Comment on the lack of choices that women had in Pride and Prejudice.

As we start reading this excellent novel, it is important
to remember that we are entering a world as seen from the perspective of women, and in
which women lead extremely limited lives. This is signalled from the beginning in the
first chapter by reference to the character of Mrs. Bennet and her reason for living,
which is of course to marry her daughters well:

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She was a woman of mean understanding, little
informatoin, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself
nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was
visiting and news.

The
reality is that for women of this time, if you lacked a rich father, the only option
open to you was to marry, and to marry well, preferably, so that you could gain yourself
a position of independence and prestige. Of course, for the Bennets, this position is
made more perilous by the way in which the property is entailed away from them to the
nearest male relative, making the desperation of Mrs. Bennet to marry off her children
even more acute.

A good example that could be used to talk
about the lack of choices that women faced at this time would be the fate of Mary, the
rather stern and studious Bennet sister, whos fate is presented to us in Chapter
61:

Mary was
the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily drawn from the pursuit
of accomplishments by Mrs. Bennet's being quite unable to sit alone. Mary was obliged to
mix more with the world, but she could still moralise over every morning visit; and as
she was no longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own, it
was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without much
reluctance.

The fate of Mary
highlights the lack of choices that women faced, and also gives us a new understanding
of why Charlotte Lucas was so desperate to marry even such a man as Mr. Collins. If you
didn't marry as a woman, you lost all chance of gaining indepdence. You would become the
carer of your mother and you would be a financial burden on the rest of your family.
Freedom and independence, such as these were, could only be experienced through marriage
and through the gaining of your own household that you could be responsible
for.