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March 29, 2017
Pride and Prejudice, Book Club Entry 1
March 29, 2017
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”(5)
Mrs.Bennet is a mother of 5 unmarried daughters, and the arrival of a wealthy young man named Charles Bingley, stirs her interest. She essentially want’s one of her daughters to marry the young man in Longbourn, while his stay. She assumes based on the quote that he may be here in the interest of finding a spouse and therefore creates this intense environment in the Bennet household to engage with this young man. So that one of her daughter’s can be married into a wealthy family and can live a great life, simply because of how wealthy he is.
When I first saw this quote I thought it seemed quite normal to me, as I have heard of things along the same lines many times before. I have often seen it in my own family with almost all of my older cousin brothers and some of my uncles, when they reach that age where they have well established their life and have an increasing income coming in, and they’re getting settled. There seems to be this environment that gets created amongst the family that try’s to provoke them to get married and even if the thought of having a wife wasn’t there or didn’t have as much importance gains a lot of attention and a lot of importance. There’s this social pressure put upon them that before they can take any other big step in life they need to divert all their attention to getting married and getting a wife. Then as this thought grows in their head it becomes something that they focus on hold great importance to their life.
Siddiqui, Fatima. "A Marxist Reading of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice." Academia.edu. Academia, 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2017.
According to the writings of Siddiqui “For a women who belonged to the lower class, it was difficult to find a husband”(par 31). So it is easy to understand why there was so much pressure from Mrs.Bennet to get one of her daughters visible in the eyes of Bingley so that eventually they could get married. So here you can see the power differentials and because of this social structure of social class it cause implication in another social system of marriage. The upper class are of course seen to be superior and hence they have more power where as the lower class are the opposite and that’s why its harder for a female to find a husband. Also since the power here is in the hands of the male which is Mr.Bingley, because he ultimately chooses if he wants to get married it imposes more pressure on Mrs.Bennet’s daughters to impress him.
“ It is amazing to me, to see how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are” (38)
At this stage in the book a note arrives inviting Jane to Netherfield Park for a day. Unfortunately, Jane is soaked, falls ill, and is forced to remain at Netherfield as she is not capable of returning. Elizabeth goes to visit...
