I Do but I Don't

Marriage is defined as a formally recognised union between two people. Some say it is a social construct and others believe it to be spiritual in nature. Whether a union born of love, necessity, or monetary gain; it has shaped many societies both past and present. Within Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion by Jane Austen, marriage is an ever-present force pushing the characters onward. To an extent that without the presence of marriage in her works, Austen’s plot falls to pieces and the characters lose a pivotal motivation for their actions. An important difference between the two works, is the ages at which the characters get married and how this affects the role that the women play and the impact of their choices within the works and their world. In Pride and Prejudice, the reader is introduced to teenage marriage in the form of Lydia Bennet, while in Persuasion, Anne is married older.

Age both shapes maturity and creates the ability for Anne to make rational choices and ultimately choose happiness instead of being persuaded by those around her. Lydia is young, naive, and easily persuaded but is also a flirt and starkly contrasts Anne in every way. Without someone to teach her otherwise and her young mind not having a chance to mature Lydia marrying in such a rash manner is a polar opposite of Anne’s later in life choice. Neither are what society would praise but both are contrasting in the one is based on lust and the other on love, Lydia is foolish, and Anne is always cautious. Austen is saying that both age and maturity matters, that rushing into a choice within the landscape of the land could affect a lady’s entire life. Anne had the ability to make a wise choice, Lydia was brought up too foolishly and was far from protected, in allowing her into the lions den she is the ultimate flirt and becomes the near ruin of her family while hardly knowing her actions have consequences. Anne is a woman, Lydia is a shield, and only one had any business getting married and it wasn’t a fifteen year old girl, the law did everything but protect women, and Austen shows exactly how it failed the youngest Bennet.

To best understand the implementation of marriage in her work, one must first unearth what marriage is to Jane Austen, the society and laws surrounding the novel, and the characters themselves. Austen uses love and relationships to express the experience of her society and what life was like for a young woman. With a focus on the patriarchal reality of Austen’s society, there is a stark lesson expressed about a woman’s role, and where adults, particularly men stand in the landscape of marriage of young ladies and girls. This lesson explains that a woman has one powerful choice when it comes to marriage and much like little red riding hood there are wolves about. Be it she take one step off the path, away from the rules of society, she risks being ruined by the forest and the wolves lurking within. Thus, the law of the land could not protect her and it is ultimately her choice in a husband that dictates her life within the patriarchal society and be it the wrong choice she is stuck in her misery with little to no power.

Pride and Prejudice opens with one of the most famous lines in literature that states, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen 1), establishing the prominence of advantageous marriage present in Regency England. While it may claim that a man of wealth must be looking for a wife, it is mirrored by the idea that a single woman must be in want of a wealthy husband. This sets the scene for the Bennet family and how their daily life was surrounded by the question of marriage. Mrs. Bennet can be found fluttering about the room, complaining about her husband’s lack of interest in their daughters marital means and begging him to see Mr. Bingley; consumed by the need to ensure her daughters are married to respectable, wealthy men. It is her mannerisms that are echoed in her youngest daughter Lydia who is considered the flirt later creating the major conflict of the novel.

Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are the gateway to marriage for the reader and while Mrs. Bennet seems the more controlling of the two, she has little sway within her own marriage and must make introductions through her husband, unable to make any connections for her daughters herself. Yet it is the responsibility of both the parents to establish a proper relationship for their daughter. When Lydia runs off with Mr. Wickham, blame is laid upon her parents, her mother for encouraging her flirtation and naivety, and her father for being distant and unable to protect his child. The position of responsibility that the male figure has surrounding marriage is not solely afforded to the father, Mr. Darcy too protects his younger sister Georgiana from Wickham and saves the Bennet’s from ruin by providing a dowery to have Wickham marry the youngest Bennet.

The significance of marriage law must be examined in order to understand what marriage meant for the women of Austen’s novels. The Marriage Act of 1753 was proclaimed necessary to bring marriages under regulation by the church and prevent ‘irregular’ marriages. Seen as a means to stop the polygamous relationships of men and many wives, it was meant to protect woman who were bearing children, and remove difficulties in proving the existence and legitimacy of a marriage via a Register. “For together with laws which voided traditional canonical practices of retroactive legitimation for illegitimate children per subsequens matrimonium and proclaimed all children bastards whose parents had not married before their birth, the Marriage Act helped drive down the age of marriage, just as it helped drive up the frequency of those related phenomena, prenuptial pregnancies and illegitimate births.” (Bannet 250). After the Act became law, a woman who lived with a man in the old way without any of the forms required by the Act would no longer be legally a wife, would not be protected by the law but would also be labelled a whore and her children bastards.

The Act aimed to stop the cruelty imposed on women, if their lovers did not agree to marry them and left them with children with no means to support them. But for women already in relationships the law that was claiming to help mothers was breaking down traditions that protected marriage and previous claims of union were no longer legitimate. This could create a way for men to leave the wife, children, and life he had if he pleased because it was no longer considered binding as previously done. The Marriage Act was the design of legislation to subordinate reproduction to production. Allowing for successful children to be born of successful parents and reduce the strane on sources to provide for the ‘whores’ and ‘bastards’.

Duff discusses the measures that men sought against women during the creation of the act.. Some argued that divorced wives ought not be permitted to remarry; others ought not to receive annuities from ex-husbands if they remarry; others tried to make female adultery a crime in itself. It is explained that, “while none of these last three measures were enacted into law by Parliament, the very debate about female sexual behavior and property rights shows men’s attempts to control women’s sexuality through legal and material sanction in the late 1600s and early 1700s” (Duff 584). Where Bannet had asserted the Marriage Act of 1753 adversely affected women who did not marry in line with laws and regulations, men’s laws concerning marriage and divorce adversely impacted women well before the implementation of the Act. These laws controlled the choices made by both men and women but particularly limited women and surrounded their courtships, proposals and marriage rights.

The consequences of this act are evident in the behaviours of the characters with Austen’s novels. With the Act stating that any person under the age of twenty-one required parental or guardian consent to be married, more responsibility was placed on the parents and families to find suitable partners, or to deal with the social fallout after young couples would run away to Gretna Green or other places in Scotland to marry. A young Lydia believed that Wickham would take her to Gretna Green so that they would be married without the need of her parents' consent. However the girl's naivety was a mistake and to ‘save’ Lydia’s reputation and that of her family, it took more than simple honest persuasion, for the two to be married. It took Mr. Darcy appealing to Wickham’s greed through money to seal an agreement of marriage. Under the old laws, perhaps Lydia would have believed Wickham’s promises of marriage, to later find herself pregnant and abandoned, because that is what many men did with ladies of no substantial standing. Georgiana was used in a similar way to gain money directly from Darcy but unlike Mr. Bennet, Mr Darcy, protected his sister within a world where she held little power. So while the law was attempting to create a better place of marriage it was truly helping the nobility make matches as they pleased and put young women at the mercy of men and their families. One mistake could bring her entire family shame, when she was merely a victim to the pursuits of an older man, it is the adult that holds the power over a child, and these ‘women’ are mere children even in the eyes of the law.

Austen reflected the true nature of courtship within her time period and offered her readers differing options when it came to love and marriage, portrayed through the various characters and relationships they each had. ‘Her perception of marriage in the woman’s situation as a whole is more complex than a simple straightforward distinction between love matches and marriages of convenience” (Manzelmann 1). Austen depicts differing forms of relationships because it was what was plausible for girls within the time.

Love became a topic in the novels that explored what was allowed or expected of a woman, “the social law of female modesty required that women wait for suitors and prevent themselves from falling in love, never declaring romantic feelings to men until they proposed; then women were magically to switch on their love for men” (Nelson 5). For example, give into one’s desires and be tricked into running away like Lydia and disaster will ensure, or be patient and kind like Jane to find a Mr. Bingley. Choice was the not the only option afforded to the female characters however, “chance is given significance in Jane Austen’s novels by her insistence on the value of its opposite-rational and deliberate choice,” (Weinsheimer 1). Thus, each women’s choice is pivotel be it Lizzy, Lydia, or Anne. They each face different circumstances and pressure, persuasions, and flirtations but only some find love within their ultimate choice.

Barkley posits that Austen values distinctly sexualized and non fraternal relationships that allow a heroine an exit from the family framework that threatens to impede her happiness. “Choosing an endogamous match raises the prospect that these unsatisfying structures will be reproduced.” (Barkley) Suggesting that the obligation to satisfy parents and family, was a sacrifice that women made in forsake of love. “Elizabeth’s insistence on, if necessary, defying family members in order to follow one's heart. This awareness of conflict heightens the argument that romantic and family love need to exist in separate categories, between which there can be no conflation” (Barkley 232). This evidence of Barkley’s examination of the difference between endogamous and exogamous relationships draws attention to the argument that the former, endogamous marriages, perpetuate unsatisfying, bland relationships compared to the erotic connection found in exogamous marriages.

The different motivators for marriage are explored through Wickham’s relationships with both Lizzy and Lydia; whilst Lizzy is charmed by him, it is Lydia he marries, however not without getting something in exchange. In a letter received by Lizzy it is explained that, “Though Lydia's short letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand that they were going to Gretna Green, something was dropped by Denny expressing his belief that W. never intended to go there, or to marry Lydia at all,” (Austen 45). Wickham has no intention of creating a union of love, rather a marriage for monetary gain. He had tried to pull a similar stunt with Georgiana Darcy which was foiled by her brother, Mr. Darcy and instead attempted to force the hand of the Bennets by running off with Lydia. Wickham is a key example of the character Manzelmann describes in, “The morality of the superior couple transcends the false rectitude of a hypocritical society that professes one thing and privately practices another. It is a constant in Austen that a preoccupation with appearances and the surface is not a guarantee of morality” (Manzelmann 3). While he looks like an upstanding and respectable member of society on the outside he isn’t so lovely beneath the surface, a warning Austen is making to her female audience. If even the clever girl is charmed by the boy who will destroy you then perhaps you best watch out when handing out your heart.

Not every marriage of Austen’s novels actually has love involved, in Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte and Mr. Collins marry because they both need a spouse not because they love each other. Charlotte explains her choice to Lizzy as, “You must be surprised, very much surprised—so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins's character, connection, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state,” (Austen 22). Charlotte acknowledges that while she might not be Mr. Collins first choice she doesn’t have a lot of marriage prospects to begin with. In the historical culture of the novel marriage was a way for women to move out of their parents home and no longer cause financial stress. Women had no right to property and therefore were taken care of by male family members or their husbands. Charlotte needed to marry not only to bring herself a little higher standing in society but but to offer her parents freedom from having to care for her at an even older age. Marriage thus became a way to help her family as well as herself. Manzelmann explains this sort of marriage in comparison to love as “Marriage is an enterprise taken on by humans, not paragons and there are shades of gray.” (Menzelmann 1)

Where Elizabeth was set on love, Mr. Collins would never have made a good husband, but for Charlotte who didn’t care about romance, she chose a safe match which perhaps did provide her happiness and security. It is important to note though that Charlotte was in her late 20’s and would have felt the familial pressure to marry in a different way to that of Elizabeth or Lydia Bennet. She made the choice at a mature age that wasn’t for love or lust but for mutual gain between herself and Collins. While her friends may not be extremely happy for the arrangement they respect it because it is what is best for Charlotte. The type of man she marries, however, might make the reader consider being single as the better option due to Mr. Collins obnoxious behavior.

By looking at these different relationships with Austen’s novels, it is possible to identify the different examples of how the culture shaped women's choices. Marrying too young could result in foolish choices while marrying older is a means to ending judgment and pressure on a lady’s family financially and socially. Love, although considered, was not a necessity.

The reality of tough choices is prevalent in Jane Asuten’s works; women often having to make pivotal decisions in accepting or denying a proposal. Marriage proposals within the world of Austen examine the intricate power that was given to a woman when it came to marriage. Whilst many didn’t have a say in who proposed to them they were able to either accept or deny that proposal. This choice is one of the few choices a young lady was offered and Austen uses this choice as a driving force within her writings. Ray explains that, “Jane Austen’s novels center on courtship and marriage. Despite her use of irony and satire, Austen’s focus on marriage has caused many leading feminists to undervalue or ignore her contribution to feminism” (Ray 1). Whilst many believe her to be anti-feminist the text says otherwise. Austen isn’t as radical as all female writers but she uses her novels to express what marriage could be and offers young girls the knowledge that they have a say. Although Nelson argued that society required women to control their emotions, and turn them on like a light switch, in Austen’s novels, the women who held themselves to a standard but never settled found the greatest love; empowering women with their freedom of choice.

With The Marriage Act of 1753 dictating a new reality for women and their relationships with men, a woman’s choice and the consequences of that had changed. Men were longer no obligated to care for the women they slept with and Harth explains the significance of love within the time of the marriage law and what this new reality meant for women. The Marriage Act of 1753, also called Lord Hardwiche’s law, dictated a new reality for women far more than men and benefited rich and wealthy men of noble birth in particular. They no longer had to care for the women they slept with for example, if unmarried, they could simply up and walk away. Thus the presence of romance during this time and what it meant for women within their relationships and marriage.

What was love in this time and was there any place for it? Harth examines the answer in depth and explains that, “Romantic love to heterosexual relationship perceived as satisfying most, if not partners' emotional and sexual needs. Scarcity of reliable documentation may never allow us to settle the question as to when romantic was actually integrated into marriage. The ideological climate of marriage is potentially a more fruitful area of research. The question becomes one of expectation rather than of practice: by the eighteenth century, how widely disseminated was the expectation of marrying love” (Harth 124). Neither Elizabeth nor Jane Bennet settled for the likes of Mr. Collins or even Wickham, they said no when the proposal was wrong and yes when it was right. While marrying for love isn’t always the case within the text, Austen is making a stark comment on what marrying for love should look like.

Lydia is shown of what a young woman's lust and the persuasion of an older man can become, that a flirtation can become something binding and even ruinous. Fitzgibbon examines Lydia and the women within Austen’s era against the law landscape. He compares the reality of Lydia’s situation in the law of the present time compared to what her reality was then. Within his comparison it becomes clear the law of 1756 didn’t protect young women. Even now, the law was rewritten to try and benefit women but a young girl is often seen as the cause of such an ordeal, rather than the victim she rightfully is. In order to better comprehend where Austen and her characters stand within the social construct there must be a comparison to the history of marriage of teenage girls within society and where that place is presently. It is explained that the, “elements, including those of obligation, office, shame, and rehabilitation, further those goods. The society that emerges from this account is a "society of life” (Fitzgibbon 582)” Within his work Fitzgibbon is expressing that society has many different factors within the Regency Era. In order to understand this role he examines Lydia within Austen’s work. Love isn’t seen in fifteen year old Lydia running away, but instead it is in the overcoming of misunderstandings and communication of Elizabeth and Darcy.

If there was a poster boy for the patrician hero then it would be Mr. Darcy. This form of character isn’t what one might initially expect from a hero and yet he is often found rescuing the damsel in distress. Jane Austen is using him as an example of what an adult, particularly a male, should be in society. He not only saves his little sister, he chooses his love and saves the Bennet family by offering money for Wickham to marry Lydia rather than toss her away as a mistress. Whether it is his own sister from the hands of Wickham or protecting the Bennet's reputation by supplying funds for Wickham to marry Lydia, he is always there when needed. Whilst even Elizabeth’s mother, who loves anyone with a fortune, views him as, “a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set-downs. I quite detest the man” (Austen 3). If the easily pleased Mrs. Bennet has a distaste for Darcy then it can be assumed that Elizabeth’s hatred was easily placed. It shows how an initial meeting is so important in life but even more in a society where appearance and wealth are everything how one acts can shape how they are discussed in societal circles. Lydia is an example of what a girl could so easily be trapped into, charmed by someone shallow; she was a flirt who nearly destroyed her family's reputation on her own selfishness. However, her parents should have protected her far more than they did, so it falls on their shoulders, not on the child.

From the beginning of the novel the pair get off to a rocky start and yet Elizabeth always holds her own when it comes to Darcy. Moler explains that, “Darcy, a caricature of the patrician hero. Later, although she retained an element of ironic imitation, Jane Austen refined her characters, transforming them from mere vehicles for satire into human beings interesting in their own right as well as because of their relationship to their literary prototypes” (Moler 14). While their love seems ironic it is an echo of how humanity can misinterpret when communication falls to pieces. Austen uses Elizabeth and Darcy to represent what a relationship can be with and without communication. Thus, she is instructing her predominantly female readership that love is found in the understanding of one another and not in the fleeting passions of youth. Moler continues to explain the writing of the text in that, “Jane Austen thoroughly humbles her patrician hero. Darcy is subjected to a series of "set-downs'' at the hands of the anti-Evelina, Elizabeth Bennet, and through his love for Elizabeth and the shock he receives from her behavior, he comes to see himself as he really is, and to repent of his pomposity and pride” (Moler 15). This is key because it shows how Darcy sets aside his pride when he realizes that Elizabeth is more then meets the eye. Whilst some say that Austen writes a text that isn’t feminist in nature, the relationship between Lizzy and Darcy seems a fairly modern one in that they overcome misunderstandings and push one another to grow.

Love is a driving force within the text but it comes in many different forms. Austen uses this motif to express what to look for in a partner and what to watch out for in suitors. Nelson explains the importance of such literate as, “Most nineteenth-century British fiction reflects the condition of England—specifically, the condition of English women. Middle- and upper-class women were the main writers, characters, and readers of novels, especially when written in the veins of realism, psychological fiction, and domestic fiction. Marriage was the primary concern of the social issues grouped under the umbrella term "The Woman Question," and marriage was also the primary concern for most women” (Nelson 1). Therefore as a female writer Austen was writing to a predominately female audience and what was important to them was marriage as it was one of the few choices they had. Whether or not to marry someone was pivotal in her culture because it made the difference of moving up or down in society. Not only was this person someone you would spend the rest of your life with but they also were now responsible for your well being as women had little rights. Perhaps this is why, “Jane Austen has been and remains a figure at the vanguard of reinforcing tradition and promoting social change” (Looser 3). Austen might not have been very popular at her time but her stories remained and became favorites of people throughout time and place. Marriage is a universal question that most women face and thus her books were guides to what to look for then and for some, what to look for now. While Jane Austen never married herself but her legacy was carried on by her family when, “her nieces and great nieces and, especially, her nephews and great nephews, would try to shepherd her egacy from there forward, but they had to rely on publishers, critics, and illustrators, too” (Looser 7). This legacy has shaped the idea of what marriage can be in the idealism of Lizzy and Darcy. However, Jane Austen said more about the marriages to avoid as much as those to try and achieve. Lurking in the lines about a young Lydia Bennet being allowed to flirt with officers and lingering in the settling of Charlotte Lucas with Mr. Collins. Austen is making a drastic statement by painting outcomes simply for the reader that during her time were possible and in doing so she is warning girls of the power of their choice.

Choice in terms of feminism in literature is prevalent and lingers today on the lips of many women. Basic rights and freedoms weren’t granted but the heroins in Austen’s books could control who they spent their lives with to some degree and that is why she focuses so much on marriage. Allen writes that, “The novel contains little direct discussion of sexual passion, and Austen attempts to discount the potential irrationalities of romantic love” (Allen 1). This could be due to her own experiences as a woman who never married. Passionate love becomes something to avoid where a dedicated love rules supreme. Allen continues to describe the relationship between Lizzy and Darcy as, “merely an extreme case of the repression of desire in the novel; expression of their feelings is restrained not only by decorum but also by their pride

and prejudice” (Allen 5). The desires they have for one another linger beneath the surface, and unlike Lydia, are not acted upon until the confines of marriage. Austen is using this suppression to represent that passion can exist but it must be channeled in approbate action lest the reputation of the lady and her family be ruined. Therefore, the choice of acting on ones passion becomes just as prevalent within the text as marriage itself. Austen makes a clear stand on what a lady ought to do and not do when it comes to love because even if it is unfair, she must rise above the flirtations of man.

Austen was not writing to an audience of girls with the freedom to marry anyone they chose without repercussions, she knew that each choice had weight. This is seen in the reflection of her characters and the marriages they find. Ray explains that Austen’s feminism is represented as, “Elizabeth’s entreaty to her father demonstrates several significant points. First, it demonstrates the contrast between Elizabeth’s rational approach to situations and Lydia’s emotional approach. The clash of Elizabeth and Lydia’s perspectives becomes an increasingly important symbol. Throughout the novel, Elizabeth represents the rational, independent thinking woman that Wollstonecraft champions, and Lydia portrays the sentimental, pleasure-seeking, and emotionally-governed female that Wollstonecraft insists is the product of an unjust and unreasonable educational system” (Ray 32). Therefore, because the system is broken the women of Pride and Prejudice musty make due with what they have and Austen must write to the options she and other women have in the world. The audience of the text is just as important as the text itself because it was the audience and her own experiences that impacted the novel the

most. Pride and Prejudice was not Austen’s first work and while she made little money because of it, she was still able to survive as a single woman. Other women, however, weren’t as lucky as they needed a male relatives help to survive. This is why the presence of Mr.Collins is key as he is the only one that can inherit the estate and Lizzy saying no is basically giving up the opportunity to keep her home within their family. In denying Mr. Collins, Austen is making a statement that reflects a notion that perhaps the dignity and happiness of a woman is more important then a match benefitting her family.

Whilst she ultimately makes a better match in Mr. Darcy, Elizabeth, nor her family, had any idea this match was going to happen. Perhaps one of the starkest comments made by Austen is in the words of Mr. Bennet after the proposal when he tells Lizzy, “An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do” (Austen 20). Mr. Bennet is the most prominent male figure in Lizzy’s life and perhaps it is his encouragement of her happiness and individuality that sets her up for success. Instead of forcing her to Marry Collins he encourages her in her decision because he loves his daughter. Thus, love wins over even the security of a reasonable match and while he had the power to urge his daughter into marriage he chose not to which perhaps is one of the most important moments within the text. Austen creates a relationship between father and daughter built on love and respect and instead of Lizzy being a creature meant simply to be passed to the next male in her life, she is precious and Mr. Bennet wants nothing but the best for her. Austen is writing as equally about what a father ought to be towards his daughter as much as she is writing about what a girl needs to find in a husband.

The key to understanding Pride and Prejudice is to see Austen’s world for all that it was.

Feminism wasn’t as vocal as it might be in other time periods but it was lingering in the witty lines of a female writer. Even if her readership was all female Jane Austen was writing to her audience and depicting what they needed to understand about the world around them. She herself might have never been married but she could observe all those around her and help guide those younger then her into smart choices. All the while, she was depicting relationship that echoed to these girls how they should and should not be treated. It gave them the power that they didn’t realize they possess in that marriage was their choice and perhaps one of their only choices but they had to make it wisely. What they did with this sole power could dictate the rest of their lives as they had little control outside of the female sphere and idealistic views set before them. As Mrs. Bennet’s sole purpose was, “to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news” (Austen 1). The pressure of marriage was throughout the family because to Mrs. Bennett if her daughters didn’t marry they would have no one to care for them. Thus, Lydia’s choice is seen from the mother’s view of success and the father's failure of protection. It becomes evident in examination where the choice of a young lady truly stood.

Fitgibbon explains that, “in a different time or place, events might have involved primarily the government and the courts. The Bennett's might have invoked their legal rights as parents, complained to a department of social services, or secured Mr. Wickham's indictment for statutory rape. But in Jane Austen's world, no one dreamed of summoning a constable or bringing the matter before a justice of the peace. (Nor, it seems, did anyone contemplate bringing the matter before the ecclesiastical authorities or invoking the teachings of the Church of England.) The episodes of Pride and Prejudice unfold under the guidance of another system of rules and principles” (FitzGibbon 583). Thus it is significant that Lydia is used during the landscape of the 1756 laws because before there was a different code. Without the rescuing of Darcy Lydia could have been ruined and abandoned with no way to hold the man accountable for preying on a young girl. Georgiana would have more protection, because of her wealth, but she too was set into harms way when it came to the older man. Vulnerable young women don’t know what they are choosing in situations such as this because they lacked the education of what their actions could bring, one without a mother and the other with a foolish one. The adults are responsible for protecting and educating these ladies because they are not only at risk of being ruined but they are truly children who do not know the power of their choice in marriage as it is one of the few they truly have.

Austen knew this first hand as she was single her entire life and cared for eventually by her elder brother. Whilst Mrs. Bennet is a laughable character she represents a real fear of the time that without marriage a girl might become destitute when her father died and she could then be alone in the world. Marriage is more than just love, it is a way of control for young women that otherwise had little or none. Austen uses the choice of such a union to drive the fact that young girls needed to be wise in everything that they did. Whilst love was important it wasn’t always found where one might expect and when deciding on who to marry a girl needed to look past first impressions. It was a lack of understanding that could lead to her ultimate unhappiness and destruction within society.

Of all the choices given to women, that of love and romance is not a favourable one. “Romance -- broadly defined as a corrupted genre, physical attraction, or adherence to anti-marriage ideology -- is the beginning, a reflection of the heroine's inexperience. Prudence as a loss of youthful illusions is the end, regardless of whether it is rewarded with happy marriage and prosperity or with resignation and, often, death.” (Vranjes, 197) However Vranjes goes on to argue that Persuasion’s Anne Elliot contradicts this sentiment. In fact, Austen’s focus on a character, often left to play a part in the background as a warning to other characters and her readers, abandons the typical romance-to-prudence tales. At twenty-seven, Anne is the same as Pride and Prejudice’s Charlotte Lucas, and a woman who has more legal control over who she can marry.

Vranjes aims to “shed light on the national significance of women’s romance-to-prudence trajectory as legislated by England’s first statute on marriage, whose passage in 1753 could serve as a historical parallel to the rise of the courtship novel.” (Vranjes, 200) With the restriction of age, women were forced to wait until after they had outgrown their susceptibility to romantic love, an arguably naive and foolish requirement for marriage. Persuasion instead postulates the freedom that women have from the generic confines of the prewritten structure of courtship as Anne offers Austen’s readers a vision if not of romantic revolution but a possibility of social change.

With regards to the Marriage Act of 1753, it is in the departure from canon law, with the introduction of parental veto over marriages that Vranjes interests lie. It is this clause that caused much debate and it is believed that it was “passed to strengthen the elite families control over property transmission.” (Vranjes 203) In a country where wealth and power was designated by the ownership of land, and the circularity of inheritance, the very Englishness of the landed was threatened by the moneyed who allowed for freedom and change. In imposing an increased control over the marital choices, “women came to be seen as guardians of the figurative borders that separated landed England from moneyed (non)England.” (Vranjes 2010). So a woman’s romance was either stifled or waited out to capitalise on the chronology that would inevitably follow; the romance-to-ambition or romance-to-prudence paths. It was seen that once past their bloom, their physical beauty fading, poor women would be unable to compete with rich women.

In many novel’s before Persuasion, the heroines are younger than twenty-one and still susceptible to romantic feelings, too young to be tainted by ambition, and yet a heroine’s greatest reward for her virtue or growth is a marriage into the landed circles. But Anne Elliot’s story is different; older, faded and penniless despite being regarded as an heiress, “she refuses to remain within that old, landed England even after she outgrows the age of romance and after her beauty begins to return.” (Vranjes 213). Anne and Wentworth’s first engagement took place more than seven years before the novel’s opening and the representatives of the novel’s landed world, including Lady Russell, Anne’s godmother, find Wentworth socially unacceptable. “Anne Elliot with all her claims of birth, beauty and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen, involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession; would be, indeed a throwing away, which [Lady Russell] grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! (Austen, 27). Wentworth satisfies no expectations of what a husband should be for a woman of Anne’s status, despite being born a gentleman, his profession as a sailor marks him as an outsider of the landed. It is explained by Vanjes that “Austen emphasizes this deterritorialization and, by extension, denationalization of the navy by noting not only her sailors’ spatial but also their temporal displacement from the Englishness for which the Elliots’ circle stands.” (Vranjes 216). Possession of landed property seemed to ensure some kind of timelessness to which an active profession such as the sailor, had no access; a man of property was able to choose his hours and seemingly remain young forever. This was what Lady Russell desired to save Anne from.

Although Wentworth became a more acceptable match in later years, Anne’s marriage to the Captain took her into the non landed world, the possession of the landaulette signified the couples removal from the confines of landed England. When her sister Mary received the news of Anne’s marriage, she “had something to suffer perhaps when they came into contact again, in seeing Anne restored to the rights of seniority, and the mistress of a very pretty landaulette; but she had a future to look forward to, of powerful consolation. (Austen 201) It is Mary, not Anne that had a future to look forward to despite Anne’s gains, as the future that Anne has does not conform with the established rules of inheritance. Where Mary’s husband is the heir to his father’s estate, Wentworth’s future is uncertain.

The plot of Persuasion reverses the romance-to-prudence trajectory that Anne seems to have followed prematurely in breaking off her first engagement to Wentworth and submitting to her duty of perpetuating the landed gentry. Yet as Anne grows older, it is marked not by a growing ambition but her fading beauty that becomes a physical manifestation brought on by the suffering of her sacrifice of romance. The age at which Anne’s choices are made is of significance, as at twenty-one it had crucial social and legal importance which Austen would have been aware of. This is significant as she uses Lydia’s youth as a stark contrast to Anne’s later in life choices. The childhood decisions a young lady made could be very reckless but Anne was persuaded out of a love bound marriage, while Lydia was persuaded into a loveless one. One eventually found happiness while the other assumes she is happy but is merely foolish and in for a rude awakening. An adult can make the choice of whether or not to marry, and with wisdom, can choose well, but a child let alone a reckless one will never stand a chance. Thus both girls, as well as the other women in Austen’s literature, are completely shaped around the marriage act that defines their present and future.

Jane Austen wrote stories that were filled with great love and wit but she also made clear statements about a woman's place within her society. In both Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion she chooses characters that vary in age, maturity, and circumstance. They are all uniquely shaped to show a variable and perspective of a relationship and expectation of the 1756 law and the society it shaped. Having all the traditional marriage forms destroyed it set a new standard in which women weren’t protected, like Lydia’s near destruction in running away with Wickham, and the wealthy men were no longer held accountable for their actions. Be it they have children outside of marriage, these children were not provided for and the responsibility fell on the woman. Austen shows that choosing wisely in marriage is the only choice women truly have but they are still seen as the ruined ones if tricked like Lydia or Georgiana. It doesn’t rest on the predators shoulders, but on the young ladies who fell into their hands or nearly did. Darcy stands as an example of what a man with wealth should be and what every girl, even those of lower birth, should look for in a partner. The same is said of Anne in her choice of love later in life, and she ultimately finds the simple yet beautiful life she wanted as a young lady. Lord Hardwicke's Law is seen through all Austen literature and is the backbone of the society in which Jane Austen was living and knew very well. Thus, her stories became warnings then and now for young women and in a way, call out the laws that failed to protect them.

Austen’s works are set in a patriarchy but even now women aren’t fully equal to men in many societies, be it American or British. There have been vast improvements for women’s rights, marriage in particular has improved, but that doesn’t mean it is equal. Even now girls of young ages are pulled out of school and pressured into marriage and have been long since The Marriage Act of 1756 was changed. Be it gypsy culture or an unplanned pregnancy, girls as young as fourteen can be found out of school because their father’s decided they get married. Without education they stand no true chance in the world, neither did the women under Harwick’s Law, held back by the societal rules of men. Even a girl who has been tricked into a situation in which she is raped or taken advantage of, is looked at more often as the instigator for not being smarter, dressing better, being in the wrong place, she is the flirt and in a sense- “asking for it.” Many young women be it thirteen to eighteen, are so expectant of being told it is their fault or untrue, that they fear their attacker or believe they won’t get help, they hide the truth as shame. Yet Austen is clear both then and now, a child cannot make such a choice as marriage or sex wisely, they are not mature yet, and the blame falls on the adult for both taking advantage or not protecting them. Much like the laws created to protect wealthy men we see that wealthy men today have gotten away with similar atrocities, not being held accountable for their actions. Austen’s claims are still accurate and so are her lessons, that in order to make the right choice a girl must not only have protection, education, and age, she must also be protected by the law of the land and if those laws do not protect her then she will always be at risk of falling into the hands of a wolf.

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