Love and marriage- in today's modern sense when we think of a wedding we often associate these two terms together. We think of dating and boyfriends and girlfriends and experimenting with different partners until we are sure we have found our true love. This was not a luxury that the Victorians had. The two texts that we read, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Charles Dicken's Great Expectations, both represent different courtship and marriage rituals taken from their perspective time periods. In this paper I shall explore these different rituals within the different social classes represented.
Views of marriage and social class in the society of nineteenth century England were very different from views in modern American society. There were two concerns when dealing with marriage in England during this time period. These issues were social class and wealth. Love was often not a luxury that they could afford when mates were chosen. In Pride and Prejudice Austin shows that marriage was not an act of love, but rather an act of survival. Women were often married off to gain wealth and stability in society, while men, on the other hand, married for comfort and companionship and to fulfill the norm of society. The marriages in this story consisted of people from the upper classes. The marriages in Great Expectations, on the other hand were primarily from the middle class. They dealt with emotions to an extent, but were primarily about financial or societal gain.
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet wife and mother of five daughters had a simple view of marriage. Her goal was to marry each, if not all at least one, of her daughters off to the man who had the most money and was most prominent in society. Most mothers of the time engaged in this activity to an extent, however, due to the entailment of their estate, this task consumed her entire life. The story focuses primarily on two courtships- those between Darcy and Elizabeth and between Bingly and Jane.
