pride and prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is often referred to as a romance novel. In fact, the novel focuses on a young man and woman choosing a spouse and getting married and starting a family. It is clear from Austen's novels that she never writes about love outside of marriage. A man who falls in love with a woman without being in a position to marry, or without the sincerity to do so, is irresponsible, or playing with women. A woman who reveals her love without seeing the man's sincerity in proposing marriage is indiscreet and even degrading; even though she has fallen in love with someone in her private heart, she must know how to restrain it. To fall in love is to get married, and to get married is to start a family, so we have to consider the social status and economic base of both parties. While it is possible to accommodate a difference in status, the economic base cannot be ignored. The children of the gentry could not earn their own living and were limited in what they could do. If the eldest son inherited the family fortune, the other sons, who became clergymen, officers or lawyers, were in a lower position than the eldest son; if they went into business, they fell another rung down the ladder than within the class. The oldest girl, having no property of her own, had to be a parasite; if she became a schoolmistress, she fell to the upper or marginal accident of her class. A good marriage was made, and families struggled to climb up the ladder, lest they fall. It is an important bald point in the competition for survival, with both men and women themselves and both families, young and old, giving their all, although in a township with only three or four large families, the conflicts are complex enough and the struggle fierce enough to show the world as it is. Pride and Prejudice depicts this worldly situation from the perspective of love and marriage. Austen considers marriage without love to be an unbearable affliction. Many of the unhappy couples in her novels are the result of not knowing each other before marriage. One cannot marry without considering the character of the other person, including appearance, manners, speech, and inner talents and virtues. Although the appearance is obvious, the other person needs to be discerning. It is only by their appearance that they are able to identify the character of others. As for talent and character, it depends on the person's behaviour. This can only be determined from a variety of sources, and it is not enough to look at a single incident, but from everyday behaviour. It is not easy to know people, nor is it easy to know oneself, and in the fierce competition for survival, misunderstandings and disputes between people are even more inevitable. Pride and Prejudice writes about how the prejudices of its heroines are created and how they are dispelled, delving from the surface of the characters to their hearts and minds, gauging their character, cultivation and psychological states. It can be said that Austen's novels are written from the point of view of love and marriage, of the world and of the characters' inner being, which manifests itself as such.