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So this is my Brit Lit term paper on the changing views of marriage in Victorian Fiction/culture.
Marriage has been making quite a name for itself recently, showing up in everything from pop culture to politics. It’s been a media darling - gossip tabloid shows and hard news channels alike have reported on the marriage ceremonies and divorce rates of celebrities, of royalty, and of the “average American.” It’s been a political platform since Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address (in which Americans learned that the “sanctity of marriage” must be defended) (Coontz 273). It’s been a battleground between gay and lesbian right’s activists who demand equal status as committed couples and the federal and state governments who have fixed bans on same-sex marriages. But always, at its fundamental core, it has been about love between two people.
At least, that is what modern society is led to believe. But this is not the case.
Throughout history, marriage has been regarded as a contract - one between a man and a woman, but also (and perhaps more importantly) one between one family line and another. This merging of two unrelated families has been “one of marriage’s most important functions…since the dawn of civilization” (Coontz 33). Without it, the Paleolithic family could not have survived. There was just no possible way for a single male-female pair to “take primary responsibility for all [the] food production, defense, child-rearing, and elder care” that would be necessary for survival before the settlement of permanent homes (Coontz 38). The in-laws acquired through the marriage exchange became active members of the family unit and relieved some of that survival burden. Therefore, without the additional support provided by the union of family lines, individuals would not have been able to complete the tasks necessary to keep the family alive and the kin groups would not survive to reproduce. It is for this reason that “for most of history, marriage was not primarily about the individual needs and desires of a man and woman and the children they produced” but instead had “as much to do with getting good in-laws and increasing one’s family labor force” (Coontz 5-6). Even as recently as the industrial revolution in Europe, more children born to a family meant more income into the home until the 19th century child labor laws and Cult of the Child movement took root.
As nomadic tribes waned in number and permanent societies became the dominate form of civilization, capital in the form of individual food stores and later, currency, became a commodity. It was at this time that the differentiation of the “haves” and the “have-nots” began (Coontz 45). As civilization progressed the richer “kin groups… sought ways to enhance their own status and to differentiate themselves from the ‘lesser’ families” (Coontz 45). Marriage circles became restricted by economics - only the wealthy could afford to contract a marriage into a dominant kin group and the “lineage with greater social status… could demand a higher ‘price’ for handing over one of its children in marriage” (Coontz 45). It is out of this practice that bridewealth and the dowry system eventually evolved.
As the institution of marriage became more unified and regulated, it “became the key to the transmission and distribution of property” in most civilizations (Coontz 5). Once the “eldest son was married” and settled, “thus ensuring the continuity of the estate” it was the marriage to the daughters in the family that “far more attention and resources were devoted to” (Perkin 5). Extra sons were not regarded with as much status in marriage, for it was the daughters’ matches that “formed the main connecting links in the dynastic network of families which ruled the counties and the country” from the middle ages onward (Perkin 5).
This system continued to grow and serve more purposes as society evolved, but the fundamental principle remained the same: the marriage contract merged together families who then formed political and economic alliances. But it was the actual act of marriage itself that was the bargaining chip. The sons in question received “the biggest infusion of cash, goods, or land” they would ever acquire in the bridal dowry and for the daughters “finding a husband was usually the most important investment a woman could make in her economic future” (Coontz 6). It is no wonder then that “marriages were not fundamentally about love. It was too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love” (Coontz 7).
But by the turn of the 18th century, civilization was on the verge of radical change and the institution of marriage was not withheld from the coming alterations in society. It was during this period of Enlightenment that “influential thinkers across Europe championed individual rights and insisted that social relationships, including those between men and women, be organized on the basis of reason and justice rather than force” (Coontz 146). This radical assertion fueled notions that marriage, as well, was a social relationship that should not be governed by force. Furthering the revolution, the Enlightenment thinkers, “believing the pursuit of happiness to be a legitimate goal… advocated marrying for love rather than wealth or status” (Coontz 146). This idea eventually gave birth to the concept of marriage that is now the standard of society, yet they did not dramatically alter relations all at once. Indeed, “the new norms of the love-based, intimate marriage did not fall into place all at once but were adopted at different rates in various regions and social groups” (Coontz 147). While there was a movement to accept the new marriage ideals unconditionally (usually in the younger generations) there was a resistance from the more conservative families and this dichotomy lasted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
As the trends and attitudes of society changed, so too did the trend for creative fiction. Where once stories of knights, dragons, and heroic journeys abounded in Medieval fiction, the “late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century novels depicted ordinary lives” (Coontz 148). Indeed, “authors and audiences alike were fascinated by domestic scenes and family relations that held no interest” for the writers of previous eras (Coontz 148). But it is in these ‘realistic’ novels that a sense of true realism does prevail, for the authors of this fiction, in crafting their plots and creating their characters, entwine the different schools of thought that influence the society in which they live.
Both the Romantic and the Victorian novelists “reflected in a peculiarly vivid and urgent way the social anxieties of their time” and brought to attention “their concern with the… institutions through which social and economic life was organized” (Calder 9). Among those chief concerns were colonialism, the rights of woman, and schooling and educational issues. But of all those different institutions, the “institutions of marriage and the family were the ones that most directly engaged the novelist’s imagination, for the [nineteenth-century novel] was concerned with domestic relationships above all others” (Calder 9).
It is especially important for these critiques of the marriage institution to be voiced by the period’s women writers for they are the ones with the most at stake in the marriage contract. This is because “a married woman had no legal existence” and, according to the law books of the time, “a man and wife were one person in law; her existence was, as it were, absorbed in that of her husband” (Perkin 13). This is exactly what the authors of the period are striving against with their passionate heroines and yet, “they were both critical of those institutions and, in varying ways and degrees, trapped in them” for almost all of these noted female authors (with the exception of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters) were married themselves and subject to the same laws of marriage (Calder 9).
Yet fictional character or otherwise, there was not much alternative for a women of the times, especially in the first half of the century. “Between the parental home and possession by a husband there is no viable alternative” for most women and even “in the novels of… Jane Austen and most contemporaneous novelists, marriage is not only the proper ambition of well-bred young ladies, it is their only safe refuge” (Calder 17).
In contrast to the practices of modern marriage, in which living on one’s own means is a common life practice before settling down with a husband or wife, “emotional independence… often began with marriage rather than ended with it” as modern society tends to view it (Perkin 4). They were never left to live on their own, but a marriage meant a husband for young women, and subsequently the separation from the father’s care. This reflected a “release from a childlike and humiliating dependence on the parental home” (Perkin 3) - in essence, it was the accustomed rite of passage for growing up. No longer a burden on their parents’ finances, married women became mistresses of their own homes and were able to enter into adult society. The marriage act then, became the single most important ritual young women were involved in and indeed, “marriage was the life plan of most women, and the single state a fate to be avoided like the plague” for otherwise a woman would be a burden on her father for all his life (Perkin 3).
This particular way of thinking is most explicitly seen in the character of Charlotte Lucas in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte’s thoughts concerning marriage clearly reflect the pre-Enlightenment notions of marriage - one of a political and economic institution and not based on love or intimacy. She is the representative typical of pre-Victorian fiction in which a woman’s talents “can only take her towards marriage” as long as that marriage is a good society match (Calder 17).
Austen tells us:
without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been [Charlotte’s] object; it was the only honourable [sic] provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. (106)
This is Charlotte’s self-appointed lot in life: to marry as her duty to her family and to her own social well-being. Instead of the notions of equal love and respect in marriage that the Bennet sisters hope to encounter in their own arraignments, Charlotte is “the slave of the male… she has to be content and happy with what her lord might give her” (Corin 123).
Of course, this has a much to do with the education of proper societal practices she learned from her parents as it does Charlotte’s own disposition. When love became a part of courtship and marriage, “young women” whose families still required advantageous matches “were told that they would ‘grow to love’ their husbands after marriage, [since] conventions of courtship were such that there was very little opportunity to know one’s future spouse well before marriage” was arranged (Calder 33). Indeed, when Charlotte calls to proclaim her engagement she notes that Elizabeth “must be surprised… [for] so lately… Mr. Collins was wishing to marry” her (Austen 108). This is an obvious sign to the reader that too little time has passed for Mr. Collins to sufficiently court and woo Charlotte. But this is her own prophesy from the beginning for she tells Elizabeth:
Happiness in a marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least… it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life. (Austen 21)
Charlotte is, of course, is the antithesis to Austen’s Bennet sisters. While most explicitly matched against Elizabeth as a reflection of the old customs of marriage versus the new spirit of love, all the Bennet girls defile the norms of society and hold on to their passions, instead of settling for the ‘good match.’ For the Bennet girls to accept the hand of someone they did not truly love (as is the case for Elizabeth and Jane) or at least feel an intense passion for (as is most likely the case with Lydia) would be simply unthinkable - they stand for the new Enlightenment view of marriage.
Early on in the novel it is addressed that the Bennets are not of the right socioeconomic class to satisfy the society of the upper-crust Miss Bingley and Mr. Darcy. While Mr. Bingley has taken fondly to Jane Bennet and has no qualms about his attachment, Mr. Darcy “had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by [Elizabeth].” Yet he found himself in no immediate danger of her charms because of “the inferiority of her connections” (Austen 46). Darcy and Miss Bingley then separate Mr. Bingley from Jane because they are afraid that her status will not keep him from seeking her hand. The cause is clear enough to Elizabeth who simply states, “We are not rich enough or grand enough for them” (Austen 103).
Even when love has won over the heard of Mr. Darcy and he proposes to Elizabeth he cannot do so without mentioning “his sense of her inferiority…the family obstacles” and the other reasons she did not belong in his esteem (Austen 160). Yet, she was there in his esteem and he could do nothing but love her because of it. For Darcy, even though the good society match with the daughter of Lady Catherine De Bourgh was his expected lot, he chose the love based marriage, instead.
For Elizabeth as well, the society match was unacceptable. The suit of her cousin Mr. Collins was a satisfying offer to Mrs. Bennet who wanted to see her daughters married in economically stable homes. Upon hearing Elizabeth’s refusal of his hand, Mrs Bennet exclaims that Elizabeth “is a very headstrong foolish girl, and does not know her own interest” but that she will “make her know [her own interest]” (Austen 95). Elizabeth cannot be forced into any loveless marriage, however. Mr. Collins regard for Elizabeth “was quite imaginary” (Austen 97) and Elizabeth’s refusal was “perfectly serious” since he “could not make [her] happy” (Austen 93). There was not even affection between this couple, and while Mr. Collins has no regard for romantic notions (as was demonstrated with his quick union with Charlotte) Elizabeth cannot be forced into any arrangement without them.
Upon her announcement that she and Mr. Darcy are to be married, Elizabeth exclaims “he still loves me, and we are engaged.” This signifies the one reason that Elizabeth Bennet could ever agree to marry. Her sister’s response best sums up the entire Bennet sisters’ way of life: “Oh Lizzy! Do anything rather than marry without affection” (Austen 311). And indeed, because of her passions, Elizabeth ends up with a husband she loves.
Though Austen’s heroines “are indeed to be married off” (what other fate could befall the heroine of an 1813 novel?) “they are characterized so much more positively and individually than we find anywhere else” (Calder 18). Knowing their place, the Bennet girls cannot denounce marriage altogether - they simply cannot be supported forever by their father and his estate (and it is still too early for educated women to earn their own keep). Yet Austen is able to critique the institution of marriage through the lack of social norms followed and the attention paid to the yearnings of the heart.
Thirty-five years later the publication of Bronte’s Jane Eyre was able to push the limits that Austen was unable to push herself. Yet, it is interesting to note, the cultural battle between pre- and post-Enlightenment marriage values has not waned in its influence on fiction. While Austen set up the old and new in the Charlotte and Elizabeth dichotomy, Bronte has the Jane and Mr. Rochester relationship versus the one between Jane and St. John Rivers.
Unlike the Bennet sisters, Jane has no father or benefactor to house and protect her until an offer of marriage comes along. Instead, “deprived of dependence” in this time “a woman would find herself in the unfortunate position of having to earn her own living. In the early part of the Victorian period it was virtually impossible for a well-bred young woman to do this except as a governess” (Calder 23). This is exactly what Jane does, yet it places her in the home of Mr. Rochester at a much lower status than he. Though she is educated and comes from a respectable family line, Jane is hired help in Mr. Rochester’s estate and therefore not the same class as he.
Yet to Rochester, that is not a concern. It is not money or status that he cares about, but about equal partnership. “My bride is here” he says to Jane, finally revealing his feelings, “because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane will you marry me?” (Bronte 252). Jane, however, is doubtful of his claims. He further explains “What love have I for Miss Ingram [his supposed fiancée]? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None” (Bronte 253). Rochester does not wish to marry for the sake of a wife and mistress to run his home and social order has nothing to do with it as well. He wishes to marry Jane because his heart truly loves her, and for no other reason.
It is, of course, important to note that Rochester has already succumbed to the pre-Enlightenment marriage, which helps to foster his newfound “progressive” stance on the topic. When his bigamous marriage to Jane is foiled, Rochester explains that he is, in fact, already married but in a marriage where he “never loved… never esteemed… never knew” his bride (Bronte 303). Being the second son of his family, Rochester was sent to a wealthy family to be “provided for” since his brother would receive all the family inheritance (Bronte 302). His bride, he finds is “already courted for” him and as such, he “had very little private conversation with her” (Bronte 302). As a purely societal and monetary transaction, it did not matter that the couple engage with one another. They simply must both show up at the alter.
It is only after their marriage that Rochester learns the true history of his new bride’s family; they are all mad (Bronte 303). And while Bertha is still in her right mind, Rochester finds he cannot relate to her, that her “tastes [are] obnoxious to [him], her cast of her mind common… [and that he] could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort” (Bronte 303). Rochester, it seems, has fallen victim to the society marriage, one in which he cannot “learn to love” his bride. He was sent into a loveless marriage by his family who “knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds” he would be receiving and not of matters of the heart (Bronte 303).
Jane, too, believes marriage to be only a matter of the heart. It is her cousin, St. John Rivers who seeks to marry her as an asset, rather than a love. When St. John proposes to Jane, he asks her to come to India “as [his] helpmeet and fellow laborer” and that she was “formed for labor, not for love” (Bronte 397-398). He then “claims” her “not for [his] pleasure, but for [his] Sovereign’s service” (Bronte 398).
This is an arrangement that Jane can take no part in. It is not the work in India to which she objects, for though she has little desire to go there she knows she “can work as hard” as St. John at the missionary task (Bronte 400). It is the “one dreadful item” she cannot deal with - “that he ask[ed] [her] to be his wife… with no more of a husband’s heart… than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge” (Bronte 400). Nothing “speaks or stirs” within Jane when St. John speaks (Bronte 398) and she knows that if she were to lie on her deathbed, he would not fight to preserve her in this world but instead send her “in all serenity and sanctity to the God who gave me” (Bronte 399). Upon her further meditation, Jane decides that St. John “will never love [her]” and for that reason cannot marry him (Bronte 400).
However, it is St. John’s refusal of anything but the traditional marriage arrangement that keeps him from having a partner in India. Jane accepts his offer of a life of mission work in India, “if [she] may go free” (Bronte 400). He resolutely refuses, yet he must, as he is the representation of the pre-Enlightenment marriage ideals. “How can I, a man, not yet thirty, take out with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me?” he asks (Bronte 403). And the answer is, he can’t, because he refuses to accept the changing trends in married life.
It is in the eventual marriage of Jane and Mr. Rochester that the new marital trends are fully realized. When they finally do unite it is not in Rochester’s “dominating prime but in his frustrated helplessness” (Calder 60). Jane comes back to him no longer on the level of hired hand but as an equal. She has come into her own source of independent money and no longer needs to “work or to serve” or “call anyone master” (Calder 62). It might even be said that she holds the power over him, since it is only because of her love that she is compelled to care for him in his disabled state. But the concept of power is a trivial matter in their marriage for they both are rewarded with nothing more than the company and partnership of the other - a trend just beginning in this Victorian period and can be seen as the model for most modern marriages today.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Signet, 1996.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin Books, 1994.
Calder, Jenni. Woman and Marriage in Victorian Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1976.
Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History. New York: Viking Press, 2005.
Perkin, Joan. Woman and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Chicago: Lyceum, 1989.
So you know... only the 20 page nostalgia paper to go...
Marriage has been making quite a name for itself recently, showing up in everything from pop culture to politics. It’s been a media darling - gossip tabloid shows and hard news channels alike have reported on the marriage ceremonies and divorce rates of celebrities, of royalty, and of the “average American.” It’s been a political platform since Bush’s 2004 State of the Union address (in which Americans learned that the “sanctity of marriage” must be defended) (Coontz 273). It’s been a battleground between gay and lesbian right’s activists who demand equal status as committed couples and the federal and state governments who have fixed bans on same-sex marriages. But always, at its fundamental core, it has been about love between two people.
At least, that is what modern society is led to believe. But this is not the case.
Throughout history, marriage has been regarded as a contract - one between a man and a woman, but also (and perhaps more importantly) one between one family line and another. This merging of two unrelated families has been “one of marriage’s most important functions…since the dawn of civilization” (Coontz 33). Without it, the Paleolithic family could not have survived. There was just no possible way for a single male-female pair to “take primary responsibility for all [the] food production, defense, child-rearing, and elder care” that would be necessary for survival before the settlement of permanent homes (Coontz 38). The in-laws acquired through the marriage exchange became active members of the family unit and relieved some of that survival burden. Therefore, without the additional support provided by the union of family lines, individuals would not have been able to complete the tasks necessary to keep the family alive and the kin groups would not survive to reproduce. It is for this reason that “for most of history, marriage was not primarily about the individual needs and desires of a man and woman and the children they produced” but instead had “as much to do with getting good in-laws and increasing one’s family labor force” (Coontz 5-6). Even as recently as the industrial revolution in Europe, more children born to a family meant more income into the home until the 19th century child labor laws and Cult of the Child movement took root.
As nomadic tribes waned in number and permanent societies became the dominate form of civilization, capital in the form of individual food stores and later, currency, became a commodity. It was at this time that the differentiation of the “haves” and the “have-nots” began (Coontz 45). As civilization progressed the richer “kin groups… sought ways to enhance their own status and to differentiate themselves from the ‘lesser’ families” (Coontz 45). Marriage circles became restricted by economics - only the wealthy could afford to contract a marriage into a dominant kin group and the “lineage with greater social status… could demand a higher ‘price’ for handing over one of its children in marriage” (Coontz 45). It is out of this practice that bridewealth and the dowry system eventually evolved.
As the institution of marriage became more unified and regulated, it “became the key to the transmission and distribution of property” in most civilizations (Coontz 5). Once the “eldest son was married” and settled, “thus ensuring the continuity of the estate” it was the marriage to the daughters in the family that “far more attention and resources were devoted to” (Perkin 5). Extra sons were not regarded with as much status in marriage, for it was the daughters’ matches that “formed the main connecting links in the dynastic network of families which ruled the counties and the country” from the middle ages onward (Perkin 5).
This system continued to grow and serve more purposes as society evolved, but the fundamental principle remained the same: the marriage contract merged together families who then formed political and economic alliances. But it was the actual act of marriage itself that was the bargaining chip. The sons in question received “the biggest infusion of cash, goods, or land” they would ever acquire in the bridal dowry and for the daughters “finding a husband was usually the most important investment a woman could make in her economic future” (Coontz 6). It is no wonder then that “marriages were not fundamentally about love. It was too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love” (Coontz 7).
But by the turn of the 18th century, civilization was on the verge of radical change and the institution of marriage was not withheld from the coming alterations in society. It was during this period of Enlightenment that “influential thinkers across Europe championed individual rights and insisted that social relationships, including those between men and women, be organized on the basis of reason and justice rather than force” (Coontz 146). This radical assertion fueled notions that marriage, as well, was a social relationship that should not be governed by force. Furthering the revolution, the Enlightenment thinkers, “believing the pursuit of happiness to be a legitimate goal… advocated marrying for love rather than wealth or status” (Coontz 146). This idea eventually gave birth to the concept of marriage that is now the standard of society, yet they did not dramatically alter relations all at once. Indeed, “the new norms of the love-based, intimate marriage did not fall into place all at once but were adopted at different rates in various regions and social groups” (Coontz 147). While there was a movement to accept the new marriage ideals unconditionally (usually in the younger generations) there was a resistance from the more conservative families and this dichotomy lasted throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
As the trends and attitudes of society changed, so too did the trend for creative fiction. Where once stories of knights, dragons, and heroic journeys abounded in Medieval fiction, the “late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century novels depicted ordinary lives” (Coontz 148). Indeed, “authors and audiences alike were fascinated by domestic scenes and family relations that held no interest” for the writers of previous eras (Coontz 148). But it is in these ‘realistic’ novels that a sense of true realism does prevail, for the authors of this fiction, in crafting their plots and creating their characters, entwine the different schools of thought that influence the society in which they live.
Both the Romantic and the Victorian novelists “reflected in a peculiarly vivid and urgent way the social anxieties of their time” and brought to attention “their concern with the… institutions through which social and economic life was organized” (Calder 9). Among those chief concerns were colonialism, the rights of woman, and schooling and educational issues. But of all those different institutions, the “institutions of marriage and the family were the ones that most directly engaged the novelist’s imagination, for the [nineteenth-century novel] was concerned with domestic relationships above all others” (Calder 9).
It is especially important for these critiques of the marriage institution to be voiced by the period’s women writers for they are the ones with the most at stake in the marriage contract. This is because “a married woman had no legal existence” and, according to the law books of the time, “a man and wife were one person in law; her existence was, as it were, absorbed in that of her husband” (Perkin 13). This is exactly what the authors of the period are striving against with their passionate heroines and yet, “they were both critical of those institutions and, in varying ways and degrees, trapped in them” for almost all of these noted female authors (with the exception of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters) were married themselves and subject to the same laws of marriage (Calder 9).
Yet fictional character or otherwise, there was not much alternative for a women of the times, especially in the first half of the century. “Between the parental home and possession by a husband there is no viable alternative” for most women and even “in the novels of… Jane Austen and most contemporaneous novelists, marriage is not only the proper ambition of well-bred young ladies, it is their only safe refuge” (Calder 17).
In contrast to the practices of modern marriage, in which living on one’s own means is a common life practice before settling down with a husband or wife, “emotional independence… often began with marriage rather than ended with it” as modern society tends to view it (Perkin 4). They were never left to live on their own, but a marriage meant a husband for young women, and subsequently the separation from the father’s care. This reflected a “release from a childlike and humiliating dependence on the parental home” (Perkin 3) - in essence, it was the accustomed rite of passage for growing up. No longer a burden on their parents’ finances, married women became mistresses of their own homes and were able to enter into adult society. The marriage act then, became the single most important ritual young women were involved in and indeed, “marriage was the life plan of most women, and the single state a fate to be avoided like the plague” for otherwise a woman would be a burden on her father for all his life (Perkin 3).
This particular way of thinking is most explicitly seen in the character of Charlotte Lucas in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Charlotte’s thoughts concerning marriage clearly reflect the pre-Enlightenment notions of marriage - one of a political and economic institution and not based on love or intimacy. She is the representative typical of pre-Victorian fiction in which a woman’s talents “can only take her towards marriage” as long as that marriage is a good society match (Calder 17).
Austen tells us:
without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been [Charlotte’s] object; it was the only honourable [sic] provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. (106)
This is Charlotte’s self-appointed lot in life: to marry as her duty to her family and to her own social well-being. Instead of the notions of equal love and respect in marriage that the Bennet sisters hope to encounter in their own arraignments, Charlotte is “the slave of the male… she has to be content and happy with what her lord might give her” (Corin 123).
Of course, this has a much to do with the education of proper societal practices she learned from her parents as it does Charlotte’s own disposition. When love became a part of courtship and marriage, “young women” whose families still required advantageous matches “were told that they would ‘grow to love’ their husbands after marriage, [since] conventions of courtship were such that there was very little opportunity to know one’s future spouse well before marriage” was arranged (Calder 33). Indeed, when Charlotte calls to proclaim her engagement she notes that Elizabeth “must be surprised… [for] so lately… Mr. Collins was wishing to marry” her (Austen 108). This is an obvious sign to the reader that too little time has passed for Mr. Collins to sufficiently court and woo Charlotte. But this is her own prophesy from the beginning for she tells Elizabeth:
Happiness in a marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least… it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life. (Austen 21)
Charlotte is, of course, is the antithesis to Austen’s Bennet sisters. While most explicitly matched against Elizabeth as a reflection of the old customs of marriage versus the new spirit of love, all the Bennet girls defile the norms of society and hold on to their passions, instead of settling for the ‘good match.’ For the Bennet girls to accept the hand of someone they did not truly love (as is the case for Elizabeth and Jane) or at least feel an intense passion for (as is most likely the case with Lydia) would be simply unthinkable - they stand for the new Enlightenment view of marriage.
Early on in the novel it is addressed that the Bennets are not of the right socioeconomic class to satisfy the society of the upper-crust Miss Bingley and Mr. Darcy. While Mr. Bingley has taken fondly to Jane Bennet and has no qualms about his attachment, Mr. Darcy “had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by [Elizabeth].” Yet he found himself in no immediate danger of her charms because of “the inferiority of her connections” (Austen 46). Darcy and Miss Bingley then separate Mr. Bingley from Jane because they are afraid that her status will not keep him from seeking her hand. The cause is clear enough to Elizabeth who simply states, “We are not rich enough or grand enough for them” (Austen 103).
Even when love has won over the heard of Mr. Darcy and he proposes to Elizabeth he cannot do so without mentioning “his sense of her inferiority…the family obstacles” and the other reasons she did not belong in his esteem (Austen 160). Yet, she was there in his esteem and he could do nothing but love her because of it. For Darcy, even though the good society match with the daughter of Lady Catherine De Bourgh was his expected lot, he chose the love based marriage, instead.
For Elizabeth as well, the society match was unacceptable. The suit of her cousin Mr. Collins was a satisfying offer to Mrs. Bennet who wanted to see her daughters married in economically stable homes. Upon hearing Elizabeth’s refusal of his hand, Mrs Bennet exclaims that Elizabeth “is a very headstrong foolish girl, and does not know her own interest” but that she will “make her know [her own interest]” (Austen 95). Elizabeth cannot be forced into any loveless marriage, however. Mr. Collins regard for Elizabeth “was quite imaginary” (Austen 97) and Elizabeth’s refusal was “perfectly serious” since he “could not make [her] happy” (Austen 93). There was not even affection between this couple, and while Mr. Collins has no regard for romantic notions (as was demonstrated with his quick union with Charlotte) Elizabeth cannot be forced into any arrangement without them.
Upon her announcement that she and Mr. Darcy are to be married, Elizabeth exclaims “he still loves me, and we are engaged.” This signifies the one reason that Elizabeth Bennet could ever agree to marry. Her sister’s response best sums up the entire Bennet sisters’ way of life: “Oh Lizzy! Do anything rather than marry without affection” (Austen 311). And indeed, because of her passions, Elizabeth ends up with a husband she loves.
Though Austen’s heroines “are indeed to be married off” (what other fate could befall the heroine of an 1813 novel?) “they are characterized so much more positively and individually than we find anywhere else” (Calder 18). Knowing their place, the Bennet girls cannot denounce marriage altogether - they simply cannot be supported forever by their father and his estate (and it is still too early for educated women to earn their own keep). Yet Austen is able to critique the institution of marriage through the lack of social norms followed and the attention paid to the yearnings of the heart.
Thirty-five years later the publication of Bronte’s Jane Eyre was able to push the limits that Austen was unable to push herself. Yet, it is interesting to note, the cultural battle between pre- and post-Enlightenment marriage values has not waned in its influence on fiction. While Austen set up the old and new in the Charlotte and Elizabeth dichotomy, Bronte has the Jane and Mr. Rochester relationship versus the one between Jane and St. John Rivers.
Unlike the Bennet sisters, Jane has no father or benefactor to house and protect her until an offer of marriage comes along. Instead, “deprived of dependence” in this time “a woman would find herself in the unfortunate position of having to earn her own living. In the early part of the Victorian period it was virtually impossible for a well-bred young woman to do this except as a governess” (Calder 23). This is exactly what Jane does, yet it places her in the home of Mr. Rochester at a much lower status than he. Though she is educated and comes from a respectable family line, Jane is hired help in Mr. Rochester’s estate and therefore not the same class as he.
Yet to Rochester, that is not a concern. It is not money or status that he cares about, but about equal partnership. “My bride is here” he says to Jane, finally revealing his feelings, “because my equal is here, and my likeness. Jane will you marry me?” (Bronte 252). Jane, however, is doubtful of his claims. He further explains “What love have I for Miss Ingram [his supposed fiancée]? None: and that you know. What love has she for me? None” (Bronte 253). Rochester does not wish to marry for the sake of a wife and mistress to run his home and social order has nothing to do with it as well. He wishes to marry Jane because his heart truly loves her, and for no other reason.
It is, of course, important to note that Rochester has already succumbed to the pre-Enlightenment marriage, which helps to foster his newfound “progressive” stance on the topic. When his bigamous marriage to Jane is foiled, Rochester explains that he is, in fact, already married but in a marriage where he “never loved… never esteemed… never knew” his bride (Bronte 303). Being the second son of his family, Rochester was sent to a wealthy family to be “provided for” since his brother would receive all the family inheritance (Bronte 302). His bride, he finds is “already courted for” him and as such, he “had very little private conversation with her” (Bronte 302). As a purely societal and monetary transaction, it did not matter that the couple engage with one another. They simply must both show up at the alter.
It is only after their marriage that Rochester learns the true history of his new bride’s family; they are all mad (Bronte 303). And while Bertha is still in her right mind, Rochester finds he cannot relate to her, that her “tastes [are] obnoxious to [him], her cast of her mind common… [and that he] could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort” (Bronte 303). Rochester, it seems, has fallen victim to the society marriage, one in which he cannot “learn to love” his bride. He was sent into a loveless marriage by his family who “knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds” he would be receiving and not of matters of the heart (Bronte 303).
Jane, too, believes marriage to be only a matter of the heart. It is her cousin, St. John Rivers who seeks to marry her as an asset, rather than a love. When St. John proposes to Jane, he asks her to come to India “as [his] helpmeet and fellow laborer” and that she was “formed for labor, not for love” (Bronte 397-398). He then “claims” her “not for [his] pleasure, but for [his] Sovereign’s service” (Bronte 398).
This is an arrangement that Jane can take no part in. It is not the work in India to which she objects, for though she has little desire to go there she knows she “can work as hard” as St. John at the missionary task (Bronte 400). It is the “one dreadful item” she cannot deal with - “that he ask[ed] [her] to be his wife… with no more of a husband’s heart… than that frowning giant of a rock, down which the stream is foaming in yonder gorge” (Bronte 400). Nothing “speaks or stirs” within Jane when St. John speaks (Bronte 398) and she knows that if she were to lie on her deathbed, he would not fight to preserve her in this world but instead send her “in all serenity and sanctity to the God who gave me” (Bronte 399). Upon her further meditation, Jane decides that St. John “will never love [her]” and for that reason cannot marry him (Bronte 400).
However, it is St. John’s refusal of anything but the traditional marriage arrangement that keeps him from having a partner in India. Jane accepts his offer of a life of mission work in India, “if [she] may go free” (Bronte 400). He resolutely refuses, yet he must, as he is the representation of the pre-Enlightenment marriage ideals. “How can I, a man, not yet thirty, take out with me to India a girl of nineteen, unless she be married to me?” he asks (Bronte 403). And the answer is, he can’t, because he refuses to accept the changing trends in married life.
It is in the eventual marriage of Jane and Mr. Rochester that the new marital trends are fully realized. When they finally do unite it is not in Rochester’s “dominating prime but in his frustrated helplessness” (Calder 60). Jane comes back to him no longer on the level of hired hand but as an equal. She has come into her own source of independent money and no longer needs to “work or to serve” or “call anyone master” (Calder 62). It might even be said that she holds the power over him, since it is only because of her love that she is compelled to care for him in his disabled state. But the concept of power is a trivial matter in their marriage for they both are rewarded with nothing more than the company and partnership of the other - a trend just beginning in this Victorian period and can be seen as the model for most modern marriages today.
Works Cited
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Signet, 1996.
Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin Books, 1994.
Calder, Jenni. Woman and Marriage in Victorian Fiction. New York: Oxford UP, 1976.
Coontz, Stephanie. Marriage, A History. New York: Viking Press, 2005.
Perkin, Joan. Woman and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Chicago: Lyceum, 1989.
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