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How does Jane Austen use marriage in Pride and Prejudice to present the nature
of an ideal relationship?
With a social and cultural context where marriage was assumed to be of great
importance, Jane Austen uses a number of marriages to expose and satirise
societal values of the age, and to explore the nature of the ideal marriage.
Austen portrays a true and ideal marriage to be one where economic and social
compatibility is encompassed with love and the union of minds. In the novel, all
marriages, except Elizabeth and Darcy?s, appear to be deficient in the values
necessary for an ideal marriage.
The marriage of the Bennets is an imprudent one, a union of a reasonably
intelligent man with an inane wife. The suggestion that the initial attraction
was purely physical elucidates that the relationship is based on superficial
grounds. Mr. Bennet?s lack of satisfaction in his marriage leads him to shut
himself from reality, failing to procure the masculine control that Austen
re...