SOCIAL CONTEXT

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor—which is one very strong argument in favour of matrimony.

—Jane Austen, 1816

   Austen’s grimly humorous observation about women’s lives, made in a letter, sums up the social fact that is the starting point for Pride and Prejudice. In the early 1800s, few middle-class women could choose not to marry or to marry simply for love. In general, women could not enter occupations and earn their own living. A young woman might become a governess, but this job paid little and had a status only slightly above that of a servant. A few middle-class women did earn money writing, as Jane Austen did, but they seldom made enough to live on. In addition, few women inherited wealth. By tradition, property and money were passed down through the male side of the family. Indeed, the entail was a legal device used to prevent a landed property from being broken up, and / or from descending in a female line. Thus, for most women, marriage was the only path to financial security.

   Given this circumscribed situation, women devoted themselves to attracting a husband. Usually this meant becoming “accomplished” in what were considered the ladylike arts, such as singing, playing the piano, drawing, and dancing. Reciting well-known poems, embroidering, and painting designs on tables were other “accomplishments” for young ladies. Because their adult lives would be spent in the domestic sphere, a well-rounded education was not considered essential for girls. Although some fathers, such as Austen’s, encouraged their daughters’ intellectual development, girls seldom received the systematic education their brothers did.

   Elizabeth Bennet, the main character in Pride and Prejudice, is typical of young middle-class women of the time in her predicament. But she is anything but typical in her character. Readers from Jane Austen’s day to the present have singled out Elizabeth as one of the most intriguing female characters in fiction. Austen is known for her complex and appealing heroines.

As one critic noted:

For the first time in English literature, outside Shakespeare, we meet heroines who are credible, with minds, with the capacity to think for themselves, with ambition and wit.

   A strict etiquette prevailed at this time. “There were clear procedures regarding visiting, introductions, forms of address, social conversation, order of precedence and the formal relationships between the sexes” (Paul Pascoe). For instance, Mr Bennet has to pay Bingley a formal call before the two parties (groups of people) can be on visiting terms. And since Bingley was a bachelor, it was imperative that Mr. Bennet should visit him first.