[摘要] 简奥斯丁的《傲慢与偏见》写于1813年，一(5)
2013-08-20 01:03
导读：In Pride and Prejudice, there are also some description about other peoples different opinion on money and marriage. For instance, Lady Catherine wants her daughter Anne to marry her nephew, Mr. Darcy
In Pride and Prejudice, there are also some description about other people’s different opinion on money and marriage. For instance, Lady Catherine wants her daughter Anne to marry her nephew, Mr. Darcy, to make a union of the two estates, and she believes it is Darcy’s duty and responsibility. Miss Bingley, who has a fortune of twenty thousand pounds and is in the habit of spending more than she ought, and of associating with people of rank, shows her great interest to Mr. Darcy, who has ten thousand a year. She also spares no effort to prevent the love affair between Mr. Bingley, her brother and Jane Bennet, Elizabeth’s elder sister, and hopes that her brother can marry Georgiana, Darcy’s sister. Only this can enhance his fortune and social position, and also the possibility of her herself marrying Mr. Darcy. Colonel Fitzwilliam, Darcy’s cousin, is a younger son of an earl, can inherit neither property nor official title. He acknowledges to Elizabeth that his habit of expense makes him too dependent and he cannot afford to marry without some attention to money. He also says that only Darcy can be out of the restraint of money to choose freely on marriage.
From the part of Mr. Darcy, though he need not marry a lady with property since he is in great wealth, he does experience long-time and fierce struggle in the process of acceptance of Elizabeth for her social position and low connections.
“He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her (Elizabeth) connections, he should be in some danger.”(24)
“He began to feel the danger of paying Elizabeth too much attention.”(25)
“She attracted him more than he liked … He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity; … though they were at one time left by themselves for half-an-hour, he adhere most conscientiously to his book, and would not even look at her.”(26)
（科教作文网 zw.nseac.com整理） Mr. Darcy grows up in a strong awareness of rank and power from his very childhood, which makes him pride and conceited. When he comes to Longbourn, the persons there and the manners they take are far different from what he is familiar with. Though there are so many pleasant girls, “there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.”(27) Even when he proposes to Elizabeth for his deep love (“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feeling will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”(28)), his sense of her inferiority – of its being a degradation – of the family obstacles which judgment has always opposed to inclination, are dwelt on with a warmth which seems due to the consequence he is wounding.
“I was in middle before I knew I had begun.”(29) Obviously, he once tries to take back his feeling when he finds he is in love with Elizabeth and has a strong conflict between sense and sensibility in his heart.
Such sense has a direct responsibility for his putting obstacles in the uneven marriage of Bingley and Jane.
“… he (Darcy) congratulated himself on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences of a most imprudent marriage ” because “ there were some very strong objections against the lady”(30) and these strong objections are, “her having one uncle who was a country attorney, and another who was in business in London.”(31) Now it comes to the point. The low connections with small fortune and bad manners is the real cause that makes Darcy depress his own love for Elizabeth and thwart the prospective marriage between Bingley and Jane.
It seems that only the marriage case of Bingley-Jane involves the purest love but no money at all. Then, why is not Bingley penniless but a “young man of large fortune”?
In Pride and prejudice, Austen put marriage into all kinds of social and economic relationship from beginning to end, which makes the whole novel have great practical significance.
（科教范文网 lw.nseaC.Com编辑发布）
Conclusion
There are a lot of novels talking about marriage in Britain, but scarecely an author could be like Austen, exposing the money-essence of capitalism marriage system so deeply. In brief, it is money that determines everybody’s life and fate, especially marriage. As for it’s pragmatic meaning, it could be forceful and penetrating. No wonder that David Dax，a western Marxism critic said, in the aspect of exposing “the economics of human beings’ behavior”, Jane Austen, “to some extent, had been a Marxist before Marx’s being born.”(32)
Notes
(1) 潘维新 《奥斯丁作品中的妇女群像》 西南师范
大学学报，1989年4月，P89, 91
(2) Tanner Tony Jane Austen P20
