In a sense, "Pride and Prejudice" is the story of two courtships - those between Darcy and Elizabeth and Bingley and Jane. Within this broad structure appear other, smaller courtships: Mr. Collins's aborted wooing of Elizabeth, followed by his successful wooing of Charlotte Lucas; Miss Bingley's unsuccessful attempt to attract Darcy; Wickham's pursuit first of Elizabeth, then of the never-seen Miss King, and finally of Lydia. Courtship therefore takes on a profound, if often unspoken, importance in the novel. Marriage is the ultimate goal; courtship constitutes the real working-out of love. Courtship becomes a sort of forge of a person's personality, and each courtship becomes a microcosm for different sorts of love (or different ways to abuse love as a means to social advancement). Of course we can also relate marriage to happiness, and happiness to one's freedom in society; something which is strongly challenged in both "Pride and Prejudice" and Orwell's "1984.".
Charlotte Lucas states a factor of her society at the time in that "happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance." and this quote does much to outline the changing conceptions of family and partnership that are central to Austen's text. The reader can see two very distinct partnership ideologies, voiced by Charlotte Lucas and Elizabeth Bennet. The two women's partnership strategies are then informed by these ideologies, which set against each other as two modes of thinking about the role of love in partnership, and as a result happiness in marriage, as it had historically been defined in Western society, and the way it is changing. Much of this change away from Charlotte's notion of the practicality and economics of partnership has to do with the rise of individualism throughout the 18th century; a change that noted the rise of affected individualism - meaning an outlook on personal relationships that emphasizes the emotional rewards to, and autonomy of, each individual and his or her personal sense of self-satisfaction.