Marrying for love

Yet we are also invited to think that Charlotte Lucas’s and Mary Crawford’s views are dismal.
Austen’s novels, while alive to the pressures of family expectations, unreservedly endorse the aim of
marrying for love. Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey declares, ‘to marry for money I think the
wickedest thing in existence’ (ch. 15). She is an unworldly 17-year-old, but her heart is right. And
women’s choices, while constrained, are their own. In the earlier novels of the 18th century, fathers
often try to command their sons and daughters whom to marry. In Austen’s world, as she says in the
last chapter of Persuasion, ‘When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are
pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point’ (ch. 24) .

Young women and marriage

And young means young. Lydia Bennet marries at 16 and her mother talks of her sister Jane
attracting the attentions of a well-qualified suitor at the age of 15. Catherine Morland becomes
engaged at the age of 17. Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility and Fanny Price
in Mansfield Park all become engaged while still in their teens. At a certain age, somewhere
between 15 and 19, a young woman was said to be ‘out’. That meant that she could be courted.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh quizzes Elizabeth Bennet about how many of her sisters are ‘out’ and is
rather astonished to find that they all are (ch. 29). Every one of them is in the marriage market,
which is Mrs Bennet’s obsession from the first page of the novel.

The men they marry are usually older than them, in some cases strikingly so. Aged 35, Colonel
Brandon in Sense and Sensibility is some 18 years older than Marianne, whom he marries. There is
a similar age difference between the heroine of Emma and the man she marries, Mr Knightley. Yet
we should not assume that this was the norm for the period: in both these cases the difference in
ages is a reason for the young woman not even to consider the possibility of the older man as a
suitor, until late in each novel. Only one man in all Jane Austen’s novels marries a woman older than
himself: Mr Collins, aged 25, marries Charlotte Lucas, aged 27. The disparity speaks of the
unselectiveness of both parties. Yet three of Jane Austen’s own brothers married women older than
themselves.

Receiving a proposal

Courtship was a semi-public process, acted out according to fixed conventions. Young men and
women would rarely be permitted to be on their own together. We should also be struck by how
short a courtship can be. Henry Tilney proposes to Catherine Morland after they have known each
other for just 11 weeks and she joyfully accepts. The marriage proposal itself followed a certain
protocol, which Mr Collins pretends to understand. The rule in Austen’s novels seems clear: if a man
proposes as if he cannot imagine that the answer will be no – the answer will be no. Austen relishes
the equally disastrous proposals of Mr Collins and Mr Darcy. Both men are amazed when Elizabeth
refuses them. The most important truth is stated bluntly by Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey: ‘man
has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal’ (ch. 10). In 1802, aged almost 27,
Jane Austen herself accepted a proposal of marriage from Harris Bigg-Wither, the brother of family
friends, only to change her mind by the next morning.

If a woman accepted, the man should then ‘apply’ to her father. Mr Darcy does this formally in Pride
and Prejudice. Once a marriage has been made it is well-nigh irreversible. A woman cannot divorce
her husband, and a man can only divorce his wife in extreme circumstances at the cost of public
disgrace. In Mansfield Park, Mr Rushworth divorces Maria for adultery, but this is a scandal, reported
in the newspapers. The marriage choices that Jane Austen’s characters make are absolute. Mr
Bennet, Austen tells us, married Mrs Bennet because he was ‘captivated by youth and beauty’, but
then discovers her true nature. ‘Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his
views of domestic happiness were overthrown’ (ch.42). He likes the country and his books, and
these must console him for his error; he has made his choice and can never unmake it.