How Does Jane Austen's View Of Marriage
Aside from Harriet and Jane, Miss Bates also exemplifies a possible marriage scenario for women who lack Emma’s high social status. Miss Bates never married and is dependent on her mother’s minimal income. With each passing year, her poverty increases, as does the amount of derision that she must endure from those around her. As marriage was the normal and expected role for middle class women to follow, those that did not marry were regarded as social failures and treated with pity and contempt. Only Miss Bates remains the perpetual spinster, serving as a warning to those women who are unable to achieve matrimony during their youth. Ironically, this is the path that Austen herself was forced to follow. Neither she nor her sister ever married,
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Austen uses Harriet's marriage to criticize the marriage and class systems that prevent women from improving their own extremely limited agency. Jane’s courtship to Frank Churchill shows how a woman can reap the associated benefits of increased power and agency through marriage. Through the representation of Emma, Austen implies that an educated young woman not only can achieve a happy marriage based on equality rather than subservience, on love rather than submission, but she also can play a crucial role in insuring the moral health of her society. By writing about three couples from widely different strata of society, Austen shows us the result of hearts finding happiness in a variety of ways. Each of the six people discussed above finally found a proper partner, though their searches were complicated by considerations that might seem old fashioned. Perhaps rank, fortune, and family connections are no longer the usual conversation on a first date, but these things have to be taken into consideration just as much in the 21st century as they were in the 19th. A match in which the couple is unequal in intelligence, cultural background, finances, etc. holds many potential pitfalls, and the incidents in Emma are a word to the wise. Still, Austen leaves us with a significant point: despite meddling interference, incongruous circumstances, and the confusion of not knowing their own hearts, all six characters have their dreams of love come
Austen uses Harriet's marriage to criticize the marriage and class systems that prevent women from improving their own extremely limited agency. Jane’s courtship to Frank Churchill shows how a woman can reap the associated benefits of increased power and agency through marriage. Through the representation of Emma, Austen implies that an educated young woman not only can achieve a happy marriage based on equality rather than subservience, on love rather than submission, but she also can play a crucial role in insuring the moral health of her society. By writing about three couples from widely different strata of society, Austen shows us the result of hearts finding happiness in a variety of ways. Each of the six people discussed above finally found a proper partner, though their searches were complicated by considerations that might seem old fashioned. Perhaps rank, fortune, and family connections are no longer the usual conversation on a first date, but these things have to be taken into consideration just as much in the 21st century as they were in the 19th. A match in which the couple is unequal in intelligence, cultural background, finances, etc. holds many potential pitfalls, and the incidents in Emma are a word to the wise. Still, Austen leaves us with a significant point: despite meddling interference, incongruous circumstances, and the confusion of not knowing their own hearts, all six characters have their dreams of love come