Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

by

Jane Austen

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Marriage Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Pride Theme Icon
Prejudice Theme Icon
Family Theme Icon
Marriage Theme Icon
Class Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Pride and Prejudice, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Marriage Theme Icon

Pride and Prejudice is a love story, but its author is also concerned with pointing out the inequality that governs the relationships between men and women and how it affects women's choices and options regarding marriage. Austen portrays a world in which choices for individuals are very limited, based almost exclusively on a family's social rank and connections. To be born a woman into such a world means having even less choice about whom to marry or how to determine the shape of one's life. The way that society controls and weakens women helps to explain in part Mrs. Bennet's hysteria about marrying off her daughters, and why such marriages must always involve practical, financial considerations. As members of the upper class, the Bennet sisters are not expected to work or make a career for themselves. Yet as women they are not allowed to inherit anything. As a result, marriage is basically their only option for attaining wealth and social standing. Yet Austen is also critical of women who marry solely for security, like Charlotte. The ideal for her is represented by Elizabeth, who refuses to trade her independence for financial comfort and in the end marries for love.

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Marriage Quotes in Pride and Prejudice

Below you will find the important quotes in Pride and Prejudice related to the theme of Marriage.
Chapter 1 Quotes
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
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Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes
Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty ... But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she hardly had a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes ... he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness.
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy
Page Number: 24
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes
Having now a good house and a very sufficient income, [Mr. Collins] intended to marry ... he meant to choose one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report. This was his plan of amends—of atonement—for inheriting their father's estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.
Related Characters: Mr. Collins
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes
Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.
Related Characters: Mr. Collins (speaker), Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet
Page Number: 106
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes
Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
Related Characters: Mr. Collins
Page Number: 120
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes
If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, he was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Bennet
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Page Number: 182
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 34 Quotes
"In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." ... He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority—of its being a degradation—of the family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding
Related Characters: Fitzwilliam Darcy (speaker), Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet
Page Number: 185
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 43 Quotes
Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy
Related Symbols: Houses
Page Number: 235
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 44 Quotes
When she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance and courting the good opinion of people with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a disgrace—when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly disdained ... the difference, the change was so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly restrain her astonishment from being visible.
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy
Page Number: 251
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 47 Quotes
Unhappy as the event must be for Lydia, we may draw from it this useful lesson: that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable; that one false step involves her in endless ruin; that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful; and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.
Related Characters: Mary Bennet (speaker), Lydia Bennet
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Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 48 Quotes
The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this ... They agree with me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family?
Related Characters: Mr. Collins (speaker), Mr. Bennet, Lydia Bennet, Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Page Number: 281
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 49 Quotes
It is all very right; who should do it but her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children must have had all his money, you know; and it is the first time we have ever had anything from him, except a few presents. Well! I am so happy! In a short time I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Wickham! How well it sounds!
Related Characters: Mrs. Bennet (speaker), George Wickham, Lydia Bennet, Mr. Gardiner
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Page Number: 290
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 55 Quotes
in spite of his being a lover, Elizabeth really believed all his expectations of felicity to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Jane, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself.
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet, Jane Bennet, Charles Bingley
Page Number: 328
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 56 Quotes
I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet (speaker), Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Page Number: 338
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 58 Quotes
What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.
Related Characters: Fitzwilliam Darcy (speaker), Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet
Page Number: 349
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 59 Quotes
I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage ... My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life.
Related Characters: Mr. Bennet (speaker), Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet
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Page Number: 356
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 60 Quotes
The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them.
Related Characters: Elizabeth (Eliza, Lizzy) Bennet (speaker), Fitzwilliam Darcy
Page Number: 359
Explanation and Analysis: