Here are two major ideas in Pride and Prejudice:
The concern for getting daughters married into good families pervades the novel. The opening line stresses the importance of marriage. Marriage meant stability, financial security, and social mobility for an English woman in Austen’s time. For other women, marriage simply meant survival. Here are some excerpts from the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice that support this point:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
... ..
"Is he married or single?"
"Oh! Single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!"
"How so? How can it affect them?"
"My dear Mr. Bennet," replied his wife, "how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them."
"Is that his design in settling here?"
"Design! Nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes."
Society’s preoccupation with class distinctions is also a major focus of Austen’s work. The Bennets hold an inferior position among the gentry, while the Bingleys belong to a higher rank. The women at Netherfield laugh at Elizabeth for disregarding manners when she walks into their house with a mud-splattered petticoat. Here is an excerpt from chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice that illustrates the theme of class distinction in the novel:
They were in fact very fine ladies; not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of making themselves agreeable when they chose it, but proud and conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others.
