year old woman, unmarried, poor, and plain. Therefore, when Mr. Collins, a man she neither loved nor respected, proposed to her, Charlotte accepted, saying that "considering Mr. Collins's 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" (Austen 165-66). Charlotte and Willoughby, a character in Sense and Sensibility, were the spokesmen for the crass materialism in their society. Like Charlotte, Willoughby married for purely economic reasons. Willoughby was in love with Marianne Dashwood as his actions showed - he offered her one of his horses, he accepted from her a lock of hair, and he called her by her Christian name. To Elinor, Marianne's sister, these actions bespoke "an intimacy so decided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between them" (Thompson 119). But, despite his love for Marianne, Willoughby married Miss Grey, a woman of great fortune. Willoughby's reasoning was simple -"Miss Grey had fifty thousand pounds. Marianne was virtually penniless" (Thompson 150). Had he married Marianne, "he would have had a wife he loved, but no money - and might soon have learned to rank the demands of his pocket-book far above the demands of his heart" (Thompson 189). Willoughby's choice to marry for money instead of love highlighted the plight of poor women during this time by showing how difficult it was for them to find husbands, their only refuge from being penniless old maids or governesses.
b. RESTRICTIONS PLACED ON WOMEN: In addition to financial pressures, the severe restrictions laws and customs of eighteenth and nineteenth century England placed on women made women look to marriage as a means of stability and made women even more dependent on men. For instance, inheritance laws entailed a family's inheritance to a male heir. In the situation of the Bennet family in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet's inheritance, his money and his home, Longbourn House, would have gone to Mr. Collins, his cousin, leaving his wife and five daughters poor and homeless upon his death. As for the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensiblity Mr. Dashwood's "estate of Norland was left to him in such a way as prevented him from dividing it between his families. Norland in its entirety was therefore [John Dashowood, his son]'s by law," but John's stepmother and stepsisters were left with only five hundred pounds a year, barely enough to live on and nothing for the girls' dowries" (Thompson 30). "From Sense and Sensibility, where a male heir deprived his sisters of their home to Pride and Prejudice, where the male entail threatens the Bennet girls with marriages of convenience," Austen showed that "patriarchal control of women depended on women being denied the right to earn or even inherit their own money" (Gilbert and Gubar 136).
c. MARRIAGE MARKET: Since women were deprived of the liberty to earn or inherit money, marriage was their safety net from a life of poverty and despair; thus, women felt that their only alternative was to compete on the marriage market. Men were the buyers; women were the sellers. Society encouraged young women "to exercise gamesmanship instead of honesty, to control rather than to share, and to live through others rather than to find their own fulfillment" (Pearson and Pope 119). For these reasons, good marriages were extremely uncommon. However, a fundamental idea in Austen's novels was that a respectable marriage was an equal marriage in which man and woman were partners, and was therefore based on friendship, love, and esteem. In Austen's opinion, a person should "do anything rather than marry without affection" (Austen 382). The paradigm of these ideas was the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. When Darcy insulted Elizabeth Bennet by telling her that he loved her despite "his sense of her inferiority," Elizabeth firmly told him that, even though he was rich and powerful, she "had not known [him] a month before [she] felt [he] was the last man in the world whom [she] could ever be prevailed to marry" (Austen 224). Only after Darcy realized that he and Elizabeth were equals - equally intelligent, equally articulate, and equally proud and prejudiced - did Elizabeth give up her prejudice against him. Through her portrait of Elizabeth and Darcy, Austen made the reader believe in the possibility of love and identity, the chance for true love, because she showed it happening in the very midst of the forces that had traditionally worked against it.
d. CONSEQUENCES OF AN UNEQUAL MARRIAGE:In contrast to the relationship of Darcy and Elizabeth, the relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Mr. and Mrs. Palmer in Sense and Sensibility showed the consequences of disregarding the essential components, according to Jane Austen, of a happy marriage: equality, respect, and love. Mrs. Bennet, "a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper," was not Mr. Bennet's intellectual equal; instead, she was merely a pretty face (Austen 53). Likewise, Mr. Palmer was captivated by an airhead with a pretty face and, unfortunately, he "cannot give her back" (Thompson 122). As a result of their unequal and unfulfilling marriages, Mr. Bennet spent his life making fun of Mrs. Bennet and "belittling his responsibilities to her, to his children, and to his society," while Mr. Palmer was invariably rude to his wife and almost everyone around him (Pearson and Pope 120).
3. Continue watching Sense and Sensibility. Have students continue to look at the following themes:
a. money/inheritance
b. role of women
c. expectations vs. reality
d. marriage and courtship
e. sense or logic, balance, reason and enlightenment
f. sensibility, or passion, and romanticism
g. social classes and hierarchies
Homework Collected: Persuasive Research Paper
Homework Given: Reflection Paper Due: April 14
Handouts given out: None
To Read: None
