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Money and Marriage——The matrimonial value orientation in Pride and Prejudice(6)
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| 文章出处：中国论文下载中心 发布时间：2005-11-11 |
Take the marriage case of Lucas-Collins for another example. Miss Lucas is Elizabeth’s closest friend. She is a sensible, intelligent young woman, knowing it very clearly that “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 of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honorable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.”(14)
Such humorous and piercing description portrays the mentality of Lucas-like women deeply and also their fate that there is no other way that can improve their own position in finance and society except marrying a husband with a good fortune. Elizabeth goes to Parsonage to visit them by the invitation of Miss Lucas after they getting married, and finds:
“Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.”(15) “When Mr. Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout …”(16)
It is interesting that, in such marriage based on sole and naked money-transaction, the woman without property does marry a single man with a good fortune, but the husband himself has nothing to do with the enjoyment the marriage bringing to her. Is not it an excellent irony to the proposition at the beginning of the novel the “truth universally acknowledged”?
Wickham-Lydia Scandal can be taken as another instance to illustrate that money is of overwhelming importance in marriage. Wickham is very handsome and charming from his appearance, but actually demoralizes. He is extravagant and always greatly in debts of honor. Lydia, far more different from her two elder sisters, is vain, ignorant, idle and absolutely uncontrolled. Moreover, she indulges herself in flirtation with officers. They elope from Brighton without any engagement and are found out in London finally. Though under such circumstances, Wickham has no intention at all to marry Lydia, but for Darcy’s help in secret:
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