With the benefit of age, it has become apparent to me that the least interesting aspect about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the love story between Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. The improbable love match between a rich, honorable man of rank and a downwardly-mobile gentleman’s daughter is the dash of fantasy Austen throws into a world full of far less fanciful marriages.
1. Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins
“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. … [I]t is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”
“You make me laugh, Charlotte; but it is not sound. You know it is not sound, and you would never act in this way yourself.”
How true it is that we suppose our friends are of like mind about things we deem important. And how devastating it thus feels when we are disabused of this notion, as Elizabeth is when Charlotte herself brings the news that she has accepted Mr. Collins. She not only fears for her friend’s unhappiness, she considers it a stain on her character that she has “sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage.”
Elizabeth’s critique of her friend’s impurity of heart befits her status as fairy-tale heroine. In the real world, transactional marriage is a status quo.
Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. […] Mr. Collins to be sure was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly of either men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
A modern reader likely has to suspend a bit of repulsion or outrage (or both) to match Charlotte’s equanimity. It offends our own sense of “purity” that the “pleasantest” option for a woman to secure the means to live was loveless marriage. This notion of purity revolves not so much around love as around the ideal of self-determination—to expect a woman to marry a man—for money, for love, or for children—is pure and simple patriarchy. Women can do as they please.
And they can—but the reality of “want” always intrudes. Does anyone think that the economy is de facto a pleasanter preservative from poverty? Obviously, for women who have remunerative careers, it absolutely is. But for every Elizabeth Bennet with a great job and understanding boss, there are many more Charlottes raising kids on minimum wage jobs.
2. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet
At the end of Volume Two, as a foreshadowing to Lydia’s not-even-an-elopement with the dastardly Wickham, Austen reflects on the dysfunctional marriage between Elizabeth’s parents.
Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished forever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown.
In this world where most men are expected to marry and most women must, there remains the matter of character. Mr. Bennet choose poorly, and while he did not turn to disreputable habits that many husbands used “to seek comfort,” he did not spare his children the “impropriety” of “exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children.”
But she had never felt so strongly as now the disadvantages which must attend the children of so unsuitable a marriage, nor ever been so fully aware of the evils arising from so ill-judged a direction of talents, talents which rightly used might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife.
Marriage is a uniquely peculiar institution: its existence is foundational, its attachments “imaginary”, its disappointments formidable—and the cost of failure nothing short of “evils arising”. But the source of these evils is not the fault of the institution, but rather of personal short-comings. Good marriages, like good character, are in short supply.
3. Lydia Bennet and Wickham
It’s not impossible to read flighty, officer-crazed Lydia as some sort of anti-hero, whether through ignorance or precocity willing to take a “what-me-care?” attitude toward the moral expectations of the society around her. Elizabeth is scared for her sister’s ruin, for its reputational consequences include her own prospects, but Elizabeth’s dominant feeling is incomprehension.
“But can you think that Lydia is so lost to everything but love of him as to consent to live with him on any other terms than marriage?”
“It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed,” replied Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes, “that a sister’s sense of decency and virtue in such a point should admit of doubt. But, really, I know not what to say. Perhaps I am not doing her justice.”
Elizabeth cannot understand her sister—just as she discovered she does not really understand Charlotte. Despite Elizabeth’s status a heroine, we should not mistake the reward of a rich husband who loves her as a blanket endorsement of the “purity” argument for companionate marriage. Through Elizabeth’s surprise and doubts, Austen makes clear that there is no simple endorsement possible, for the range of character among humans is so wide that, though they may ostensibly strive for the same objective (happiness), there can be no expectation that their destinies will not diverge.
4. Jane Bennet and Mr. Bingley
“If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. […] In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.”
Jane’s marriage is the other happy union formed over the course of the novel—but it takes the entire course of the novel to bring it to fruition. Jane is a model of integrity and decorum, but once again, Charlotte’s cynical insight proves exact. Because Bingley has no real assurance that Jane loves him (although one might ask how someone of her reservation and mildness would have accomplished that), he is easily swayed by Darcy’s advice to look elsewhere for a wife, given the “inferiority” of the Bennet family’s “connections.”
Arguably, the Bingley’s happy union is the payoff for the long, uncertain period of longing. Though lacking the drama of the events between Elizabeth and Darcy, both couples have promising marital futures. Jane and Elizabeth are not just natural siblings, there are sisters in the Club of Happy Marriages, a bond arguably stronger. Indeed, after just one year, the Bingleys move to Derbyshire so that the sisters end up living “within thirty miles of each other.” Happiness loves company, too.
USG: husband of last resort?
If obligate marriage has now been exposed as an unsafe and unfair institution, the question of what sort of social institution should take its place remains unresolved. As reductive as it was to assign men to the role of breadwinners and women to the role of child-rearers, two facts remain: children require care and the vast majority of people have to work for a living.
The pandemic has exposed the precariousness—indeed, we might as well say the lie—of working motherhood in America. Without school or daycare, many mothers will simply not be able to work the jobs they held before the pandemic (if those jobs still exist). For women who were the sole breadwinners for themselves and their children, this is an existential crisis. If a husband is no longer required, expected, or desired for motherhood, perhaps it is only a matter of time before the state itself assumes the role of breadwinner. If, as Austen teaches us, character is destiny, a mother could certainly do worse do than a regular—and silent—monthly check….